Andrew Selous
Main Page: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)Department Debates - View all Andrew Selous's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberI can confirm we are developing the idea of women’s community prisons, which will be smaller-scale prisons specifically designed to address the needs of women. We will outline more about that in due course, and look at overall reform in respect of women offenders in the new year.
A little while ago a former prisoner said to me that when he left prison he could mop a floor very well but that was not going to pay the bills. In the recent Dame Glenys Stacey in-depth look at 86 prisoners, not one left to go to a job, so may I urge in particular a focus on construction skills from day one of a sentence, given that we need 300,000 construction workers to build the houses this country needs and the infrastructure for our economy?
I commend my hon. Friend for the work he did as prisons Minister in promoting employment. I have seen some excellent schemes in prison. For example, Costa Coffee is offering jobs and training people as baristas, and I have mentioned Land Securities looking for scaffolding and dry-lining workers and training them in prison. I completely agree with my hon. Friend that rather than doing work in prisons and then seeing what jobs are available on the outside, we need to look the opposite way round; we need to see what is available on the outside and make sure those are the skills we are training up in prisons, preferably with the employers who are then going to take those offenders on.