Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Graham Allen

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s continued focus on this important issue. As the Prime Minister said in his speech on 8 February, we believe in humane treatment and care. In our work in prisons we are going to give prison governors more say in this area, and we are going to move towards full co-commissioning for governors with NHS England, meaning that prison leaders can have more of a say in defining what kinds of services prisoners need and the budgets available for them.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

T2. Will the Secretary of State welcome back, after her long illness, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire)? Will he also consider giving the House a report on the Peterborough prison experiment, where a social impact bond involved voluntary and private sector investors to reduce the amount of recidivism in prisons? May we please have a report on how that is going?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Graham Allen

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of the Rebalancing the Outer Estates Foundation in Nottingham North constituency on reoffending rates among young people not in education, employment or training.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to improving education, skills, training and employment for his constituents. He has a long record of working in early intervention projects—an area that I am personally very committed to.

[Mr Allen]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Does the Minister agree with the old cliché that the best crime prevention measure is a job for young people? Will he commend the work of the rebalancing foundation in Nottingham North and visit it in order to see a number of the schemes that we have undertaken, including building—or hoping to build—a special college for 14 to 17-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training?

[Andrew Selous]

The evidence backs up what the hon. Gentleman says: only 32% of adults said they were in paid employment in the four weeks prior to custody, so the hon. Gentleman’s question is along the right lines. The evidence also tells us that more than a third of young people who go to prison in Nottingham reoffend. That is why we are putting education and skills at the heart of our transforming youth custody programme. The Government have also given £100,000 from the local enterprise partnership to the project in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.