Sentencing White Paper

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. As I said, we are creating 10,000 additional prison places, on top of those being delivered by Wellingborough and Glen Parva. These new prisons have been designed to be safe, decent and secure and to support effective rehabilitation. We have committed an additional £156 million this year to address some of the most immediate maintenance and renewal issues across the prison estate. We are also grateful to our FM providers and all those other contractors that have helped us operate prisons safely in the very challenging environment of Covid-19. Most recently, we announced that £140 million will be spent installing temporary prison cells, repairing and refurbishing prisons, approved premises and young offender institutions and improving IT in the Prison Service.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, while agreeing with my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, I would have welcomed many of the proposals in the White Paper when I was a magistrate—but I was depressed to see that in paragraph 394 in the annexe on race disparity, a most important element of justice, the term “White” is contrasted with “BAME”. Does the Minister agree with me that there are white minority-ethnic groups, notably Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, as well as people from the Balkan countries? Secondly, why has the Youth Justice Board not fulfilled the undertaking made to me several years ago by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to separately categorise Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, so that we can finally make a start to better understand the context of their situation in the criminal justice system?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I apologise to the noble Baroness, but I could not hear the majority of what she said, and I do not think the rest of the Front Bench could either. I wonder whether we could take it offline and I will write to her.