Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

I want to look at the flip side of this issue—specifically, what happens to those detained overseas who return to the UK? The Government are preparing to resume deportations of Syrian foreign national offenders, while the Syrian Democratic Forces have called on countries to repatriate their own citizens. In recent months, several ISIS-linked individuals have been returned to this country from the al-Roj camp. Will the Minister confirm whether these ISIS-linked individuals will return to custody in the UK, given their direct links to a proscribed terrorist organisation, or are those individuals now free in the UK, having faced no consequences for their terrorist affiliations?

[Jake Richards]

When foreign national offenders are deported from this country and are able to return, they should be detained and dealt with appropriately by law enforcement agencies. I would expect that to happen in every single case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister, whom I welcome to his new role.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

The use of drones to bring contraband into prisons has become a significant issue. Last year there was an intra-year increase of 43% in the use of drones for illegal activity on the prison estate, and, as an MP with a prison in my constituency, HMP Littlehey, I find this surge in their use alarming.

Last month the Justice Secretary announced that he had

“tasked British prisons with learning from Ukraine’s drone expertise”

with a £6.5 million funding stream, but no tenders are currently out to develop that capability. The only specific competition from the Ministry of Justice has been November’s £60,000 counter-drone challenge. Can the Justice Secretary tell us what is the current counter-drone strategy for HM Prison and Probation Service, given the current delays in the installation of physical unmanned aircraft systems countermeasures, what specific projects are actually in flight to develop the counter-UAS capability across our prison estate, and by when that capability will be available?

[Mr Lammy]

This is a very serious issue, which is why I announced the partnership with our Ukrainian colleagues. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman missed it, but I also announced £6 million of funding for that research innovation as part of the package. I know that, because of his own background, he will recognise the substantial expertise that lies in Ukraine; he will recognise, too, that much of what we do to counter the drones that are flying across our prisons is classified, but I can assure him that this is a priority for the Government.

Separation Centres Review

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman with the detail, because it is a very good question. There are 254 prisoners in custody for terrorism or terrorism-related offences, 60% of whom have an Islamic ideology, and all the prisoners in our separation centres come from that cohort. He will recognise that that is a tiny proportion of the rising population in prison who say they are of the Muslim faith. It is important to emphasise that. However, radicalisation is a bigger thematic area than just the work of those extremists in separation centres—he is absolutely right—and we have to continue bearing down on it. I have discussed this in Committee stages of Bills under the previous Government. It remains a long-standing issue and will continue to be, I suspect, for decades to come.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

I wholeheartedly agree that our most dangerous prisoners should be dealt with appropriately, but I will touch on an adjacent point around prison capacity. We are aware that the Government are in the process of rolling out more prison places—around 14,000—but we are also aware that none of those prison places are currently designated as category A. Looking at the most recent statistics for the beginning of the year, we see that of the available capacity in the prison system, only 12% is category A. Is the Justice Secretary confident that there is enough remaining capacity in the prison system at category A level, given that the remaining prison places planned are categories B to D? What is the number of available prison places remaining that will trigger a need for us to build out that capacity?

[Mr Lammy]

I was very pleased to say in oral questions that we are turning the tide on the prison capacity crisis that we inherited. In the context of my statement, I talked about a tiered approach—yes, a supermax approach, but on more than one site. As we enter a spending review and I make that case, as well as the case that Jonathan Hall makes, by definition and necessity the places will have to be category A—at the highest tier—for this group of prisoners. It is important, as we saw after the incident at Frankland, that we are able to move prisoners to other high-security sites; we have Belmarsh prison here in London, which I visited early in my post. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; we will need to have those places, and I am happy to write to him with more detail.

Prison Capacity: Annual Statement

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jake Richards]

I am very happy to come and speak to the Justice Committee as and when invited. The hon. Member raises an important point about fire safety; I do not have the exact figures to hand, but there are definitely issues with fire safety across the prison estate—of course, safety is the primary focus, but that has an effect on capacity and maintenance more generally. I am happy to write to her with those figures. As for the effect of part 1 of Leveson’s report and the forthcoming part 2, the modelling and assessments will be set out as and when the legislation comes before the House, and I am sure they will be sent to the Justice Committee as well.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Regarding prison capacity, my understanding is that none of the 14,000 prison places that are planned is category A. Can the Minister confirm how much remaining capacity there currently is within the prison system at category A, and is he confident that there will be enough going forward?

Twelve prison projects, including the new prison in Buckinghamshire, were due to be delivered by ISG Construction Ltd before it went into administration, and both the major project portfolio programmes it was working on are red-rated within that. Can the Minister confirm that all 12 of those projects have recommenced, and that a new contractor is now delivering them?

[Jake Richards]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman on his last question—I just do not have the details, and I do not want to mislead him or the House on that particular case. As for high-security prisons, there is an ongoing workstream within the Department to look at the future of that estate, and we will update the House in due course.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I want to place on the record my sincere thanks to her for all her tenacious campaigning on behalf of her constituents who have been through the unimaginable pain, trauma and grief of losing their children in the most horrific circumstances and then being denied the truth. It was a privilege to meet her constituents with the Prime Minister last week and to hear their truth, and I thank them again from the Dispatch Box for sharing their pain with us and sharing directly why this Bill is so important and why we need to get it right. Hearing their truth and hearing from the families is exactly why the Government have taken the decision to pause this legislation so that we can get it right. We are determined to do that by working with the families and hearing from them, and by working with the intelligence services.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Looking at the wider implications of the Bill, the Minister talks about the intelligence services. Can she confirm whether there is a carve-out for military intelligence services in any way? Looking at that more broadly still, will it also apply to special forces operations and personnel, and will it be applied retrospectively?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

It is important to put on the record that there is absolutely no carve-out here. The Bill will apply to all public authorities, including the armed forces and all intelligence services. We have worked collaboratively with our armed forces and with the Ministry of Defence in the design and creation of the legislation, and we will continue to do so. As I have said, the primary objective of this Government is to protect national security, and we will do that at all costs, but we also need to ensure that the families’ experiences are reflected in the Bill and that we get the legislation right, and that is exactly what we will do.

Jury Trials

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Since 1220, trials by 12 good men—trials by jury—have been taking place. Juries are a key way that citizens consent to and participate in one of the most significant powers the state holds: to convict and imprison subjects. According to the Secretary of State’s figures, cited in this House on 16 December last year, only 3% of all criminal cases are heard by a judge and jury under the current regime. He also claimed:

“Jury trials will remain a cornerstone of the British justice system. Delayed justice is justice denied.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2025; Vol. 777, c. 742.]

Yet he is now choosing to bring to an end an almost 1,000-year-old system in the name of efficiency. This is a complete red herring.

Remedies are already available that would help to solve the backlog. In November, the Institute for Government stated:

“The major drivers of poor productivity are not having enough criminal lawyers, badly maintained court buildings, shortages of court staff and poor technology”.

While none of those are quick or easy to overcome, maximising productivity is a far more practical and measured step than the controversial and nuclear option of judge-only trials via the introduction of a new intermediate court, the Crown court bench division, which has been neither piloted nor thoroughly modelled—[Interruption.] I hear the Minister chuntering from a sedentary position about who started that. Well, this Government are doing nothing to address it. They could do as we on the Conservative Benches suggest and make a start by providing an adequate number of sitting days. Lady Chief Justice Carr has already said that 2,000 days are currently going unused. I would advise the Government to help sort the backlog by allocating those, rather than by abolishing a significant part of our system.

The Institute for Government has identified that scrapping jury trials will save between 7% and 8% of the time currently spent on Crown court jury cases. Abolishing a practice used in such a small percentage of cases shows that this Government are more focused on the same tinkering at the edges that the Justice Secretary has stated we cannot afford to do, as opposed to using pragmatic, clear solutions that could help fix the issues. It also represents yet another in a long list of examples of Labour wanting to take power from citizens and further engorge the state. The Justice Secretary need not listen only to me. The Bar Council’s leadership issued a statement that made clear its position that it was against the curtailment of jury trials, stating:

“There is no evidence we have seen…that it will significantly reduce the Crown Court backlog. However, there is evidence that diminishing the constitutional principle of trial by jury will erode trust in our criminal justice system.”

[Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)]

When the Justice Secretary gave evidence to the Justice Committee in December, he said that the evidence underpinning the 20% time saving that comes from Sir Brian’s report would be released. If that makes the proposition good—I understand that the hon. Gentleman disputes that—would he and his party still oppose even the principle of structural reform, even if it is necessary to cut the backlog and keep it down?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I have just been informed that the hon. Member walked into the Chamber only about five minutes ago—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. The hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) has been here for a while. He was not allowed to make a speech because he was not here at the beginning of the debate, but he has been here for a while.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will make progress.

No one who voted for Labour voted for this seismic change. It is rushed, knee-jerk and smacks of a Justice Secretary who is still smarting from his demotion from one of the great offices of state and is now overcompensating by attempting to make his mark. I urge the Government to reconsider, and I urge those on the Government Benches who plan to rebel today to do so with a clear conscience, knowing that they are simply cutting out the middle man, because the Government will inevitably end up where those rebels already are.

HMP Leyhill: Offender Abscondments

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Nothing—absolutely nothing. Absconds decreased under the previous Labour Government, and that trend carried on under the Tories until they failed—they have the poorest ever record. The number is down 2% on last year. The Conservatives’ failure to get to grips with this, fund our prisons and probation system effectively, and deal with the crumbling infrastructure of our prisons system has resulted in this crisis in our prisons. The Labour party is getting on with the job of cleaning up their mess.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

The Minister is keen to take credit for the reduced rate of absconsions. What specific steps have the Government taken to reduce that rate? Will she reassure the public that every single one of the 57 prisoners who absconded—less the two currently at large—have been re-apprehended?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I congratulate the hon. Member on his happy news over the Christmas break. It is lovely for us to have some positive news to celebrate in this place.

In April 2025, the Government introduced changes to the eligibility for open conditions from three years to five. We also strengthened mandatory checks in offender assessment system reviews and victim liaison officer notifications, and introduced mandatory seven-day transfer reviews and mandatory security inputting. We upped the assessments necessary for a prisoner to be moved into open prison. We are reducing the number of absconsions—there has been a 2% decrease on last year, as I said—and we hope to go further. Open conditions work; they are about rehabilitation. Tagging also works, which is why we are investing £700 million in probation to increase tagging and probation.

As for the 57 prisoners, I do not have those figures to hand, but I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman with them.

Prisoner Releases in Error

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend puts it beautifully. I suspect that it is why the shadow Justice Secretary said last week that the state of the Prison Service has been unacceptable for a very long time, including under the Conservative Government. I suspect it is why William Hague, a former leader of the Conservative party, said that the Government failed to grasp this—they did not build more prisons, and they did not have enough people in our prisons—and that this has been a long period of real failure.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Between 5 July and the end of the reporting period in March, this Government oversaw the accidental release of 193 prisoners. That is five prisoners every week. We now know that there have been a further 91 accidental prison releases since 1 April, so there have been 284 in total. What assurances can the Secretary of State give my constituents that no prisoners have been accidentally released from HMP Littlehey in my constituency since Labour took office?

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Member knows that about 17 prisoners a day were released in error under the last Government.[Official Report, 11 November 2025; Vol. 775, c. 43.] (Correction) He knows too that, in introducing their early release scheme and our emergency early release scheme, there is complexity in the system. I will look closely at the data that is available in relation to the prison in his constituency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

7. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle violence against women and girls.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

12. Whether she has had recent discussions with Cabinet colleagues on reviewing the strategy entitled “Tackling violence against women and girls.”

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

14. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle violence against women and girls.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely do support the “Loose Women” in this regard. I was about to say that I would like to think of myself as one, but I am not sure that that would come across very well. I agree that signage in GPs’ surgeries, dentists’ waiting rooms and pubs and clubs are valuable tools to warn the public about the signs of domestic abuse, and can help to point those who are worried about a friend or family member to places where they can be helped. We as a Government must ensure that when people need to see that signage it will be there, and that is what we are doing

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

In June I asked the Government to consider my private Member’s Bill calling for them to publish a strategy to tackle interpersonal abuse and violence against men and boys. The strategy would ensure that male survivors of crimes that are considered to be violence against women and girls—such as rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, forced marriage and honour-based violence—were given dedicated support, and would also prevent male survivors from having to be in spaces that should be for women. On 1 September, the Minister told me that the strategy

“will be published early in the autumn.”

We are now well past that. What is causing the delay in the publication of the revised VAWG strategy, and can the Minister assure me that it will specifically address male

survivors of crimes that are considered to be violence against women and girls?

[Jess Phillips]

Yes, I can absolutely give the hon. Gentleman that assurance, and I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss these matters and see where we can go forward together. The delay is being caused by the fact that the work will be completely cross-governmental; we must ensure that the allocations processes, and all the things that go on in Government Departments, are as good as they possibly can be, because the National Audit Office reports about previous VAWG strategies have left a lot to be desired, and I do not want that to happen again.

Sentencing Bill

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jake Richards]

I thank my hon. Friend’s father for his service. Prison officers across the country do a brilliant and important job. My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I have sat through hours of this debate over the last few weeks, and while it has been important, the crowing from the Tories is galling considering the legacy that they left behind.

This Labour Government faced a crisis when we came into power last summer. The Tories had left our prison system on the brink of collapse, and lawless chaos was on the verge of breaking out. We took action, with plans to build 14,000 prison places—the biggest prison-building programme since the Victorian era—and 2,500 places in our first year, compared to just 500 places that were built during 14 years of the Conservative Government.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Does the Minister recognise, from his written response to me, that every single one of those 2,405 prison places was authorised by the previous Conservative Government and that the 14,000 prison places he planned to build will not be delivered because the firm that was due to build them has gone into administration?

[Jake Richards]

The hon. Member always makes that point, and he thinks it a good point. Towards the end of 14 years of Conservative government, the Conservatives suddenly realised they had not done anything to our prisons—it was an absolute shambles—and they started to take action. We have actually delivered those places, with 2,500 in one year compared with just 500 in 14 years. It is shocking. That is not a good point, and he should not keep raising it.

The Government began an independent sentencing review, led by a former Conservative Justice Secretary, to ensure that our system was sustainable. The Bill is that vital step to ensure that we can keep that most basic promise to the British people. We will ensure that there is capacity in our prisons to keep law and order on the streets. We will ensure that our justice system clamps down on reoffending and delivers punishment that works. We will ensure that we will never again face the chaos of Tory misrule. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.