Offenders (Day of Release from Detention) Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 3rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild). I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) for bringing the Bill to the House. As far as I am concerned, people who end up in prison have gone through our process, they have been rightly convicted of offences, and they will serve their time. It is vital we give them the opportunity to rebuild their lives when they have served their sentence and come out.

When I brought forward the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, one of the areas I insisted on was ensuring that ex-offenders leaving prison were encouraged to rebuild their lives, that prison governors had a statutory duty to ensure they did so, and that they were referred to local housing authorities to be offered suitable accommodation. It is fair to say that I have harassed a number of Ministry of Justice Ministers over the past six years to ensure that prison governors carry out their statutory duties, so it is a great shame that is not happening as it should.

As has been said, one in three prisoners are released on a Friday at present. Housing authorities close their doors at 5 o’clock and unless the ex-offender is there in time, they are likely to have a choice of either sleeping rough or, worse still, returning to the area in which their crimes were originally committed and then mixing and mingling with the same people who got them into trouble in the first place. They are often left with £50 in their pocket and told, “Go away and don’t reoffend.” That is unacceptable today, particularly for people who have committed to rebuilding their lives and end up literally on the streets.

The support services people need are not there. I declare my interest as the co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness. We have a clear indication and evidence from local authorities that there is no support over the weekends for prison leavers to obtain accommodation. They approach the housing authority and find it closed or unable to provide accommodation on an emergency basis, so that leaves them on the streets or with the alternative I have mentioned.

As has been said, other services are needed. GPs, jobcentres and advice centres all close at the end of Friday and do not open again until Monday. That leaves people in a desperate position that they should not have to face. They have frequently lost contact with their friends and family because of the fact they have been in imprisoned, and they literally have nowhere to go over the weekend. For many, the stability of prison, despite the conditions, and a roof and food is potentially better than being on the streets, because then they face a choice. Do they spend their money on a hotel room? Do they reoffend? What do they do? That is the key challenge. We have to prevent people from getting to that unacceptable position.

Given the weather, people will be being released today in freezing conditions and then facing that desperate choice. They have no stable living place to end up in, so the temptation to return to a life of crime is always there, and they may have people who will support them to return to that life of crime, rather than supporting them to rebuild their lives. It is clearly not in the interests of anyone that people are placed in that position.

This is a very simple Bill, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness for bringing it forward. We should be releasing prisoners during the week, allowing them to access services and to rebuild their lives. We do not want to see people returning to prison. We do not want people to reoffend; we want them to be good citizens. If we do send them back to prison, we should remember that it costs, on average, £43,000 to host a prisoner each year. In the public purse’s interests, this Bill is a sensible move.

In conclusion, I strongly support the Bill. It can lead to fewer crimes, fewer reoffending individuals and safer streets for us all, and that has to be in the interests of every single one of our constituents. What opposition could there be to such a Bill? It is good news, of course, that the Bill is welcomed on all sides. Finally, I would just say that prison governors and the people in the prison support service need to be thinking about how we support people to rebuild their lives, and to plan for it as they are coming up to their release dates, rather than it coming up as a sudden rush with people literally being put on the streets and told, “Go away and don’t reoffend.” That cannot be acceptable in today’s society. The Bill has to be in the interests of us all, and I commend it to the House.