Prisons and Courts Bill

Caroline Flint Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her point. She is absolutely right. Getting employers who want to employ people on the outside to train offenders on the inside will help to create the path into work that reduces reoffending. I have been to Brixton and seen the fantastic work that it is doing with offenders. The question she posed is already being addressed by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, because we want people to be able to get the experience in work that means that they can leave prison, get into a job, and lead a lawful life. We are also launching a strategy on employment to try to get more employers like National Grid, Timpson and Halfords, which already do fantastic work, to sign up to employing these ex-offenders, because that benefits all of us.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

The Lord Chancellor has mentioned how important staffing is. The roll-out of a 1:6 ratio in public sector prisons is welcome, but I do not understand why it would not apply to private prisons, because they have to deal with the same sorts of challenges as those in our public sector.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I should clarify that it is a caseload of 1:6, which means that each officer will have responsibility for six offenders whereby they are in charge of making sure that those offenders are safe and encouraging them to reform while they are in prison. The head of the Prison Service, Michael Spurr, is in discussions with the private sector prisons to make sure that they have access to the same level of staffing. We want that to apply in both the private and the public sectors.