Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend has made a number of points on the criminal justice system over a number of years that are all worth thinking about. He is absolutely right about protecting our prison officers. We have, as he will be aware, increased the sentence for assaulting prison staff.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

No, we did!

[Lucy Frazer]

Parliament brought it in, at the behest of the hon. Member’s Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018—cross-party working in this place is very important—and we continue to look at this important area.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Lady rightly upbraids me, and I apologise. It is important and good that we now have domestic abuse advisers in every jobcentre, who can really help signpost and give support to people who are in abusive relationships. It is right to say that about 60% of claims are made by the primary carer, which will often be a woman, but in a number of cases individuals are trapped in a position of dependence. I hope that the Bill will be an opportunity for us to do more work on that.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I hope the Secretary of State has seen the work that has been done in Drake Hall women’s prison, which has shown that about two thirds of women prisoners—those who have been screened— have had a major traumatic brain injury or a history of it. Two thirds of those injuries happened prior to their first offending behaviour and were as a result of domestic violence. So would it not make sense, first, if we screened every woman prisoner before she arrived in prison to make sure that she had the right support, and, secondly, if we made sure that every woman who had potentially suffered from domestic violence was given the neuro-rehabilitation that she needs to make sure that she gets over the physical trauma?

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point—one with which I am familiar—about the cycle of abuse and then criminality. Women whom I have met in Eastwood Park recently were in a similar position, particularly women from south Wales. I could talk about individual meetings I have had with women prisoners, but the simple truth is that I get the point about acquired brain injury and we want to do more about it. Again, drawing that out in the debate will be really helpful for the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Ind)]

It is always a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). She and I do not always agree on things, but I absolutely concur with her final comments to the Minister about this being a gendered crime. Of course it happens to men as well as women, but we have to look at the reality of the statistics.

I welcome the opportunity this afternoon to get this Bill out of the blocks and use this unexpected week wisely. I must also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) for her moving contribution. I wish, in a limited period of time, to concentrate on one element alone. Some may look at me with some surprise when I do this, and fear I find myself in the role of gamekeeper turned poacher, rather than the other way round. I am sure the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), does not need reminding of the meeting that she and I attended in May, alongside the Minister for countering extremism and my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), then an Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Justice. I was pleased to see him on the Treasury Bench for the opening of this debate. He made the point during that meeting that when considering domestic abuse it is imperative that we consider people as victims first, rather than alongside any other considerations that the Government might have. That meeting was attended by Southall Black Sisters, Imkaan and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who has not yet spoken in this debate but who has such a wealth of experience and expertise on these issues.

I was pleased to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor talk about the need for a cross-Government approach. The meeting that I chaired and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle, attended was a cross-Government one, but, as I said to those agencies represented, it was not sufficiently cross-Government. There was no representation from the Department for Work and Pensions or the Department of Health and Social Care. If we are going to address domestic abuse in all its forms, we must have all bodies around the table.

[Chris Bryant]

I just wonder whether we should be looking at one other Department, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, because in my constituency and in the south Wales valleys the worst spikes, when there are so many instances of domestic violence that the police are simply not able to cope, occur when there is a big rugby or football match. I simply do not understand why all the sporting bodies cannot come together to run a major publicity campaign to try to tackle this.

[Caroline Nokes]

I welcome the comments that the hon. Gentleman makes and those that my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), a former Culture Secretary, made when she said that she was trying to do what he suggests. Of course the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government must also be involved. We have heard much about health, relationships and sexual education in schools, so the Department for Education also of course has a role to play.

I urge the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend Member for Louth and Horncastle to do what she can to make sure that we are doing more for migrant women, bearing in mind that the destitute domestic violence concession is currently available only to those who come here on a family visa. We must consider those who are here as partners of refugees, those who are here en route to settlement but who have not yet got their protected status, and those who are here on tier 4 visas. We have heard much about older victims, but younger people, those who might be here as students, can also suffer from domestic abuse.

Female Offender Strategy: One Year On

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green]

It is important to recognise the circumstances in which women commit offences, the nature of the violence and offences against the person for which they may be convicted, and the level of violence and threat that these women present to society. I will certainly look again at the figures that I have been given, because clearly they are widely different from the figures the hon. Gentleman quotes. I am not disputing his figures; I will check my source. In my experience, the women I have met in prison are more of a danger to themselves than to anybody outside custody.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend seen another set of statistics, which are taken from work done at Drake Hall women’s prison in Staffordshire? Some 64% of women prisoners who had been screened for brain injury showed up as having had a brain injury before their first offence. Their brain injury was likely to have been part of what led to their offending behaviour in the first place. Some 62% of those brain injuries had been caused by domestic violence. Is there not a real danger that the original victim of the crime is ending up in the criminal justice system quite unfairly?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend makes a good point; we know that traumatic brain injury is one of the routes by which women come into custody, and we see disproportionate representation of women with brain injury inside our prisons.

What sentences do women receive? Fines are most common and their use has been increasing. They are often seen by criminal justice practitioners as an effective and swift means of justice. But as the Magistrates Association points out, many women cannot afford to pay the fines that are imposed, which leads them into debt or pressures them into reoffending.

By contrast, the use of community penalties has been falling since 2015, with community penalties representing only 5% of sentences received by women, which is half the rate we saw a decade ago. While there has been a welcome fall in the number of women sentenced to custody, three quarters of those who received custodial sentences were imprisoned for a period of less than 12 months. I believe that short custodial sentences have been shown not to be effective and not a good use of money. Some 70.6% of women receiving a custodial sentence of under 12 months in the period from April to June 2016 went on to reoffend. Such sentences are not achieving a reduction in reoffending.

Many women are in custody now as a result of being recalled to prison following release and during a period of post-release supervision. That has been exacerbated by transforming rehabilitation changes, which introduced post-release supervision for those who had served short custodial sentences. In practice, the failure of such supervision arrangements to recognise women’s caring responsibilities, their lack of access to transport and their anxiety about leaving the house is leading many women to miss appointments. They are therefore in breach of the terms of their release and find themselves going back in through the revolving door of recall.

I contend that our system is clearly not working for women or for wider society. That was understood by the Government too, because the 2018 female offender strategy sought to address a number of those concerns and issues. What specifically did the strategy introduce? It introduced some £5 million over two years for investment in community provision, including £2 million for programmes to address domestic abuse, and a pilot to introduce five residential women’s centres. The strategy was explicit in its ambition to reduce the number of short custodial sentences served by women. It introduced new guidance for the police on dealing with vulnerability, and guidance on whole-system approaches, such as we have had for a number of years in my home city of Manchester. It also sought to introduce a national concordat on women offenders.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Marriage will always be one of our most important institutions. It is vital to our functioning as a society, as we all know instinctively from our own lives and from the lives of family and friends. Rightly, then, none of us is indifferent when a lifelong commitment cannot continue, but it cannot be right for the law to create or increase conflict between divorcing couples.

I am encouraged by the many colleagues and others who have told me that the law must change to take unnecessary conflict flashpoints out of the legal process. Like me, they believe in the importance of marriage but see the destructive effects of what the law demands. People going through divorce already have to face more than enough emotional upheaval without the conflict that can be created or worsened by how the current law works.

I have reflected at length on the arguments for reform, on what people have said in response to the Government’s proposals and on the painful experiences we all know from talking to family and friends. I have heard from people who have been through divorce, from people who support divorcing couples through the legal process and from people who say they cannot afford to live apart for two years—without finally sorting out their finances—but, at the same time, cannot bring themselves to throw hurtful allegations.

The Bill responds constructively to the keenly felt experience of people’s real lives. This is a Bill for anyone who agrees that the end of a relationship should be a time of reflection and not of manufactured conflict.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate the Government and the Secretary of State on introducing this Bill. I think I have married more people than anybody else in this House, in the transitive use of the word. I was always painfully aware that, when two people come together, it may well be that, in the end, they need to part, but the idea that they would have to prove in court all sorts of reasons for why the marriage had fallen apart—relying on the common law understanding of adultery, for instance—is just nonsense and adds to the sense of pain that there could already be within a family.

[Mr Gauke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, and this Bill is by no means anti-marriage. As he rightly says, this Bill seeks to ensure that, in those unfortunate circumstances where a marriage comes to an end, it comes to an end in a way that minimises the conflict between the parties. That, in my view, has to be a sensible way forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight these issues. We have made progress in our negotiations, particularly in the context of family law. It is to the advantage of citizens in the UK and the EU that a deal is reached, which will enable us to enforce judgments in this area. Our ambitions are to go further and, in terms of the future framework, to make further progress on civil judicial co-operation.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

In thousands of instances, we are not able to deliver justice in this country unless we have a proper extradition agreement with other countries in the European Union. As I understand it, even if the withdrawal agreement were to go forward at some point, we will still have to operate as a third party outside the European arrest warrant. Relying on the 1957 treaties will not be enough, so what plans does the Secretary of State have to ensure we are able to maintain a proper extradition arrangement with other countries in the European Union?

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that on leaving the European Union we will not have access to the European arrest warrant. We would wish to be able to do so, but there are difficulties. For example, Germany has a constitutional bar in this area. The Home Office continues to work with EU member states to try to find a way in which we can have as effective extradition and arrest warrant arrangements as possible.

Privatised Probation System

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

First, I pay tribute to my hon. and gallant Friend for the work he did on piloting many of these ideas. We can learn a great deal from those pilots. Central to our reforms will have to be co-ordination—having the right relationship between the national probation service and the community rehabilitation companies, and thinking about the geography—and part of that will be thinking about how the CRCs work with the police and crime commissioners.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I know that the Minister has done a lot of work on brain injury in prisons. Is it not vital, where prisoners with a brain injury have started some form of rehabilitation in prison and have been receiving advice and support, that that is carried through into their experience in the outside world? Otherwise, there is a strong likelihood that they will simply go back inside.

[Rory Stewart]

First, I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the work he has done on acquired brain injury. As the House will be aware, he has argued very strongly that brain injury frequently suffered as early as childhood can have a long-lasting effect, particularly on behaviour, and contribute to reoffending. The major question is about getting the right relationship with the NHS. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), is leading some interesting work, drawing on some of the extra funding now available to the NHS, to make sure we have the right programmes in the community, not just on acquired brain injury but on everything stretching from mental health issues to addiction services provided by the local authority.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

Of course, evidence is extremely important. I should mention that when we reviewed the legislation earlier this year, we found that not all bailiffs act inappropriately. A large number act in accordance with the regulations that we set out, but we need to look at the small number who do not.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

But it is like the wild west at the moment, and often there is no redress when the bailiffs have made a mistake. I have one case in which a family lost their property because the bailiffs went to Treorchy instead of Treherbert. Three years later, the police will not investigate and there is no body to which the family can go to get their place back. It is surely time that we acted instead of having yet more consultation.

[Lucy Frazer]

I would be very interested to hear about the case that the hon. Gentleman mentions. There is regulation in relation to bailiffs. For example, they have to be appointed by the court every two years. They come to the court to get their authorisation. So measures are in place to protect people, but we are looking at the issue and we must go further.

Bedford Prison

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely true. The big change in prisons over the past 20 years—and this has been a cross-party change brought about by Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments—is a huge shift towards a focus on rehabilitation. Above all, the purpose of prison needs to be about ensuring that when somebody leaves prison, they are much less likely to reoffend, otherwise, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, we see reoffending costs of £15 billion. More than that, it is the daily—day in, day out—misery that is inflicted on the public and indeed on the individuals themselves by being caught in a cycle of violence and crime.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is one thing to change the law—I am very grateful for the Minister’s help in achieving that today—but quite another to ensure that the law is implemented. If we really are to protect not only other emergency workers, but, in particular, prison officers, do we not need to make sure that the police and the prosecuting authorities take this new law seriously? Is there anything that we can do on a cross-party basis to make sure that that happens?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. A lot of focus to date has been on assaults on police officers, and it is unacceptable that members of the public are spitting at police officers. Nevertheless, prosecutions have been brought for spitting at police officers, but that is almost unheard of in the case of prison officers. Sadly, in many prisons, a culture has emerged of people almost taking that for granted and it does not seem to me that enough priority is given to investigating assaults and other crimes in prison. The police, who are under a lot of pressure with many other things to do, must be encouraged to get into the prisons, gather the evidence and work with the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute people who assault prison officers. If that does not happen, we will never get the calm, orderly environment that we require.

Victims Strategy

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. There will be a trial of body cameras for giving a personal statement, which we believe has the potential to make a real difference. It means that victims will be able to give such testimony in a way that is as comfortable for them as possible in the circumstances, and it will minimise the need for them to have to do exactly what she says, which is having to relive the crime a number of times.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

One of the most depressing elements of a violent crime is that, quite often, the victim has to live with the damage for a long time afterwards. In particular, many young men who have been hit on the head have traumatic brain injuries from which they have never managed to recover because there has not been proper rehabilitation support. Will the Minister work very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure that we have neurorehabilitation prescriptions, so that justice is brought to those victims because they can properly recuperate?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, and I want to reassure him. As I look around the Chamber, I see my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell. I paid tribute to him earlier, and I pay particular tribute to him for initiating this work and for working with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that we have a strong relationship. I regularly meet my opposite number, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). We have met to discuss this strategy, and I am very happy to discuss with her the point made by the hon. Gentleman.

HMP Birmingham

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely the right challenge. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has introduced a private Member’s Bill that will double the maximum sentence available for assaulting prison officers. But it is not enough just to double the maximum sentence. We need to make sure that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service work together to bring prosecutions forward. There are still today too many incidents of prison officers being assaulted. They are hard-working, serious and professional public servants with a very challenging working life. We owe them a duty of care, and we must prosecute people who assault them.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Of course I fully agree with the points that have just been made, but I wish to ask about brain injury in Birmingham Prison. The work that has been done in Leeds Prison shows that there is a very high incidence of traumatic brain injury in the prison population, and the work done in a pilot in Cardiff Prison shows that we can make dramatic differences to reoffending if we screen everybody who comes on to the secure estate and provide full neuro-rehabilitation to those who require it. Will that be available in Her Majesty’s prison in Birmingham?

[Rory Stewart]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work on this issue. In fact, I would like to offer to sit down with him immediately to discuss the findings he mentioned and how we can apply them to Birmingham Prison.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

This is a fundamental challenge, and of course it is central to anything that happens when the Government work with the private sector. We must make sure that the tender process ensures that the people bidding for any of these contracts have the credibility, legitimacy and capacity to run the contracts effectively.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

If the point of order relates to these exchanges, let us hear it.

[Chris Bryant]

I am very grateful, Mr Speaker. The Minister and several other Members referred to my private Member’s Bill, which might help with some of these matters. It has completed its passage through the House of Commons and through the House of Lords. I just wondered whether you have any means of ensuring that it receives Royal Assent as soon as possible.

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the prognosis is positive and the hon. Gentleman may be satisfied erelong, but I say that with caution because he is not easily satisfied and, even if satisfied, is not necessarily satisfied for long.