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Chris Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is indeed a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) who speaks with such great passion about his home area of Northamptonshire.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, who can start again in a moment. Let me explain the practice relating to speakers. Where Members have notified the Chair in advance, they will obviously participate in the debate. If Members wish to contribute once a debate is a good way through, they may approach the Chair, but take a lower priority. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) was unable to be present earlier and has indicated that she would like to speak. I intend to call her at the end. I hope that that is clear to Ministers. I am not being unfair to the hon. Lady; I am following normal practice.

[Chris Evans]

Thank you for your patience this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have had to be in and out of the Chamber, trying to balance my attendance with my duties on the Finance Bill.

The Queen’s Speech contains three new Bills that relate to criminal justice. For a Government who argued while in opposition that the Labour party over-legislated in this area, these Bills join seven others on criminal justice since they came to power in 2010. The previous seven Bills have created in total 619 new criminal offences, many of which carry custodial sentences.

With our prison population stretched to maximum levels, now is the time to question the role that prison and criminal justice play in society. In the past year, the prison population in England and Wales has reached record levels and stands today at 85,228 prisoners—a 90% increase since 1993. In 2012-13, the overall resource expenditure on prisons in England and Wales was just under £3 billion. Each inmate costs the taxpayer an average of £36,808 per prison place a year—money that the general public would no doubt think better spent on health, education, improving the roads and many other projects that hon. Members have mentioned.

With the UK having the second highest incarceration rates in western Europe and the prison estate suffering from overcrowding since 1994, we are facing a crisis that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. There is no doubt that prison works for some people. For the victim of crime and those who live in fear of it, prison gets criminals off the streets, reducing the risk they pose to the rest of society because they cannot commit an offence when they are locked up. Sadly, we all know that some individuals pose such a threat to other people that there is no option other than keeping them under lock and key for a very long time. However, prison is not the answer in all cases, and I want to concentrate on that in my speech.

According to the executive summary of the latest figures on releases, about 590,000 adult and juvenile offenders were cautioned, convicted or released from custody between July 2011 and June 2012, and 25% of them reoffended within a year. According to the “proven reoffending” tables, the reoffending rate among persons released from a custodial sentence was 45.5% for adults and 67.4% for juveniles. Those statistics should be balanced against the fact that between 1997 and 2010, under a Labour Government, crime fell by 43%, and violent crime fell by 42%.

Although I represent the Labour party, I will say that it seems that when in government we were very good at locking people up, but did not address the inherent problem of reoffending. Now, as more criminal justice Bills appear before Parliament, I see that we are still not tackling that problem. If Governments have a duty to society to protect their citizens from criminals, that means they also have a duty to ensure that those who are released from prison do not drift back into a life of crime.

The National Offender Management Service manages 17 public prisons in England and Wales and the contracts of 14 private sector prisons, and is responsible for a prisoner population of about 86,000. However, it must make cuts of £650 million in its £3.4 billion budget by 2015. Now, with the prison population reaching almost unmanageable levels and the Government intent on making cuts in the resources available to prison staff, it is of the utmost importance that rehabilitation be looked at seriously. That approach needs to begin in the prisons themselves. Just 36% of people leaving prison go into some type of education, training or employment.

People often leave prison ill equipped to deal with day-to-day life. Statistics show that 43% of offenders have numeracy skills below GCSE standard, while 37% have reading skills below the same measure. Moreover, no one can agree on the number of offenders who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia. For many prisoners who are released, unemployment is a familiar scenario: 67% of the prison population were unemployed before being locked up, and many will face the same situation when they are released.

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend is talking very sensibly about the problems faced by people in prison and the work done there, but will he acknowledge that some of the changes in the probation system will not help, given that there are already signs that they are not bedding down easily?

[Chris Evans]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There have been many severe cases in which the probation service has been stretched to the maximum. I am thinking of one in particular, in which an extremely violent crime had been committed. I do not want to mention it, but it was reported in the national press. That violent individual was released, and the probation officer never reached him because of the extent of the work load.

Is it any wonder that people who leave prison only to be faced with the unemployment that they experienced before should return to the way of life that sent them to prison in the first place? I think that that problem is more acute in the case of short sentences, which many of the 600-odd new offences will attract. At present, 60% of prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months are reconvicted within a year, which is a sad reflection on society. Those who are in prison for less than a year have no access to offender management programmes, and are not subject to supervision by the probation service following their release. The Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 seeks to address that by ensuring that all offenders are supervised in the community for 12 months after their release. Given that the probation service is already strained, we must await the outcome of the Act, but in the light of my experience of membership of the Justice Committee, I do not hold out much hope. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but it would be unfair to allow him to continue when there is a noise going on. There is something wrong with the speakers. I have asked for it to be fixed, and I hope that neither the hon. Gentleman nor those who are listening to him will be too distracted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Evans]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was aware of it, but I was trying to block it out—but that sort of thing happens a lot in this job.

The lack of education available in prison to short-term offenders makes gaining employment after prison difficult. Having a criminal record is an obvious stumbling block for someone trying to get their life back on track. The Institute of Leadership and Management published an article in April 2014 on employing ex-offenders. It states that fewer than 50% of businesses would interview someone with a criminal record, despite 80% agreeing that ex-offenders should be given a second chance. Those going into prison often suffer from the disadvantage of a lack of any formal qualifications. Over half of men in prison have no qualifications. Upon release, the situation is often unchanged, despite the availability of prison education. Even those who serve longer sentences and gain well-recognised qualifications while inside are damaged by the perception of prison education. How can we expect somebody with no previous work experience and no formal educational qualifications outside the prison environment to turn up to work on time every day and conduct themselves appropriately? It is my belief that a prison education system designed in conjunction with businesses and employers may help to change the perception employers have of the worthiness of education inside prison, and in the process reduce the likelihood that people will reoffend.

Of course, even talking about this issue will leave any politician open to the charge of being soft on crime. On particularly slow news days there is always a journalist with a case up their sleeve, telling the world how criminals are again living the life of Riley. However, as I said at the beginning of my speech, we are at crisis point, with a prison population that is simply running out of control. With public finances stretched, it is obvious that the increasing prison population, together with high reoffending rates, means something has to be done urgently.

This is not an easy debate to have, especially when we have a media intent on peddling the myth that criminals get away with it. In this age of austerity we now find ourselves living in, we have an opportunity to talk candidly about the future of crime and punishment, and I hope we will begin to do so in the coming months and years.