Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Evans and Edward Argar(8 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
End of custody supervised licence began in October 2023. Analysis of and statistics on its use will be based on one year’s worth of data and published on an annualised basis in line with other statistics, such as deaths of offenders in the community. We consider that to be the appropriate approach.
Chris Evans
Earlier this month, the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who is in his place, said that prisons are at “bursting point”, while the Prison Governors’ Association said that without the extension of the ECSL scheme, our criminal justice system
“may have ground to a halt”.
Meanwhile, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner labelled the plans as
“dangerous to domestic abuse victims”.
Is the Minister satisfied that the scheme manages the prison population while keeping the victims of crime safe? If so, when will he release data about which prisoners have been released?
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. There are a number of points there. The ECSL is a response to, yes, acute capacity challenges, but it is a targeted scheme operating in prisons as required and where necessary. I gently say to him that a similar scheme ran from 2007 to 2010. In that case, it bore significant differences to what is happening now. ECSL, as operating now, contains a range of important safeguards that were simply not in place between 2007 and 2010. The 2007-10 scheme released some people straight into the community without any supervision and led to the early release of some prisoners convicted of terror offences. This scheme is totally different. It plays a role in managing the prison capacity challenges, but it has those important safeguards in place to protect victims and society.