Oral Answers to Questions

Colin Clark Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

10. What steps the Government are taking to prevent violence in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Violence in prisons is fundamentally driven by three things: drugs, the conditions in the prison, and relationships between prison officers and prisoners. We are addressing all three. To cut down on drugs, we are putting much more perimeter security in place to make it more difficult to get drugs in. Secondly, we are investing a great deal in decency and cleanliness in prisons. But the most important thing is the training and support for our hard-working prison officers so they can develop the right relationships with prisoners—ones that are strict but also humane—in order to bring proper behaviour management into place.

[Colin Clark]

Clearly reducing violence in prisons does depend on effective training of prison officers, but what assessment has my hon. Friend made of improvements in the way violent offenders are handled?

[Rory Stewart]

We repeatedly survey this; we have a specialist team looking at it. We have a long study under the violence reduction strategy, and the real conclusion is that it is about training. It is about what happens at the cell door—about how we develop respectful relationships in the same way that a good teacher would. There are high expectations on prison officers and on prisoners, so that we can have a safe, humane relationship that also has boundaries in place to control behaviour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is best placed to lecture on common sense versus ideology.

The reoffending rate has fallen in the time since “Transforming Rehabilitation” and we would like it to fall further. There are issues with how the system is working, which is why we took the entirely pragmatic approach of bringing the contracts to an end and making some important and necessary changes to ensure that we can do more to reduce reoffending.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

T3. Will the Minister update the House on progress towards the abolition of the same roof rule?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. Further to the Secretary of State’s answer a few moments ago and the tabling today of the written ministerial statement on the review of the overall scheme, let me say that earlier this year we committed to remove the pre-1979 same roof rule more swiftly. In that context, I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) in her campaign on this issue. As the Secretary of State has said, we anticipate, subject to the parliamentary timetable, to be able to lay an order as swiftly as possible.

Prison Reform and Safety

Colin Clark Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is right. I cannot do better than quote a 19th-century prison reformer, Thomas Mott Osborne, a former politician who is described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath as having “turned to good works”. That might seem to be a tautology. Osborne became immersed in the prison system, becoming a prison reform commissioner in New York just before the first world war. He said:

“Not until we think of our prisons as in reality educational institutions shall we come within sight of a successful system; and by a successful system I mean, one that not only ensures a quiet, orderly, well-behaved prison but has genuine life in it— one that restores to society the largest number of intelligent, forceful, honest citizens.”

He was right then, and I think that what he said rings true now as well.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

I was recently very glad to speak to a group of sixth-formers who were doing modern studies. They asked me about prisons, and I said that at the first opportunity I would raise the subject on the Floor of the House and ask one of their questions. Given that my hon. Friend is so well versed in the subject, I will ask him this question: “Do you think that the support on offer to those prisoners who suffer mental health disorders is effective?”

[Robert Neill]

All the evidence that our Committee has seen so far suggests that it is not effective. Far too many people in prison suffer from mental health difficulties. David Cameron, the former Prime Minister, rightly emphasised that in a speech that he made back in 2015.