Crispin Blunt
Main Page: Crispin Blunt (Independent - Reigate)Department Debates - View all Crispin Blunt's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to increase educational opportunities in prisons.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
Together with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Ministry of Justice has undertaken a review of offender learning. Our proposed new approach has received strong support from the heads of learning and skills in prisons, and I hope that when we publish the results of the review, which we will do shortly, my hon. Friend will share their enthusiasm.
Tony Baldry
Does my hon. Friend agree that punishment is the deprivation of liberty, and that we should all try to ensure that when people leave prison, the time that they have spent there makes them less inclined to reoffend? Education is an important part of that. The position is very straightforward. When my hon. Friend’s proposals are made public, I hope that they will present opportunities for a substantial increase in educational opportunity in prisons.
Mr Blunt
I share my hon. Friend’s view. It is important for the pathway that leads the offender through the custody system—and, indeed, the supervision system in the community—to assist his progress towards rehabilitation, and that must be done through the delivery of learning and skills and education. Prisoners should be given effective work that enables them to make proper recompense to their victims, and learning and skills associated with that work will be an important rehabilitative tool.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
While in government Labour increased the offending learner budget by 300%, and I am pleased to hear that the Minister is building on that. Does he agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who on 9 March was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that offender education was
“yet another example of gold-plated rights for convicted criminals”,
and that prison education
“sends out the signal that crime pays”?
Mr Blunt
The reason for the review of offender learning is that, as usual, the last Administration spent a vast amount of money and secured precious little extra output for it. The hon. Lady has made the case very clearly. I am satisfied that we will largely protect the budget for offender learning and that people will leave prison with skills and training, better equipped to be contributing members of society following their release.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
The Minister will know that Reading young offenders institution received a dreadful report on its education service from the independent monitoring board, particularly the part of the service that is run by The Manchester College. What action is the Department taking to deal with the shortcomings of the college, and to give more power to prisons to opt for excellent local education provision?
Mr Blunt
My hon. Friend has been assiduous in holding the offender learning contract to account in Reading prison, and the Skills Funding Agency has completed an investigation into the allegations made against The Manchester College in respect of its education contract there. The report of that investigation is being finalised, and I am not able to comment on it until it has been completed, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right that we must get the heads of learning and skills in the prisons much more clearly in charge of the direction of the skills training in their institutions.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
3. What the evidential basis is for his proposals on the future of universal jurisdiction.
Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
4. What plans he has for the use of innovative community sentences as an alternative to custody; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
We are examining ways of making community sentences more clearly associated with the principles of sentencing, not least so that those elements relating to protecting the public, such as residence, reporting, and curfew and tagging requirements, and those relating to punishment—fines and unpaid work—carry greater public confidence.
Stephen Gilbert
I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. Is he aware of the “Community or custody” inquiry commissioned by Make Justice Work, which has found that schemes offering tough and effective alternatives to short prison stays are facing funding cuts? Does he agree that that would be a step in the wrong direction?
Mr Blunt
We are trying to ensure that funding decisions are delegated more effectively locally, so that where decisions have been taken for alternatives to custody pilots to be mainstreamed or for alternative funding to be found for them, and they are found to be of value at a local level, they should be able to be protected at a local level.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Does the Minister agree that any alternative to custody must contain the essential element of punishment for the crime, as well as rehabilitation, in order to prevent a recurrence?
Mr Blunt
I wholly agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is very important that community sentences reflect the principles of sentencing—I made that point in the original answer. If they do not carry credibility in respect of punishment and protecting the public, people will rightly expect us to make a greater use of custody. As we know, short custodial sentences are not always in everyone’s best interests.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Given that the probation service says that there are already 6,600 high-risk or very high-risk people serving community sentences, and that the reoffending rate on the intensive supervision and surveillance programme in recent years has ranged from 74% to 92%, may I urge the Minister to ignore the siren voices of those on the Liberal Democrat Benches, and perhaps even in his own Department, who are calling for more community sentences and fewer people to be sent to prison? What Conservative Members want is more robust sentencing and more people sent to prison.
Mr Blunt
I know that my hon. Friend agrees that what we want is what works, and we want to ensure that there are fewer victims of crime in future. When our policies deliver rehabilitation far more effectively than those of the previous Administration, we will have protected the future victims of crime, and I know that he will—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am extremely grateful to the Minister, but we must move on. I am afraid that these answers are rather long and they need to get a bit shorter.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
The resource budget for the National Offender Management Service for 2011-12 is £3.679 billion, £2.181 billion of which relates directly to expenditure incurred in prisons.
Graham Jones
If, as the Secretary of State predicted in The Daily Telegraph on 11 February, crime increases under his Government, will he reverse his prison closure policy and undo the scaling back of the prison building programme? If not, what will he do with the criminals?
Mr Blunt
I am not entirely sure that my right hon. and learned Friend’s comments bear that interpretation, but what we have to do in the Ministry of Justice is ensure that we successfully imprison those people sentenced to prison by the courts and not get ourselves into the state of affairs that occurred under the previous Administration, whereby people had to be let out early because they had run out of space.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The shadow Justice Secretary has argued:
“Playing tough in order not to look soft made it harder to focus on what is effective.”
Given that, does the Minister agree that despite record spending and the record prison population, Labour failed to improve public safety?
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but on several occasions I have had to say to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) that questions must be about the policy of this Government, not a previous Government. I think we will leave it there. I call Lorraine Fullbrook.
Sadiq Khan
I have a question for this Government. Given that the prison population is rising—it was 82,991 on 7 January and last week it stood at 85,454—and that, at the same time, this Government are closing prisons and slashing the prison building programme, what is the Minister going to do if the number of people who should be in prison exceeds the number of places?
Mr Blunt
Unlike the previous Administration, we will not get ourselves into that position. As the shadow Secretary of State will know—he will be well on top of his brief—there is a seasonal rise in prison numbers following Christmas. I am happy to say, however, that our policies are already having an effect. The prediction we inherited that we would end up with 96,000 prisoners by 2014-15 is unlikely to come true.
Sadiq Khan
Those of us who stayed awake for the entire Budget know that the Chancellor has no plan B and I am afraid that the complacency of that answer shows that the Ministry of Justice has no plan B. If crime goes up, as the Secretary of State predicts it may well do, and if the prison population continues to rise, the Government will have no choice but to release offenders who should be in prison without due process or to use police cells. Which will it be?
Mr Blunt
As of now, we have an overhead in managing the prison estate of about 3,000 places. We will manage the estate to ensure that we sustain an overhead and do not get ourselves into a position whereby we run out of space, as the last Administration did. It is basic administration. We will keep a very careful eye on the prison numbers and ensure that we have sufficient capacity.
Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)
6. What proportion of the cost of accommodating foreign national prisoners awaiting deportation after serving their sentences is provided by his Department.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
7. What plans his Department has for the future of the probation service.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
We will fundamentally reshape probation services to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, empower front-line professionals and make them more accountable. Probation staff should be able to spend more of their time working directly with offenders; we are lifting the burden of bureaucracy that has hindered them from doing that.
Andrew Gwynne
I agree with the Minister that our probation service does a magnificent job in very tough circumstances and, under his self-styled rehabilitation revolution, should have an even greater role in successfully returning offenders to society. Will he therefore explain to the House how he can possibly square the increased work load and responsibility with cutting 3,000 experienced and front-line probation staff as a result of his Government’s spending cuts?
Mr Blunt
That is not a result of our Government’s spending cuts. The efficiency savings for the probation trusts for next year are largely the plans that those trusts had for the transfer from board to trust status, which was inherited from the previous Administration. The National Offender Management Service is taking 37% out of its headquarters’ overhead precisely in order to protect the front-line professionals in the probation service in delivering effective offender management.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Are probation trusts going to be providers of services, commissioners of services or both? If both, is there a conflict of interest?
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister tell me how much work is going on in our probation services with violent offenders, particularly those who have been violent in domestic circumstances? Tackling the issue is enormously important in preventing future offending.
Mr Blunt
I agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of addressing the issue of domestic violence. Every probation trust I have visited has had programmes to address it. It is a particular priority and we will want carefully to examine the delivery of interventions and programmes to ensure that they are sustained. I accept that that is an area of priority.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
What help can the Minister give to probation trusts to enable them to compete on a level playing field with the large private sector contractors that might be doing a lot of the work they are currently doing?
Mr Blunt
I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the competition for community pay-back. The first competition will be for the London area, where the boundaries overlap precisely with those of the London probation trust. That will give those probation trusts that need to get together to make a collective public sector bid involving a number of trusts the time and opportunity to put an effective bid together.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Is the Minister aware of the evidence that was given to the Select Committee on Justice about the whole issue of competition and/or commissioning providers and so on? Those points have been very well made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). Is the Minister aware that if there is a conflict of interest then, prima facie, the whole system will be unlawful? Does he realise how important it is to separate those functions, because the probation trusts do not have a clue where they are going?
Mr Blunt
This is an area of change for probation trusts, and the competition for community pay-back, which we inherited from the previous Administration, is an exemplar of that. I look forward to the opportunity to review all the evidence that has been given to the Justice Committee and I shall come to a view on the basis of the evidence that has been received. I will give my own evidence and take questions in due course in the Committee, presumably at greater length than is allowed here.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
8. What progress he has made on his proposed reform of legal aid.
Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)
12. What progress he has made on reform of legislation on squatting.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
The Government take this issue very seriously and are therefore exploring options for strengthening the existing legal framework and its enforcement. We hope to be in a position to announce our plans soon. In the meantime, we have published guidance for home owners about the steps they can take to regain possession of their properties.
Mike Weatherley
I thank the Minister for his reply. In my constituency of Hove and Portslade we are often plagued by serial squatters, who cost the city and taxpayers many tens of thousands of pounds. Will the Minister confirm that the proposals he is considering will be a sufficient deterrent to these well-organised squatters?
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
13. How many prisoners convicted of violent offences and released under the early release scheme between 2007 and 2010 have since been returned to prison.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
14. What steps he is taking to support drug rehabilitation in prisons.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
We are working with the Department of Health to reshape drug treatment in prisons to sustain a better path to abstinence, not least by addressing a transition from prison to the community. Our proposals to improve the rehabilitation of drug-misusing offenders were published in the Green Paper, “Breaking the Cycle: effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders”, in December 2010, and they include piloting drug recovery wings, supporting the Department of Health in developing payment-by-results drug recovery pilots and reducing the availability of drugs in prison.
Margot James
I visited Winson Green prison last month and was shocked at the number of drug-addicted prisoners being prescribed methadone. In our system, almost 24,000 prisoners are now maintained on methadone. Does my hon. Friend agree that that undermines opportunities for effective drug rehabilitation in prison?
Mr Blunt
I share my hon. Friend’s concern about that issue. Methadone has been used increasingly to tackle heroin dependency, and the number of clinical interventions has gone from 21% in 2007-08 to 39% in 2009-10. Although we do not dispute that methadone has a role to play, we agree that drug treatment in prison ought to have a greater focus on recovery and should provide a clearer route to abstinence either in prison or when offenders return to community, and preferably on a pathway that includes both.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I very much welcome the announcement this week about funding for the national liaison and diversion service, which will try to divert people with mental health issues from the prison system. Does the Minister think that, in time, that model could be used to divert people with drug addiction from prison, too?
Mr Blunt
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her endorsement of our policy on addressing mentally ill offenders and delivering on that very substantial element of the Bradley report. There will not be quite the same method of having a liaison diversion service at courts and in police custody suites, but we will be looking at the drug recovery pilots as the model for the future, with local assessment and referral centres that identify the appropriate place for people to get drug treatment in the community.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
16. If he will assess the extent of regional variation in the rate of custodial sentencing of offenders under the age of 17; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
There is regional variation in the proportion of 10 to 17-year-olds who receive a custodial sentence of between 4% and 8% of those sentenced. There are national guidelines to promote consistency in sentencing, but levels will vary for reasons such as offence seriousness, local practices and criminal justice agency relationships.
Mr Blunt
What we want to do is to begin to transfer responsibility to local authority areas, so that they begin to appreciate the cost of custody. At the moment, youth custody is extremely expensive, but it comes as a free good to local authorities. We want to incentivise them to deliver earlier intervention to divert people away from custody and, indeed, from youth crime in the first place.
Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
17. How many prisoners serving indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection have been released to date.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
As at 17 November 2010, 187 prisoners had been released into the community from indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection or detention for public protection, including offenders who have subsequently been recalled to custody.
Mark Lancaster
I am grateful for the answer, but it highlights the logjam that IPP prisoners are causing in our prison system, so how does the Minister intend to address that problem?
Mr Blunt
When those sentences were introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and implemented in 2005, the then Government estimated that there would be 900 such prisoners; there are now more than 6,000, and more than 3,000 of them are beyond tariff. [Interruption.] I can understand why the shadow Justice Secretary is ashamed of the record in that area. That is why there has been an increase in the size of the Parole Board; and that is why we are consulting on proposals to raise the tariff to a 10-year determinate sentence before an IPP can be enforced, and to examine the Parole Board test. Those are the proposals in the Green Paper on which we are consulting.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
18. How much was paid to convicted criminals by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in (a) 2008-09 and (b) 2009-10.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority paid £6.9 million in 2008-09 and £12 million in 2009-10 to people with unspent convictions. These figures reflect only cases where the CICA reduced the award due to unspent convictions, which the current compensation scheme says it must do. However, there are still cases being considered under previous schemes that did not make such reductions compulsory, so the real figures are likely to be higher.
Mark Menzies
Does the Minister agree that it is slightly perverse and repugnant to be paying out compensation to criminals who have often caused severe injury and offence to their victims?
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
T3. The Minister may be aware that the Gaddafi house is a high-profile squatting incident in my constituency. Just this week, we have had two further squats. Will he meet me and my hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Mike Weatherley) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) to discuss this pressing issue?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
I will be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss squatting. I would hate to think that anyone would use the example of the Gaddafi house as any excuse for this pernicious offence.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Justice Secretary is not afraid to speak his mind, and he has many fans on the Labour Benches as a result. Does he agree that there has been a great deal of confusion on the Government’s policy on the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Bill of Rights? Can he explain in plain, simple English whether his Government are in favour of abolishing, or in favour of keeping, the Human Rights Act, which brought into domestic law the European convention on human rights?
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
T4. Will my hon. Friend inform me of whether the principles of joint enterprise will remain after the sentencing review, as they were instrumental in bringing successful prosecutions against a number of people who were involved in the murder of the son of a constituent of mine?
Mr Blunt
My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that there are no plans to consider the joint enterprise principles in the sentencing review. The existing law ensures that if a person commits an offence as part of an agreed plan or joint enterprise, all parties to the enterprise may be guilty of the planned offence. That factor indicates higher culpability and justifies a tougher sentence than would otherwise be imposed.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
T2. In an earlier answer, the Minister acknowledged the role played by offender learning services in prisons in preventing reoffending. Given that about 60% of young offenders have communication difficulties so severe that they cannot benefit from such services, will he give an assurance that he will talk to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists to ensure that the service is in no way damaged as a result of public spending cuts?
Mr Blunt
I think that the hon. Gentleman might be confusing what happens in the adult estate and in the youth estate. However, his substantive point stands and I accept it. I am happy to talk to the Royal College, because I accept that communication is an extremely important tool in addressing offending behaviour. In many cases, a lack of communication skills leads to offending in the first place and, if it is not addressed, leads to reoffending.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
T5. When I was a member of the independent monitoring board of a young offenders institution, I was often concerned about the underuse of the sports facilities on site. The reason that was sometimes given was that there were stringent rules on who could supervise them. Will the Minister consider those restrictions so that there is more sport and less television watching?
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
T8. Given the great work that West Mercia probation trust does in Redditch with the payback scheme, which I know the Minister has also visited, will he reconsider the new form of payback contracts, which cover large parts of the country but not necessarily our local communities?
Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)
T7. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the tightening-up of no win, no fee arrangements will deliver lower insurance premiums, not higher insurance company profits?
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State explain to the House why the Government have yet to put into practice the provisions of the Crime and Security Act 2010, leaving victims of overseas terrorism such as Will Pike without the compensation that they expected to receive?
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
If it is the case that squatting has been made illegal in Scotland, will the Justice team look favourably on the Scottish proposals and make it illegal in this country as well?
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice mentioned the repatriation of Nigerian prisoners and the contract that is being signed. Will he tell the House, following three years of discussion by the previous Government, how many prisoners from Nigeria have been repatriated this year and how many more he expects to repatriate next year?
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
Morale among the prison officers in the two prisons in South Dorset is at an all-time low. Will the Minister reassure me that their rights will be upheld as well as the prisoners’ rights?
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The Forensic Science Service provides impartial evidence to the courts. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with it to secure its future and ensure that its primary duty remains to the court, not to shareholders?
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Prison Minister is being very quick in his answers. Could he be very quick in answer to this question? Will he confirm that Wellingborough prison is not to close?
Mr Blunt
There is a continual review of the whole prison estate to address precisely the issues that the shadow Secretary of State mentioned. It would therefore be wrong to confirm that about any prison in the system, because there is a process of review to ensure that we have sufficient prison places to jail those sent to us by the courts for the term of their sentence. The last Administration did not achieve that.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The Government are proposing to remove legal aid for all asylum support law cases, while retaining it for other asylum matters. Why is the Minister drawing that distinction, when the vulnerabilities involved are surely the same?
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
When the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr Howarth) and I were in Dartmoor prison together, we noticed that the second most popular prisoner workshop produced excellent plaster garden gnomes. In view of the great and burgeoning success of the film “Gnomeo and Juliet”, will the Minister have a word with the governor of Dartmoor to see what advantage can be taken of that serendipitous circumstance?
Mr Blunt
I am delighted to answer that question and to refer to my niece’s part in “Gnomeo and Juliet”. I was in Dartmoor last week. I did not see the garden gnome factory, but I did see the some of the gardens, which make up for an otherwise bleak place. Prison industries are a very important part of the future development of our prisons strategy to ensure that, in future, prisoners have wider employment and work than they have now.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Government have decided to close a number of magistrates courts in this country, as a result of which, many valiant volunteer magistrates will travel far longer distances and incur additional costs. What action will my hon. Friend take to ensure that people are properly compensated for their time and travel costs?