Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

2. What recent progress he has made in making prisoners work while in custody; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

We have made clear our intention to make prisons places of work and industry. We are already making good progress towards longer prisoner working weeks at a number of prisons, including 13 early-adopter sites that are implementing regimes designed to facilitate increased working hours. We are continuing to develop a framework that will enable us to maximise this approach across the prison estate. To achieve this, we are looking at the experience of other countries and have established a business advisory group to help us to deliver prison industries that operate on a commercial basis so that much more work can be delivered at no cost to the taxpayer and can contribute to victims’ services while competing fairly in open markets.

[Jessica Lee]

Does my hon. Friend agree that having prisoners do real work will help not only by tackling the culture of idleness in prisons, but by giving prisoners valuable vocational skills that we all hope they will put to good use upon their release?

[Mr Blunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There will be substantial benefits from bringing this policy to scale, which I am optimistic we can do. There will be benefits to victims from the resources generated by the work that prisoners do; to the taxpayer from relieving the cost of the regime; and to the stability of the prison regime, as she mentioned. However, there will also be a substantial rehabilitative benefit to prisoners who will leave prison with a CV that includes skills training in the work in which they have been involved as well as experience in the work itself.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

We all agree that prison industry is good for rehabilitation, but how many additional prison officers does the Minister think will be needed to supervise movement around the estate and to ensure that prison industries are secure and properly delivered?

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. If we are to change prisons from being simply places of security and of warehousing people, where work is wedged in when possible, there will be additional costs to the prison regime. The businesses that go into prisons will have to generate the resources to support that.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

In strongly welcoming my hon. Friend’s initiative, I urge him to consider the position of young people on remand. As successive prison inspectors have said, it cannot be right to have young people, even though they have not been sentenced, sitting about not required even to undertake any education let alone work.

[Mr Blunt]

Again, my hon. Friend is right. Remand prisoners pose a particular challenge, in the youth estate as well as the adult estate, because of the speed with which they tend to turn over in those institutions. That makes getting work for them more difficult, but there needs to be a proper focus on programmes for all people in custody following a proper assessment of their rehabilitative requirements.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that women in prison are often under-occupied. Will he tell us what special attention he is giving to creating working opportunities for women who are serving custodial sentences?

[Mr Blunt]

This agenda has to apply to women as well as to men. The sad fact is that, overall, too many of our prisoners are under-occupied, whether women or men, and the same attention must be paid to the women’s estate as to the men’s estate.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

3. What his policy is on the right of overseas victims of alleged human rights abuses by UK multinational companies to access justice in the UK.

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[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

10. What steps he is taking to eradicate gang culture within prisons and young offenders institutions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Youth and adult custodial establishments have access to a range of accredited programmes that address offending behaviour, including gang-related issues. Programmes include engaging community and voluntary sector groups to help deliver solutions to gang-related issues, and the National Offender Management Service and the Youth Justice Board support this work. The Government are developing a cross-departmental programme of action to tackle gangs and gang violence. An inter-ministerial group will report to Parliament in October.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank the Minister for that answer, which goes part of the way to addressing these issues. However, when I visited the Warren Hill young offenders institution in my constituency last year after there had been a riot, one of the reasons cited for the riot was the growing emergence of gang culture and the fact that when people are placed in young offenders institutions, proximity takes priority over gang dispersal. I would like him to look at this policy again.

[Mr Blunt]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the interest she takes in Warren Hill. I have followed up the discussions that we have had and I assure her in relation to gang violence that there is no absolute, rigid rule that proximity should take precedence. When placing young people and adults into custodial establishments, both the YJB and NOMS take proper account of all the factors required and there is emerging good practice around identifying gang affiliations.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

As the Minister knows from the evidence that has been received about the recent riots in London and other cities, a number of people involved in gangs were part of those riots. Will he ask his Department to deal with organisations such as User Voice, which consists of ex-offenders who were in gangs, which are willing to work with the Ministry of Justice and assist it in its projects?

[Mr Blunt]

The right hon. Gentleman has made an excellent suggestion, which I am very happy to pass on to officials in the Department.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Many of the foreign national prisoners in our jails are members of foreign national EU gangs that commit organised crime in this country. What is the Justice Department doing to tackle this aspect of gang culture in our cities and in our prisons?

[Mr Blunt]

Of course, where evidence and intelligence of that kind are received, they will be acted on to make sure that those gangs cannot operate within the prison estate and that gang members are properly dispersed by the placement decisions taken by NOMS. We will also want, as we do with all foreign national prisoners, to try to make sure that those people go home to serve their sentences.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Payment by results is gathering pace. We are piloting a number of different approaches to see what works best. Two prison pilots have been put in place at Her Majesty’s prisons Peterborough and Doncaster.

Pilots also will begin in public sector prisons next year. Six justice reinvestment pilots have been put in place through memorandums of understanding with either local authority chief executives or local police chiefs in Manchester and London.

In 2012 two community pilots will commence to rehabilitate offenders while serving sentences in the community, in addition to one or more provider-led innovation pilots. We are also working with the Department for Work and Pensions through the Work programme and with the Department of Health on drug and alcohol recovery to look more widely at payment by results mechanisms which fully—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I advise the Minister, for next month the answers should be a bit shorter. They are just a bit too long.

[Ben Gummer]

I thank the Minister for that careful reply. He will be aware of the Justice Committee’s recommendation that contracts should follow the offender through the criminal justice system, rather than attach themselves to the various institutions through which he or she might pass. What progress has the Department made in considering those proposals?

[Mr Blunt]

My hon. Friend will have realised, given the number of pilots we are conducting—I am sorry, Mr Speaker, that the list was too long for me to deliver satisfactorily—that we are testing the different elements of the system to identify the best and most effective way to deliver payment by results. I hope that, in the end, we can deliver the offender-centric process on which my hon. Friend relies, once we have identified which part of the system makes offenders best respond to effective rehabilitation measures.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Do any of those projects help to test whether providing housing for people leaving prison helps them to be less likely to reoffend?

[Mr Blunt]

Housing—having a home to go to—is plainly a key crime desistance factor, but an awful lot of other key factors, such as work and drug addiction, are well-documented. We want to get out of the business of identifying exactly what inputs people must deliver to offenders, but make all sorts of institutions responsible for focusing on the outputs and let them take the decisions about which are the appropriate desistance factors to address for the offenders whom they are treating.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. When he plans to bring forward proposals on compensation for victims of overseas terrorism.

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[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

17. How many prisoners are serving sentences for (a) human trafficking and (b) drug-related offences; and what the average length of sentence is in each case.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

Between 2006 and 2010, 109 people were sentenced for human trafficking offences, with an average determinate custodial sentence length of 50 months, and 254,980 people were sentenced for drug-related offences, with an average determinate custodial sentence length of 32 months. The average determinate custodial sentence length for trafficking for sexual exploitation was 50 months; in the case of trafficking for forced labour, it was 51 months, and in the case of drug trafficking, it was 73.5 months.

[Mr Bone]

I think that the House will agree that there is a bit of difference between the figures for human trafficking and for drug-related offences, yet the two crimes—human trafficking and drug offences—are very difficult for the victims. We should surely rebalance the criminal justice system to ensure that more traffickers are caught. I know that the Government have produced their human trafficking strategy, but there is a terrible imbalance at the moment.

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I thank him for his energetic chairmanship of the all-party group on human trafficking, and for continuing to bring the issues to my attention. Trafficking drugs and people are both extremely serious offences, and when people are caught—obviously, we want to make sure that they are, on every conceivable occasion—they should serve an appropriately serious tariff.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Minister both for his succinctness and his control of his breathing, which was impressive.

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[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

T6. Does the Minister agree that it is a scandal that so many drugs are swilling around prisons? It is crucial that we ensure that those who arrive in prison clean do not leave as addicts.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Some 55% of those entering prison have been reported to have a serious drug problem, and 64% in a recent survey had used drugs in the previous month, which gives a sense of the scale of the problem. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we must use all means possible, in a multi-faceted way, to address the problem, and provide safe places in prison, at the very least, for those attempting to recover from drug addiction, which is why we are beginning to develop drug recovery wings.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T5. There are 66 people in Bolton and more than 10,000 across the UK who are still driving with more than 12 points on their driving licence. Many are repeat offenders of the offences of speeding and driving without insurance and have more than 20 points. Is there a problem with the legislation or are judges being too lenient? Will the Secretary of State investigate?

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[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

T8. The Government cancelled the building of the Maghull prison after work had already started. Will the Lord Chancellor take this opportunity to tell my constituents what plans he has for the site, to allay their concerns about the Maghull prison site and nearby greenfield projects, which developers are eyeing up?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful for that detailed question from the hon. Gentleman. I will write to him with a full answer.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that prison is not the right place for women who pose no risk to the public, and that robust community sentences would be a much better option?

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[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State has stated his commitment to rehabilitation as a priority. Probation officers are key to this. They often need highly developed skills, particularly when working with violent offenders and sex offenders. Is he committed not only to maintaining levels of funding for probation officers, but increasing it in order to continue the downward trend in crime that continued under a Labour Government?

[Mr Blunt]

As the hon. Lady very well knows, we are having to manage a 23% reduction in our budget over the next four years in order to make the Ministry of Justice’s contribution to rescuing the nation’s finances. Sadly, probation services, like other elements, are not exempt from this. However, for the reasons she has given, they have been relatively protected under the spending review. We will of course continue to look for all available efficiency savings wherever we can, but the output of probation is very important.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

An appeal to the special educational needs and disability tribunal listed today will not be heard until late February 2012. Does the Minister agree that that is wholly unacceptable and that a much quicker process is needed in order to resolve some of the cases relating to special needs?

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[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

On the subject of payment by results, what guarantee can Ministers give that small providers will win some contracts and that small and large providers will have to make information about their performance publicly available?

[Mr Blunt]

Of course, anyone who is going to deliver payment by results would be crazy not to engage the voluntary and charitable sector as part of their delivery mechanism. Some of those charities will not have the resources to be able to underwrite payment-by-results schemes, but the prime provider would be mad not to engage those services.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The Government are currently consulting on the criminalisation of squatting. Has the Secretary of State seen the report “The Hidden Truth about Homelessness”, produced by the housing charity Crisis, which reveals that 39% of vulnerable homeless people have at some stage resorted to squatting to find a roof over their heads, and has he made an assessment of how the proposals he is putting forward will affect homeless people?

[Mr Blunt]

The consultation will end on 5 October, and I will of course be looking at all the reports and responses to it, including the one from Crisis.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State was good enough to accept on Second Reading of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that people who served indeterminate sentences for public protection had a very low reoffending rate, despite the fact that 29% of them have more than 15 convictions. Given that people with indeterminate sentences are in prison for manslaughter, other homicide, rape, robbery, arson and other violent crimes, why does he want to let them out?