Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

5. What steps the Government are taking to provide support to women in the criminal justice system who have been victims of domestic violence and abuse.

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

Tackling violence against women and girls is a priority for the Government, and specifically for me, as I have responsibility for women in the criminal justice system. The National Offender Management Service, in conjunction with Women’s Aid, has published the framework to support women offenders who have experienced domestic and sexual violence. It contains guidance for commissioners and links to resources for practitioners. Women’s Aid and the National Offender Management Service are also training prison and probation staff to pilot the Power to Change programme, which aims to help women prisoners who want to leave a violent relationship.

[Nic Dakin]

With the closure of courts across the land, will the Minister tell us what steps are being taken to guarantee that domestic abuse courts will remain in place?

[Mr Blunt]

We continue to examine the provision of court services across the country and there is an agenda to try to deliver justice much closer to neighbourhoods. Of course, dealing with domestic violence is an important part of addressing a particularly horrible crime at a community level. I have seen for myself the work done by the probation trusts, and that will go hand in hand with what needs to be done with the courts as well.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The House will be aware of the deeply disturbing cases where women have been stalked for many years by their ex-partners and have not been properly protected by the criminal justice system. Two months ago, I raised my concern and expressed the view that stalking should be made a separate criminal offence in order to provide greater protection for women. Labour has tabled an amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Bill in the House of Lords to do exactly that. Will the Government support us in our proposals to make stalking a separate offence and vote for those proposals in the Lords?

[Mr Blunt]

Obviously we have seen the proposals coming from the Opposition. We need to look at the evidence on how the existing legislation has or has not been used effectively and assess whether further work could be done on using existing harassment legislation properly. We are looking at the proposed amendment; during the course of the debate, we will come forward with a proper assessment and answer to it.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

6. What steps the Government are taking to encourage corporate boards to have a more representative proportion of women.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

7. What discussions she has had with ministerial colleagues on the treatment of women offenders.

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

I engage in frequent discussions with ministerial colleagues about how we should address women’s offending as part of the Government’s rehabilitation reforms. Those discussions often include either my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities or my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities. We are working across Government to tackle offenders’ mental health problems, along with the Department of Health; to get them off drugs for good; and to give them skills for work, which involves the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Our Work programme reforms will of course affect offenders leaving prisons, and in that regard we are doing very good work with the Department for Work and Pensions. In all that work, we are taking full account of the distinct needs of women.

[Heidi Alexander]

The Government want prisoners to work a 48-hour week, but in a recent written answer the prisons Minister confirmed that just 161 women were working in prisons in March this year. That is a disproportionately low figure given the size of the female prison population. What will the Minister do to close the gap?

[Mr Blunt]

Most work in prisons at the moment is effectively a programme: it is a cost centre for the Prison Service. If we are to increase the amount of work done in our prisons to any significant extent, we shall need to adopt a rather more economic and commercial approach, so that the work of offenders can generate resources to deliver services for victims of crime. We are undergoing a system change, and there are many important and difficult questions to be answered about competition and similar issues. That applies just as much to women as to men.

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

The Government rightly dislike adopting targets, but has the Minister an aspiration in regard to the number of women he expects to be in prison at the end of the current Parliament?

[Mr Blunt]

My aspiration is, of course, zero, but although we have delivered a highly effective policy on crime and criminal justice, I am, like my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities, realistic enough to know that it is unlikely to be achieved. We will, however, work towards its achievement.

Over the past year the number of women prisoners has fallen by 1.5%, and the number of women arriving at prisons to serve sentences of less than 12 months has fallen by 10.7% .