Earl Attlee
Main Page: Earl Attlee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Earl Attlee's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord. He is absolutely right and I am looking at this on a daily basis. I walk past too many classrooms in prisons that are not full. Some are only one-third full. If I owned an airline and my planes were one-third full, I would not be doing very well. Recent Ofsted inspections have been encouraging, but we need to make sure our prisons are far more stable. When they are 99.9% full, the priority is not education, unfortunately, but it should be. It is a combination of having more stable prisons, working with our education providers to create a more stable environment to get more men and women out of their cells into education, and developing in-cell digital learning.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the Conservative Benches next, then we will go to the Labour Benches.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the work of the Minister, but can he explain why we continue to release prisoners early without requiring or securing a measurable improvement in literacy and numeracy?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
This is the final question that the noble Earl will be asking me, because today is my 600th day in the job and his penultimate day in your Lordships’ House. I thank him very much for his contribution. There are too many people coming in and out of prison, especially in female establishments. The average number of days spent in a female prison that I have been to recently is less than 45, which is not enough time to give people training. The staff we have in our prisons do an incredible job educating men and women. Anna Fellingham, who is the librarian at HMP Frankland, was recently praised by the inspectors for her creative writing courses for all abilities. It is the time that our educators spend with prisoners in stable prison environments that is going to make the difference. We want people to leave prison not just being able to read and write but having the skills for a job on release, so that when they get out, they do not come back.