Ukraine Update

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Richard Fuller

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Lady is correct. I have spoken to my Chinese counterpart and made it clear how unacceptable any Chinese support for Russia in this conflict would be. I am very concerned about the recent statement by President Xi on that subject. Of course, we continue to trade with and support Taiwan, and to defend internationally the principles of sovereignty, self-determination and freedom that should govern the international order.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Shaun Pinner, a British citizen and a member of the Ukraine armed forces for many years, was captured while injured by Russian proxy forces. Since then, he has been coerced into making calls to his family to seek a trade for his life, he has been put through a show trial with no independent legal support, and he has been given an arbitrary and unjustified death sentence—all without any access for the Red Cross. He is a prisoner of war, and many of those actions, sanctioned by Russia, are against the Geneva convention. Will my right hon. Friend redouble her efforts to work with Russia to secure Red Cross access to Shaun and other British citizens held by Russian proxies in Ukraine?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that on behalf of Shaun Pinner and the other British citizens who are being wrongly detained. They are prisoners of war; they were fighting legitimately for the Ukrainian army. Those actions by Russian proxies are completely abhorrent. We are working very closely with the Ukrainian authorities to seek the urgent release of those people.

Free Trade Agreement Negotiations: Australia

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Richard Fuller

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The New Zealanders have a veterinary agreement with the EU, but they also have their own independent SPS policy. Let me be clear: we are not dynamically aligning with the EU’s SPS policies. In fact, our agreement in principle makes it very clear that both Australia and the United Kingdom have their own independent SPS regimes.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

There cannot be British citizens in the Australian Parliament but there are Australians in this Parliament.

I, for one, commend my right hon. Friend for securing this deal. She will understand that one of its strategic benefits is to set the basis for a global arrangement on standards in services. What progress did she make towards that strategic objective?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right. In this deal, we have agreement on the free flow of data, advanced provisions on the mobility of professionals, recognition of qualifications and a whole host of positive arrangements in areas such as investment and procurement. By Australia and the United Kingdom working together to set standards alongside other allies, we can help challenge unfair trade practices across the world and make sure that we stand up for good, rules-based trade in areas where the UK leads.

Prisons and Courts Bill

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Richard Fuller

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. and learned Friend has made the important point that a fair trial is at the heart of our justice system. We already have rules committees, and we are establishing a new online rules committee which will be managed by the judiciary. They will look at the issues in detail to ensure that a fair trial is always paramount.

The Bill will enable screens to be installed in courts across England and Wales to allow the public to observe virtual hearings from court buildings anywhere in the country. Lists of all open cases will be published online, and results will be made available digitally. That will ensure that justice is done and seen to be done.

The Bill will streamline the pre-trial process, and will make changes in the way in which cases are allocated in the Crown and magistrates courts. Defendants will be able to indicate a plea online in all cases, allowing the courts to make administrative decisions without the need for a hearing. We are also stripping out nearly 30,000 unnecessary first hearings for the most serious offences in the magistrates courts each year.

The Bill will abolish local justice areas, simplifying the structure of our magistrates courts and removing the bureaucracy and geographical constraints that cause inefficiencies and delays. It will allow those who are charged with some of the most straightforward, non-imprisonable offences to resolve their cases entirely online. For example, a commuter charged with failure to produce a ticket can log on to a website, have all the options clearly explained, and accept a conviction and pay a set penalty instantly online without waiting for a magistrate to process the case.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that a number of magistrates courts—including the court in Bedford—were closed in past years by the justices themselves, despite the best efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), whose hands were tied. Will these measures help to allay my constituents’ concern about the difficulties of additional travel in the case of some offences? Will the Bill give them some comfort by ensuring that the problems involved in having to go to Luton will be allayed?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right. I represent a rural constituency, and I understand people’s concerns about having to travel far. Virtual hearings will enable people to do more online so that they do not need to travel to court, and to use virtual videos. That is already reducing travel needs throughout the country. If people want to observe a case in another part of the country, they will be able to go into their court to do so, with special permission. Victims and witnesses will have more access to the justice process.

Prisons

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Richard Fuller

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. Friend’s assessment is absolutely right and we are, indeed, bringing back former prison officers on a temporary basis.

I will move on to what we are doing on recruitment and retention, because that is the most important issue we face as a Prison Service. We will not achieve our aims of reform if we do not have enough officers and if we do not train them properly and have proper career development to make the most of our workforce. In October, we started by announcing our plans to recruit an extra 400 staff in 10 of our most challenging prisons. I am pleased to say that we have so far made 389 job offers. We were due to do that by the end of March, so we are ahead of target. We recently launched a graduate scheme called Unlocked, which is like Teach First for prisons, to attract the top talented graduates. We had more than 1,000 expressions of interest in the scheme and within 24 hours, we had 350 graduates from Russell Group universities applying for it.

The idea that people do not want to do the job is not right. There are a lot of people out there who want to reform offenders and to get involved in helping us turn around our Prison Service. We need to talk up the job of being a prison officer, because it is incredibly important. One prison officer described themselves to me as a parent, a social worker and a teacher. What could be more important than turning somebody who lives a life of crime into somebody who contributes to society? We find that when we go out and recruit, a lot of people are interested in the role.

Of course we have to retain our fantastic existing prison officers, but I want to correct the hon. Member for Leeds East. In fact, 80% of our staff have been with us for longer than five years, so the idea that we do not have a strong depth of prison officers is wrong. However, we do need to ensure that they have career and promotion opportunities. That is why we are looking to expand the senior grades in the service and to promote our existing staff. We want to give them a career ladder so that they have opportunities to train on the job and get the additional skills they need.

We are giving prison governors the opportunity to recruit locally for the first time. We have launched that in 30 of our most hard-to-recruit prisons. That means that the governor can build much more of a relationship with the local community, get people involved, show people what life is really like inside prison and encourage people to work there. The local recruitment and job fairs have been really successful.

Of course this is challenging. Recruiting 4,000 people in one year is challenging, but I think we can do it. We have the opportunity to do it, we are enthusiastic about it and we have the budget to do it for the first time in a number of years.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The opportunity for the governor to do more proactive recruitment has been welcomed in Bedford. In the amendment, she talks about decentralising authority to prison governors to enable them to make their own decisions. Does she find it interesting that that idea has been missed completely by the Labour party?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to give prison governors power over what happens in their own prison. They should decide what regimes to operate and what staffing structures to have. They should motivate and recruit their own team. They should also have more say over how lives are turned around. For example, we are giving them the power over their own education providers. We will hold prison governors to account for how people are improving in English and maths; how successful they are at getting offenders off drugs, which we know can lead to rehabilitation; and how successful they are at getting people into work when they leave prison, which will encourage them to work with local employers and set up apprenticeships. However, we need to give governors the levers and the responsibility that will enable them to do those things. We are also working on leadership training so that governors have the skills and capabilities to take on those extra responsibilities.

That is the only way we will turn lives around. Whatever I and my civil servants do in the Ministry of Justice, we are not the people on the ground in the wings who are talking to prisoners day in, day out. It is those people who will turn lives around. That is why we need motivated staff and governors who are empowered to do that job. That is what our reforms will achieve.

Prison Officers Association: Protest Action

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Richard Fuller

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

It is disgraceful that the hon. Gentleman refuses to condemn illegal industrial action that is putting our hard-working front-line prison staff at risk—it is completely irresponsible. I have made it absolutely clear ever since I was appointed to this role that safety is my No. 1 priority. That is why we are rolling out new tests for psychoactive substances and making sure that all staff have body-worn cameras. It is also why we are already recruiting new staff, for which we have announced a £100 million increase in the prison budget. The hon. Gentleman needs to act more responsibly. He needs to work with me, as does the Prison Officers Association, to make sure that our prisons are safer. Sanctioning illegal industrial action in our prison estate is actively putting people at risk of harm, and I ask him to reconsider his disgraceful stance.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Following the recent disturbances at Bedford prison, I put on record my thanks to the prison officers and members of the Tornado force for restoring order so rapidly and carefully, and to the prisons Minister for keeping me in touch with affairs throughout the evening a week last Sunday. It is a great shame that prison officers have been led into unlawful action today, but does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State not recognise that in addition to adding staff, she needs to look urgently at the retention of existing staff and the reasons for their disquiet? Please will she do so as part of her ongoing review?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right about the importance of retaining our valuable officers with experience in our prisons, which is why we have given governors extra freedoms to take the measures they need to take, and why we need to increase safety across our prison estate. I have made that a clear priority, and we have already put in place a number of measures to improve security and safety. Unlawful industrial action is not the way to improve the situation. We had been in discussions with the POA—I met its representatives on 2 November—but it has walked away from talks that were designed to deal with some of the issues. I urge the POA to come back to the negotiating table, to stop putting its members at risk and to work with us to make our prisons safer.

Education Bill

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Richard Fuller

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

I appreciate the incentive that my hon. Friend gives me to talk about local issues—there are examples in the borough of Bedford and more generally—but he recognises that the duty to co-operate involves questions such as the ownership of land and buildings. In addition, my local authority has a somewhat confused educational structure. There is a mix of two tier and three tier, and sometimes there is both in the same place at the same time. In those circumstances, when schools wish to pursue becoming an academy, there is potential for a difference of opinion on the best interests of children. A school being subject to a requirement to co-operate with the local authority on the basis of the local authority’s responsibilities does not facilitate the growing liberalisation of schools to determine their futures that we wish to see. There is potential for conflict, but I hope that those examples have helped my hon. Friend.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some local authorities, such as Norfolk county council, have taken a positive approach towards academies, and are helping schools to become academies and to link up? Local authorities can play a positive role if they have the right attitude towards what that role should be.

[Richard Fuller]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s intervention, although with respect, I will stick tightly to the Lords amendments on this issue. She gives another example of how the duty on schools and local authorities to co-operate has evolved. Given that their noble Lords went so far in putting that duty back in the Bill, may I encourage the Minister and his ministerial colleagues to think further and more deeply about the evolving landscape and what that is likely to mean over the coming years?

I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for his comments about school admissions, which many of us share, and I thank the Minister for the changes that have been proposed or made. If we wish to see a substantial change and more liberalisation of schools in terms of where the authority lies, we should be aware that most families and parents want schools’ admissions policies to be clear and fair in their communities. That does not necessarily mean that they have to be uniform, although many of us would indeed hope to see uniform entrance policies, particularly with free schools, because that would reinforce the success of this new idea and new policy. I therefore very much welcome Lords amendments 20 and 21. I have listened to different points of view on free schools, and I know that support for this radical idea among Opposition Members has been “on again/off again”. Indeed, it would be interesting to know whether those on the Opposition Front Bench are “on” today or “off”.