HMP Birmingham

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. If he looks at the way we review prisons, he will find that the performance of the private and public sectors is relatively equivalent. There is not a significant difference between performance in the private and public sector. We set the levels of staff that the private sector has to employ. We are moving towards a 1:6 ratio in both the public and private sectors. All our evidence suggests that that will be enough to make sure that we keep prisons safe and, importantly, to reform prisoners to reduce the cost of reoffending.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said in her statement that these matters had been developing over a number of years, but is it not the case that between 1997 and 2010 there were no cat A escapes and no riots like the ones we have seen? Since that time, there have been two category A and many other escapes, record numbers of suicides and record numbers of homicides in our prisons. Why should we trust the right hon. Lady’s party to run the Prison Service?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have said absolutely that we have seen significant rises in violence over recent years. That is why we launched the prison safety and reform plan. The first thing I did when I became Secretary of State was to make sure that we dealt with those issues. We have faced new challenges such as psychoactive drugs and mobile phones, which were not an issue before. I say to the right hon. Lady that since the inception of prisons we have not seriously impacted the reoffending rate, which is a challenge we face as a country. It is costing us £15 billion a year. It is important that we make our prisons safe, but also make them places of reform where we can reduce reoffending. Prisons need to follow both purposes.