Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)]

Over the weekend, we launched the unified probation service for England and Wales. It was the culmination of huge amounts of preparation over two years, and I am hugely grateful to probation colleagues and frontline staff for making it happen. We have invested £310 million in that time to recruit 1,000 extra probation officers, with 1,500 more on the way, alongside making more use of technology such as GPS and sobriety tags. We are determined to ensure that the millions of hours of unpaid work handed down to offenders every year are served more visibly, keeping our towns, cities and our countryside clean. I have said many times that every Department of Government should be a criminal justice department, and the new probation service will be at the heart of a more joined-up approach with police, health services, local authorities and others to cut crime and keep the public safe from harm.

[Fleur Anderson]

On 17 June, I wrote to the Justice Secretary about probation services, raising a deeply concerning whistleblower case in the probation service. When my constituent first joined the service, there were 10 members of staff in her team. At the end of 2020, three members of staff had left and a further three were on long-term sick leave, and the case load was overwhelming. Does the Secretary of State accept that the 60% drop in staffing levels presents an unacceptable risk to public safeguarding, the welfare of probation service officers and the rehabilitation of offenders?

[Robert Buckland]

I will make sure that the hon. Lady’s letter is brought to my attention. She sent it just over a week ago. I will not comment about the individual case, but it will of course be looked at carefully. She will be encouraged to know that as a result of the investment we are making, 1,000 more probation officers have been recruited already. We are going for another 1,500, and that means that, together with the changes to how case loads are managed, probation officers will be supported and encouraged, and the sort of issues that she raises I believe will start to diminish, because that is my determination. I want to sing the praises of an unsung public service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Robert Buckland

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his assiduous representation of the many hundreds of prison officers in his constituency, and he is right to draw my attention to those concerns. I repeat the assurance that we are reviewing that policy. I want to get it right; I want whistleblowing to be a safe and meaningful exercise for all staff, and I am happy to undertake that review, which will be completed later in the year.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

The new Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020, which came into force on 8 June, set a standard fixed fee that will make legally aided complex asylum and immigration work financially unviable. Will the Secretary of State commit urgently to assessing the impact of that fixed fee and to funding a system that pays a fair wage to legal aid lawyers, to ensure that access to justice is not denied to some of the most disadvantaged people in our communities?

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Lady will be glad to know that I have already committed to the second stage of the consultation to do that, to reflect fully the nature of the work undertaken by immigration practitioners. Our aim in the first stage was to quickly bring forward increases to reflect important work on skeleton arguments —it was always a first stage. I have made that commitment and we are going to get on with the consultation, as we always planned.