Ministry of Justice Spending

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to follow my good and hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous). This is an important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for us to discuss these issues. I must declare an interest, in that I am a member of the Justice Unions Parliamentary Group and I am proud to represent the interests of prison officers campaigning for a basic right: the right to a safe working environment. I also want to pay tribute to the dedicated and hard-working staff throughout the justice system—in the prisons, in probation and in every aspect of the Department’s work—whose work is often overlooked.

Time is short, so I shall touch on just three issues: other Members have covered the financial cuts to the Ministry of Justice, so I will refer to them only briefly; I want to talk briefly about the loss of experience in the Prison Service because of budget cuts; and I will address the consequences of cuts for prison staff who are trying to maintain a safe working environment.

I read a most disturbing article in my local newspaper, the Evening Chronicle, entitled “Seven staff stabbed at North East jail as prisoners leave officers ‘black and blue’”. That is from 13 July. The article quoted the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, who said in response:

“The Government is taking unprecedented action to improve safety in prisons.”

In the light of those comments it is important that, as part of our responsibility to hold the Government to account, we consider their record on law and order.

The Department has suffered cuts of more than 40% since 2010 and, according to some work that I have read by the New Economics Foundation, the indications are that that proportion will rise to more than 50% by 2023. My concern is that the cuts are a false economy. Several Members, including the Chair of the Select Committee, mentioned that the Ministry of Justice budget was around £8 billion and the estimated annual cost of reoffending is now more than £18 billion.

Ron Hogg, the police and crime commissioner in Durham, is a wonderful man who is currently struggling with a most debilitating illness. He pioneered the Checkpoint scheme in an attempt to address the issue of reoffending. Ron joined me on a delegation—in fact, he led the delegation; I joined him—to see the Secretary of State for Justice and put forward a powerful case for taking a new approach to tackling reoffending.

Private prisons are inefficient and are wasting resources. Although private prisons accommodate approximately 15% of the prison population, the Government spend nearly a quarter of the total prison budget on them. The main aim of a private prison is clearly to make profit for shareholders. Public service and staff safeguarding are secondary. Private companies aim for a profit margin of around 8% to 10%, so for every pound paid to a private prison operator, 10p is immediately top-sliced, to be given to shareholders rather than being spent on making our prisons safer.

The other method that the private sector has used to improve prisons’ profitability is to reduce wages, cut staffing levels and accommodate more prisoners. A report by The Guardian newspaper, based on parliamentary questions, found that private prisons are up to 47% more violent than public prisons, as a consequence of understaffing and overcrowding. Put simply, private prisons cost more and deliver less.

The House will remember that the Secretary of State said:

“The Government is taking unprecedented action to improve safety in prisons”,

so let us look at the evidence in the little time I have left. The Tory-Liberal coalition cut 7,000 prison officers, leading to the loss of more than 80,000 years-worth of prison staffs’ accumulated experience. The recruitment of new prison officers, to which I understand the Minister will refer, even if to the same level the Government inherited from the previous Labour Government, will not replace the lost years of experience for many decades to come. The Government’s unprecedented actions over the past decade have damaged prison safety and increased violence, through the loss of prison officers and the valuable experience that they have in running our prisons.

At Holme House near Stockton, which is the prison nearest to my constituency, seven staff were stabbed. Meanwhile, 11 staff at HMP Northumberland suffered fractures and another 22 needed stitches. Across the north-east, there were 46 incidents of prisoners spitting at staff, and 29 other serious incidents that resulted in injuries to staff were recorded. Indeed, the annual report of HM inspectorate of prisons for England and Wales found that among category B and C prisons staff shortages have

“been so acute that risks to both prisoners and staff were often severe, and levels of all types of violence had soared.”

The Government are failing in their duty of care to prison staff: their workplace is unsafe; prison officers’ wages have been cut in real terms for a decade now; and their retirement age has been increased from 60 to 68.

This Government, facilitated by the Liberal Democrats in coalition, are to blame for our prisons being unsafe and for failing in their primary duty of reducing re-offending and rehabilitating prisoners. Unless prisons are safe, secure and decent, rehabilitation is simply impossible. Our prisons have become, in many cases, universities of crime, with career criminals in control of prison landings.

In my opinion, the Secretary of State, or his Minister, should start by apologising to prison staff for a decade of failure. He should apologise for devaluing their jobs through real-terms pay cuts, and apologise for creating an unsafe working environment by cutting the number of officers, losing valuable experience, increasing the retirement age and expecting prison officers approaching 70 to tackle and deal with violent inmates who are in their 20s, 30s and 40s. He should apologise for allowing private prisons to profit at the expense of staff safety, for undermining our criminal justice system, for imposing a decade of cuts at every level—to policing, to legal aid, to our courts and to our Prison Service. I was frankly aghast to hear Conservative Back-Bench Members at the start of this debate wringing their hands about cuts to legal aid. I must have dreamt that Tory Members trooped into the Division Lobby in 2012 to vote for cuts to legal aid. I do hope that the Government will acknowledge their role and start immediately to repair the damage they have caused over the past decade.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Philp)]

It is a great pleasure to conclude this debate. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chairman of the Justice Committee, as well as the other Committee members here, for securing this afternoon’s very important debate. When I attended the opening of the legal year on Tuesday, it became clear to me just how many of the senior judiciary in this country the Committee Chairman knows. I will certainly endeavour to listen to him, and to other members of the Committee from both sides of the House, as I embark on my new role.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) indicated, justice is of fundamental, vital importance to the functioning of our society. Justice is the foundation of any civilised society. Without justice, there is no freedom, and without the rule of law, there can be no prosperity, so the state discharges few functions that are more important than ensuring that justice is done. I join Members on both sides of the House in paying tribute to judges, lawyers, the police, Crown Prosecution Service officials, court officials, prison officers, probation officials, and of course Ministry of Justice civil servants for their work in making sure that our justice system functions.

As this debate is on funding, I should like to comment on the overall funding figures. A number of Members have referred to a reduction in spending of 40% since 2010. It is important to mention that that figure is based on figures for the 2015 spending review. Since then, there has been additional resource spending on Ministry of Justice matters from a variety of sources, and when that spending is added back in, the real-terms reduction is 21%. That is still a reduction, but of a great deal less than 40%. To put that in context, the British crime survey, which produces the most reliable crime statistics—in fact, the only ones recognised by the Office for National Statistics—finds a 33% reduction in crime over the same period; that is significant, and we should bear it in mind.

That said, there are clearly issues with the way that various parts of our criminal justice system operate that need addressing—issues that Members on both sides of the House have powerfully and eloquently referred to. That is why it is welcome, as some Members have acknowledged, that in the spending review statement made just a few weeks ago in this House, it was announced that the Ministry of Justice’s resource budget will increase from £7.631 billion this financial year to £8.142 billion in the next financial year. That is an increase of £511 million, which is over half a billion pounds, 6.7% in cash terms, or 4.9% in real terms. I am glad that Members across the House welcome that increase. On the capital side, the capital DEL budget has increased from £417 million in the current year to £620 million next year—a 48% increase.

The Department is going through the allocations process to work out where the extra £511 million will go. I heard powerful representations about the probation service from the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) and the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), and I think pretty much every Member who spoke in the debate mentioned the prison system. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst spoke about the courts system, and many Members discussed the legal aid budget, including the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), who spoke powerfully. What has been said in this debate will be carefully looked at as the allocations are made. However, we should remember that the reason why these savings had to be made was the catastrophic state of the public finances 10 years ago, so as we look forward to next year, as the economy continues to prosper and as public finances come under control, I hope that the 2020 spending review can do a lot more for the Ministry of Justice and the various areas that it looks after.

I will now respond to some of the specific points raised in the debate. On prison places, I am delighted that two prisons are now under construction, with 3,360 new places. Construction started just last week at the new prison in Wellingborough, and the Secretary of State turned the first sod of earth with his very own hands. That £2.5 billion programme will, as Members have said, add 10,000 places by the middle of the 2020s.

Members also made reference to the need to maintain and improve conditions in prisons themselves, with the right hon. Member for Delyn and the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) both referred specifically to the conditions within prisons. The Government fully recognise that issue, and I can confirm today that, in addition to the spending review 2019 figures that the House heard a few weeks ago, an extra £156 million will be spent next year expressly on prison maintenance and conditions. That is a 75% increase across the capital and resource budgets on the amount planned in the spending review, so I am sure that everybody in the House who raised the important matter of prison maintenance will be pleased to hear that.

Several Members mentioned the number of serving prison officers, including the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) a few moments ago. Members will therefore be pleased to hear that, as of June this year, there were 22,321 serving prison officers, which is an increase of 4,366 since 2016. The shadow Justice Secretary said a moment ago that 2,500 extra officers were announced in 2016, so I am pleased that we have delivered almost double that.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith talked about an important trial that took place in 10 of the most challenging prisons to try to improve prison safety and address, for example, assaults on prison officers. The trial published its results in August this year, and assaults fell by 16% and positive drug tests by 50% across those 10 prisons. Those are important results, and I hope that the pilots can be expanded. I will certainly be passing that point on to the Minister of State for Prisons and Probation.

We heard a bit less about our courts than about prisons, but they are also extremely important, with my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst drawing particular attention to them. The digitisation process is not, as he said, a panacea. It is part of the solution, not the whole solution, but it is welcome that uncontested divorce proceedings, probate proceedings, the issuance and response to civil money claims and minor pleas can now all be done online, saving both participants in the criminal justice system and the court system itself a great deal of time and money. The common platform designed to make criminal cases run more effectively and efficiently between the police, the CPS and the courts will start to be rolled out in the first half of next year. That will do more to make the courts run more efficiently.

My hon. Friend the Select Committee Chairman mentioned issues with sitting days and maintenance in the court system, which I recognise. As the Minister with responsibility for courts rather than prisons, I will of course make the case for sitting days and for the maintenance programme in the court system as we go through the allocation process in the coming two or three months to divide up that half a billion pounds of extra money.

On court closures, which the shadow Secretary of State raised a few moments ago, the courts that were closed—those that were consulted on in 2015—were running at about one-third utilisation, partly because of the one-third reduction in BCS crime since 2010. Clearly, having courts running at only one-third utilisation does not make a lot of sense, but before there are any further closures, there will be a consultation process and extremely careful thought, for the access to justice reasons that he and other Members mentioned.

Legal aid was mentioned by a number of Members, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham and for Bromley and Chislehurst, and the hon. Members for Lewisham West and Penge and for Hammersmith. I am pleased to remind the House that last year the rates for criminal barristers were increased by around 10%—that was a £23 million commitment—and, as Members said, the criminal legal aid review is under way. In fact, some parts of that review, because they are so urgent, will report early: the parts related to unused material, cracked trials, paper hearing cases, pre-charge advice and payments for sending cases to the Crown court will report next month. The rest of the review will report in the summer of next year, and I hope it will address some of the concerns hon. Members raised about the legal aid system.

The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge mentioned victims. They are very important—particularly victims of sexual assault. The victims and witnesses budget is £92 million, and I am sure she will join me in welcoming last week’s announcement of an extra £5 million specifically to help victims of sexual violence.

Let me conclude with sentencing, which the Lord Chancellor and I have responsibility for. I support the change in the automatic release point for standard determinate sentences from half to two thirds, because I think the public expect someone who is sentenced to serve the majority of their sentence. Releasing them at the halfway point undermines public confidence in the sentence that is handed down. The change aligns the release point with the discretionary release point for extended determinate sentences, at two thirds. That will, of course, apply only to the more serious cases; it will not apply to all cases where a standard determinate sentence is handed down.

[Grahame Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Philp]

I would love to, but I only have a few seconds left. I would love to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman on a future occasion.

On less significant offences, I recognise the extremely high reoffending rate—60%—that Members referred to. As the Minister responsible for sentencing, I will look very carefully at expanding trials in which treatment, in particular for drug addiction, alcohol addiction and mental ill health, is put at the heart of sentencing and rehabilitation. There is much more we can do to learn from those trials and from countries around the world where more effective treatment is the key to reducing reoffending rates. That is my personal commitment to the House this afternoon.

It has been a great pleasure to participate in the debate. I look forward to hearing the Select Committee Chairman conclude it.