Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Imran Hussain and Sam Gyimah(7 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend is pre-empting our employment strategy, which we will announce very soon. He will be aware of the New Futures Network, which the Justice Secretary announced at party conference. This will bring together employers and ex-offenders to help to create employment on release. The construction sector is a key sector and he will be hearing more from us in due course.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
A 2015 Ministry of Justice study found that community orders have a substantially lower rate of reoffending than short prison sentences. What is the Minister doing to reverse the sharp fall in community sentences that has taken place under his Government?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Imran Hussain and Sam Gyimah(7 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gyimah
Obviously, I take a keen interest in the hon. Gentleman’s local prison, where the staff complement is exactly as it should be. It is one of the 10 pathfinder prisons in which we are implementing the new offender management model. I discussed the staffing situation there with the new national chair of the Prison Officers Association, and he commended the fact that staff numbers there are at full strength, but that does not mean that there is not more to do across the estate. We are halfway to our target of 2,500, and I am confident that we will achieve that.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The chief executive of the Prison Service has stated that, because of overcrowding, the Government will not be able to proceed with planned closures, throwing the financing of their prison building plan into disarray. In the light of concerns that the Ministry of Justice will not be able to build new prisons without selling off the old—the model on which its building plan was based—will the Minister today guarantee that no new prison places will be built from private funds?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten that we have a duty to house those who are sentenced by the courts. The prison population in England and Wales is 86,000; we have a duty to provide accommodation for them to serve their sentence in. We still have a commitment to investing £1.3 billion in the prison estate to create 10,000 additional prison places during this Parliament.
Proposed Prison: Port Talbot
Debate between Imran Hussain and Sam Gyimah(7 years, 3 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Mr Gyimah
Infrastructure is not just motorway access but the local infrastructure of the area. For a category C prison, which would effectively be a resettlement prison, ease of access to employment is important, so that prisoners can be released on temporary licence and come back easily. It is also important that local people can work in the prison without having to commute long distances, not to mention ease of access for prisoners’ families to visit them. All those things are taken into account when we look at local infrastructure.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Imran Hussain and Sam Gyimah(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend is right. About 50% of prisoners have the reading age and numeracy skills of an 11-year-old. If we are to give them a chance in life, we need to sort out education, but we also need to give them employment skills that are valued in the workplace. That is why prison reform, which is at the heart of the White Paper that the Government published last November, is carrying on at pace.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The chief inspectors of prisons and of probation recently issued a devastating report on the Government’s flagship community rehabilitation companies, which stated:
“None of the prisoners had been helped into employment by through-the-gate services”.
Will the Minister commit to an urgent review of the role of CRCs, including their delivery of education and employment services, and will he guarantee that no extra money will be passed on to those private companies until they can be proven to be fit for purpose?
Mr Gyimah
The probation reforms that the previous Conservative Government rolled out mean that 45,000 offenders who previously would not have been supervised, because they had been in prison for less than 12 months, are now being supervised. The hon. Gentleman is right that there are challenges with what is a first-generation outsourcing programme. We have an ongoing probation review and extra funds have been invested in the CRCs, but we are still within the funding envelope that was decided at the start of the programme. We are carrying out the review to make sure that through-the-gate and other services operate as was envisaged in the original vision.