(1 year, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberI congratulate my hon. Friend on her consistent advocacy for projects in the Celtic sea as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the Celtic sea. The necessity for securing timely consents is an imperative, and I will continue to work with the Welsh Government and all stakeholders to ensure that the huge opportunities that this presents are capitalised upon.
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberWe are determined to work across Government to modernise the Mental Health Act 2007 so that it ensures that patients receive the right care in the right setting at the right time. Prison should be a place for rehabilitation, not a convenient holding pen for those people for whom mental health is the primary driver of their offending.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her continuing interest in this important process. We are consulting widely on these proposed reforms, including service users, carers and professionals, to ensure that we get this once-in-a-generation opportunity right. The consultation is now available on the gov.UK website, and will close on 21 April.
Will the Secretary of State explain how reforms of the Mental Health Act will strengthen the role that the justice system plays in protecting society’s most vulnerable, both in north Wales and across the country?
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend who, from his professional experience, has a great deal of expertise and knowledge in this area. Among other reforms, we want, in particular, to increase patient access to the Mental Health Tribunal, which provides vital independent scrutiny of detention orders. We wish to expand its powers so that it plays a greater safeguarding role. Health policy is devolved to Wales, so it will be for the Welsh Government to decide whether they wish to join the UK Government on many of our reforms in the White Paper, and we will continue to work closely with them in order to secure that partnership.
(3 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Lady is right to raise the particular challenges facing women prisoners. There does seem to be a different effect of the current restrictions on women prisoners as opposed to the male estate. Sadly, we have seen rates of self-harm and, indeed, repeated self-harm from individual prisoners increase. I assure her that the female offender strategy that we launched two years ago is at the heart of our considerations. It is all about understanding why a lot of women not just self-harm, but end up in the custodial estate in the first place. We continue with work on that. More investment is coming, with the creation of secure centres. We will continue to look at ways in which we can reimagine and redesign how women are incarcerated. She will be glad to note that overall numbers in the custodial estate remain quite low compared with recent years as a result of covid and, indeed, the approach that the courts have been taking.
My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. We have taken steps to minimise the risk from transfers. We allow only essential transfers—for example, where courts need to be served and justice must carry on. We have clear policies in place to define the need for essential transfers, and we have our compartmentalisation strategy, which means that new admissions to prisons are kept separate from the general population. We are testing new prisoners and, indeed, testing those being transferred between prisons to minimise the risk of spreading the virus.
(8 years, 3 months ago)
Commons Chamber11. What recent steps he has taken to promote (a) public legal education and (b) the provision of pro bono legal services.
As Government pro bono champions, the Attorney General and I continue to support, through our co-ordinating committees, a number of projects that reinforce how important pro bono work and public legal information are, not just domestically but internationally.
I thank the Solicitor General for his replies on this topic. How can the Government further help the efforts of charities such as LawWorks, a pro bono legal advice service supported by the Law Society that targets the most needy and has offices across the UK?
My hon. Friend is right to mention LawWorks, which has been an active member of the pro bono co-ordinating committee for several years. Since October 2014, the Ministry of Justice has provided funding for the litigant in person support strategy, which is designed to help third sector organisations deliver increased support to litigants in person. I am sure that he will put that on his website.