Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Certainly, the Government take a serious view of the use of a nuclear weapon; I hope that not too much of that breaks out in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. We discussed these proposals in the House only last week, and we achieved the House’s approval for them. There is an indeterminate sentence called a life sentence, which is the best and most established form of indeterminate sentence. Having got rid of the failed indeterminate sentences for public protection, we expect that quite a lot of people will get life sentences who hitherto would have been given the rather unsatisfactory IPPs.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State consider the problem of pre-release of prisoners where insufficient preparation is made for training or, particularly, for somewhere to live or some kind of community support? That means, in turn, that they either stay longer in prison or are released into the community, where they are inadequately supervised and end up back in a whole regime of crime.

[Mr Clarke]

We are looking at that problem very seriously, and we hope to produce a substantial improvement on the present situation. In particular, I am working with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to try to ensure that offenders leaving prison can have instant access to the work programmes that we are developing for other people seeking work. Enabling people to get back into employment is one of the best ways of improving the chances that they will not offend again.