Prison Education and Employment Strategy

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered prisons education and employment strategy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and to raise this issue. I am sure that the Minister will agree that it is an incredibly important topic. It has at its heart the issue of recidivism—or reoffending, as it is more commonly known. The issue costs our society more than £15 billion every year, about twice the budget of the Ministry of Justice. I am sure that we would all agree that that is a big problem, which creates an additional burden on the prisons estate, and on taxpayers.

The prison population projections for England and Wales detail an expected rise in the prisoner population, with more than 90,000 expected by the end of June 2020. With that in mind, the importance of reducing reoffending is crystal clear, especially as reoffenders are one of the largest groups contributing to prisoner numbers. I note that the Minister has made reducing reoffending a central plank of his philosophy and strategy on prisoners and prisons.

There are some things that we can do better, and education in prison and employment after release are key. All too often, people with criminal convictions face significant barriers and prejudices on their release, which often prevent them from getting a job after they leave prison. As such, education and training is incredibly important, because it leads to jobs after release, which reduces reoffending.

In recent years, unfortunately, education participation in prisons has declined and prisoners have continued to have trouble getting a job after release. Reoffending is too high as a result.

I warmly welcome the education and employment strategy presented to Parliament by the Minister; it is a good strategy with a compelling vision that I wholeheartedly support. I want to consider the three main parts of the strategy: education in prisons, prison work, and employment after release. I thank the Minister very much for responding to this debate.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that, although it is essential that inmates have access to gym and sporting equipment, which is very important, it is equally important that there should be access to skills training and basic level education? Half of Britain’s inmates are functionally illiterate. Courses such as cookery—how to cook on a budget—are very important as well, as is skills training in order to get a job. Those are essential basic skills, which need funding.

[Rachel Maclean]

No Westminster Hall debate would be complete without the hon. Gentleman in his place. I agree with his point. Sport is a central part of the whole strategy, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s points. My speech does not contain a lot of references to sport, but the hon. Gentleman has made an eloquent point. We discussed the issue recently in the all-party parliamentary group for running, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). We are all planning to run the marathon together, which may be foolish, but we want to use that opportunity to highlight the importance of sport in prisons and in wider society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. To put this in context, if you were the Yorkshire prison group director, Mr Betts, you would get your governors together to look at your list of five. You would choose the supplier that you think will provide the best quality for your core common curriculum, and then you would adjust for your area. How do you do that? Humber, which is a training prison, is currently offering coding, upholstery and design services to other prisons. Lindholme—again in Yorkshire—will be focusing on construction skills. Then, as my hon. Friend pointed out, you need to be open to bolting on to that the incredible education offerings of other types of volunteers. I taught Shakespeare in prisons when I was an undergraduate, so I can relate to what my hon. Friend’s son has been doing. The governor needs to provide space for those voluntary organisations to come into the prison, and they need to get the regime right for the core common prison day so they can get the prisoners into the classroom.

[Jim Shannon]

In the Minister’s response to the intervention of the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), he referred to the educational quality of the providers he is looking at. Everything he said is right, but some prisoners need daily living skills, budgeting skills and how-to-live skills. How do we incorporate those sorts of skills into the very basics of their lives?

[Rory Stewart]

The core of the answer is that we must give governors the freedom to adjust to the prisoners. They must take responsibility for that. One of the big changes in this framework is that we have taken power out of the centre and given it to governors so they can do exactly that. How are governors doing that? Increasingly, numeracy, literacy and budgeting skills are taught through the upholstery, carpentry and construction courses. The best way to get people to learn those things is often to focus on the practical vocational skills, and attach life skills to them.

In Yorkshire—I want to pursue this example a bit further—the New Futures Network gets people with the prisons group director to connect directly to employers. It reaches out to employers’ boards and ensures that employers understand what is on offer in the prison. I pay tribute not just to Paul Foweather, the prisons group director in Yorkshire, but to organisations such as Tempus Novo. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch asked about voluntary organisations. Tempus Novo is a charity run by two terrific ex-prison officers who have spent 25 years working on the landings. They left as band 4 officers—not governing-grade officers—and set up that organisation. They walk with employers into the prison, introduce them to the prisoners, reassure them about what is involved in employing offenders, and go into the workplace with the offender for the first interview. If any problems emerge in the workplace, Tempus Novo follows them up.

In the end, education and employment for prisoners is not about big ideas or fancy strategies. It is about doing 50 or 60 things well and looking carefully at the quality of what we are delivering. It is about speaking to prison governors and prisoners and saying, “What is going wrong with the curriculum? How many hours a day are you able to spend in the classroom? Is the fan working in the classroom? Are the teachers actually turning up? Is the qualification you got of any use in the outside world? Yes, you are beginning to go on an apprenticeship scheme, but are you able to connect it to the Government system? Yes, you are learning how to abseil, but are you getting the health and safety support to be able to turn that into being a window cleaner on a high-altitude building? What are we doing with release on temporary licence”—that is a question from my hon. Friend—“to make sure we give people the chance to spend time in an employer’s workplace before they leave prison formally?” Changing that is about changing a dozen small rules. We must ensure there is not a statutory lie-down period in each new prison, so that if a person is released on temporary licence in one prison and moves to another prison, they do not suddenly have to sit back in the prison and lose touch with their workplace.

If we get all those things right—it will be hard yards—we can make a difference. At the moment, only 20% of prisoners who leave prison get a job. If we can get it up to 25% or 30%, it would be fantastic and would change nearly 40 years of stagnation. Those do not sound like big numbers, but nearly 200,000 people circle through our criminal justice system every year. Every one of those people we get into a job is 7% less likely to reoffend. That translates not just into tens of thousands of families with an income and somebody at home with a job, but into thousands fewer crimes and thousands fewer victims of crime. It leads to a society that is healthier and safer.

At the core of this is our belief in the capacity for humans to change, and in our incredibly hard-working prison officers, governors and prisons group directors who are driving through this change. Employers such as Timpson take a huge risk, but they put a lot of energy into understanding prisoners, their needs and the skills they need to stand eight hours a day on the shop floor dealing with customers. If we get all those things right, we can be proud not just of our criminal justice system and our education strategy but of our society.

Question put and agreed to.