HMP Birmingham

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the book already has pride of place on my bookshelf. I have read it thoroughly, and I recommend it to every Member in the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) is very committed to prison reform, so much so that he agreed to become a Whip in my Department to keep an eye on us and make sure that we are on the right track.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about foreign national offenders, and we are very much dealing with the issue.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

First the prison was taken over by G4S, and then it was taken over by the prisoners. The report on the prison by the Independent Monitoring Boards states explicitly that staff shortages are a major issue, observing that

“on too many occasions, in many areas, the service was reduced by there being insufficient staff”.

That was the very theme of the report. Brutally, whose fault is this, the private operator’s or the Government’s?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Clearly, there are issues across our prison estate. There is not sufficient time out of cell, and that is one of the things we are going to be measuring in our new reform measures. We also do not have sufficient staff to be able to keep our prisons safe and reform offenders, which is what we need to do.