HMP Birmingham

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have discussed the issue the hon. Lady mentions with Lord Woolf. She is right that the disturbance at HMP Birmingham was very serious; that is why we are investing £1.3 billion in our prison build programme to create extra capacity and eliminate overcrowding in the prison estate.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The Howard League published a report in the summer indicating all Welsh prisons had seen a fall in the number of officers compared with last year, so what is the Secretary of State doing to ensure the Welsh prison estate is equipped with sufficient staff, especially as it is the policy of the UK Government to build in Wrexham a Titan prison, one of the largest in Europe, primarily, as she has said in this debate, to house prisoners from overcrowded prisons in England?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We have great recruitment plans and programmes in place. We have already recruited a significant number for the first 10 prisons, including one in Wales, and we will follow that through with new apprenticeship programmes and graduate entry programmes and by making sure staff in our prison service are able to gain promotion and get the training they need to progress.