Prison Communications

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The right hon. Gentleman is enormously gracious to offer a personal apology, and I thank him for that.

The right hon. Gentleman is right. In relation to his own situation, he highlighted the fact that the practice concerned a discussion between a prisoner and a member of his staff. I venture to suspect that we will find over the course of the investigation that a large proportion of the calls were with members of staff rather than with Members of Parliament. None the less, it is important that such calls can be made without the sense that someone is listening in.

With regard to the right hon. Gentleman’s comments on the earlier report, I have had a quick read of it since I spoke to him on the phone. I will, indeed, pass it on to Nick Hardwick. It is important that we ensure that any lessons to be learned are learned.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Confidentiality is clearly very important. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for coming to the House so promptly. That is a model for others to follow. May I press the Secretary of State on two specific points? He said in his statement that, since 2012, there has been a case “where an individual clearly identified on the system as an MP has had their...calls recorded and listened to.” I would be grateful if he explained how that happened, and why it did not trigger any sort of alert. He also said that there have been “a small number” of cases in which conversations with lawyers had been recorded. How big is that small number?

[Chris Grayling]

I am only aware of a handful of cases over the years. When such cases arise, they are dealt with individually, with an apology and an explanation given to the prisoner involved. In terms of numbers, I am not aware that that is comparable to the issue we are dealing with today. It is however a concern, because such cases do arise.

The truth is that we all make mistakes. I do not yet have a detailed answer on the case of the Member of Parliament, but I suspect that it was a simple mistake by a member of staff who did not realise that they should not do what they did. However, we need to understand why and how this happened in both those circumstances, and we need to make sure that appropriate guidelines or measures are in place to ensure that they do not happen again.