Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Karin Smyth Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority about HMP Birmingham, and he is right to identify that if prisons are run in such a way there will be consequences because the time available for meaningful activity is reduced.

The Justice Secretary talked in the media at the weekend about improvements in our justice system since Mr Acheson’s report. He repeated that in his speech and he has repeated it in an intervention a moment or two ago. I therefore thought I would compare what the Justice Secretary is saying with the views of the independent chief inspector of prisons. The latest annual report from Peter Clarke states that

“far too many of our jails have been plagued by drugs, violence, appalling living conditions and a lack of access to meaningful rehabilitative activity.”

That should be a wake-up call to the Government. Mr Clarke went on to say that

“levels of self-harm were disturbingly high and self-inflicted deaths tragically increased by nearly one-fifth on the previous year.”

That is no way for the Prison Service to be run and things must change.

There is also, if I may say so, an issue at the Ministry of Justice with the Government failing to provide it with stable leadership. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is the seventh Justice Secretary since 2010. Of those seven, five have served for 18 months or less. The role of Lord Chancellor should have been respected and not been subject to a revolving door. No wonder there is such a lack of direction and no wonder there is no long-term planning. Justice Secretaries are simply not in post long enough. There are even indications from 10 Downing Street that half the Cabinet could be out by Friday.

I say in all sincerity to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I very much hope he survives in this role—I hope I have not jinxed him by saying that; I could have just ruined his Friday—because there is an enormous job to do. There are 224 terrorist prisoners in England and Wales, of whom 173 have been assessed as having extreme Islamist views. We also know that there is a growing threat from far-right terrorism. If we want properly to manage the risk of terrorist offenders, we need the most effective targeted de-radicalisation programmes to be delivered by staff working in the best conditions we can provide for them.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

One area has not been mentioned. When I took part in the police service parliamentary scheme and spent some time with the counter-terrorism units, the one area they highlighted was working on the ground with mental health resources in our communities. That risk decision, the decision at community level about someone’s mental capacity and radicalisation, is really important when we look at resources. The cuts to our mental health services are having an impact on this area.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think we sometimes see things in isolation, but cuts to many other services have also had an impact, which the Government need to take into account. Indeed, when we talk about conditions for our prison officers to work in, a third of our prisons were built in the Victoria era. There is a £900 million maintenance backlog and a desperate need for new investment.