Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Ministry of Justice

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts
Tuesday 25th April 2017

(7 years, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Sam Gyimah Portrait Mr Gyimah
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Absolutely. As I said right at the start, we have a new directorate within Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and a new team across the Home Office and the Prison Service, with new funding to tackle that and to roll out our anti-extremism strategy. The right hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Justice Committee, will also be aware that just last week we announced the separation centres that Ian Acheson recommended in his review and that will remove the most poisonous individuals from the main population of our prisons.

Keith Vaz Portrait Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
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About 1,000 individuals have been identified as extremist or as vulnerable to extremism, so the creation of those separation units is welcome. However, the key is monitoring people when they come out of prison. Can the Minister reassure us that that will happen?

Sam Gyimah Portrait Mr Gyimah
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To be precise, there are actually about 700 people of concern. Of those 700, about 180 are in prison or on remand for terrorism-related offences. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about what happens when people come into the community. The multi-agency protection arrangements with law enforcement mean that those people are subject to strict licence conditions, and if they breach those licence conditions, they can and do end up in jail. The police are obviously part of that.

I take this opportunity to thank the police, especially those who protect us here as we go about our daily jobs.