Safety of Prison Staff

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) will be meeting the relatives of someone who took their own life in custody recently. There are sometimes sensitivities about specific cases, but as a general rule this is something that, of course, we would wish to do.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

From his experience as Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend will have worked out that there is a catalogue of reasons why the safety of prison staff is placed at risk: overcrowding of prisons; the mental health issues he has described; and the lack of purposeful activity for prisoners, which he has described. Does he also accept that the continuing uncertainty for prisoners on IPPs— indeterminate sentences for public protection—making them the most difficult cohort of prisoners to manage, is something we ought to be dealing with very quickly? Can we not arrange to have them re-sentenced quickly to determinate sentences or put before the Parole Board so that their cases can be reviewed? This is a matter of urgent priority and I urge him to look at the IPP question, which is causing such a lot of disturbance in our prison system.

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. and learned Friend is a busy man, so he probably will not have had an opportunity to read the speech I gave to the governing governors forum some six weeks ago. In it, I outlined the urgent case for reform of IPP sentencing and said that the former Member for Sheffield, Brightside, Lord Blunkett, had acknowledged that the original intention when he introduced those sentences had not manifested itself in the way in which those sentences were applied. I can say to my right hon. and learned Friend that I will be meeting Nick Hardwick, the new chair of the Parole Board, later this week specifically to expedite some changes which I hope my right hon. and learned Friend and others in the House might welcome.