Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

5. What recent discussions he has had with representatives of employers and training organisations to develop his policy on rehabilitation.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

9. What recent representations he has received on promoting links between employers and prisons for the purposes of improving skills among prisoners and increasing employment opportunities on release.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

Promoting links with employers and business is central to our plans to make prisoners work and improve rehabilitation. We have established a business advisory group, which meets regularly to advise Ministers and officials on how to increase both work in prisons and private sector involvement.

[Nick Herbert]

I share my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm for that programme. The National Grid young offender programme is a really good model of effective engagement with the private sector. I would particularly commend Dr Mary Harris, its director, who has driven it energetically. The programme has recently been extended to two prisons in Wales and one in the west midlands, and we would like to do more with it.

[Margot James]

It is well known that employment is the most significant determinant of effective rehabilitation. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on his plans to incentivise Jobcentre Plus, Work programme providers, further education colleges and local employers to get involved and maximise the number of job opportunities available to ex-offenders?

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Finding a job on release plays a significant part in reducing the reoffending of prisoners. That is why we have worked with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that prisoners being released who are eligible for jobseeker’s allowance will be mandated immediately on to the Work programme. We are also re-commissioning learning and skills in prisons. One of the main objectives is to ensure that learning focuses far more on employability, and our employers forum will encourage employers of all sizes.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

The hon. Gentleman is being a little harsh on the Mayor of London, who is a keen supporter, as am I, of the Heron unit in Feltham, to which he was referring, which does extremely good work. The hon. Gentleman is right to underline the importance of getting proper research and analysis to inform payment by results so that we in the Ministry of Justice and the taxpayer end up paying for outputs that deliver and not simply for inputs, which is how the position has been characterised in the past.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

T2. Last month my right hon. and learned Friend prioritised the reform of the European Court of Human Rights during our chairmanship of the Council of Europe. Will he update the House on the steps that the Government are taking to restrain the Court’s influence over laws and customs that are properly the affair of member states?

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

We have had the chairmanship of the Council of Europe since 7 November, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I have been seeking to move forward our agenda of reforming the Court in due course. Indeed, I will be lobbying two more Ministers tomorrow at a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council. We are seeking to get the Court to concentrate on the most important cases which require some international jurisdiction to get rid of the huge arrears of cases clogging it up at the moment, most of which are inadmissible, and to make sure that the national courts and national Parliaments discharge their primary duty of delivering the convention.