Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend is a tireless advocate on behalf of his constituents in raising these most distressing matters. The Government believe that it is right for the authorities in individual towns and cities to commission local inquiries. It is crucial that answers are provided where failings have occurred, and that we work nationally and locally to improve services’ response to this horrendous crime. The Government welcome Bradford’s work to do that through commissioning and disseminating its recent review. The local authority and police must now do everything possible to understand the current threat and ensure that children at risk are safeguarded and offenders prosecuted.

I also just add that, at a national level, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse continues to investigate public bodies to ensure that they are doing everything that they should to protect children.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

4. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the recruitment and retention of prison and probation officers.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Since October 2016, band 3 to 5 prison officer numbers have increased by more than 4,000 from 17,955 to 22,325 full-time equivalents. In the year to March 2021, we recruited more than 1,000 trainee probation officers and we will recruit a further 1,500 by the end of March next year.

[Mary Glindon]

The prisons White Paper concedes that attrition rates among prison officers are too high,

“causing an unsustainable level of turnover in the system… contributing to a vicious cycle of staff dissatisfaction and lack of retention.”

With even the Prison Service’s new retention framework conceding that low wages are key driver of attrition, when will the Minister stand up for both prison officers and probation officers and give them the proper pay rise the Government’s own experts recommend?

[Kit Malthouse]

We do recognise that attrition among prison officers is an issue, which is why we have put in place retention toolkits in prisons, providing governors with the support and tools that they need for employee retention. As far as pay is concerned, the hon. Lady knows that the economic ravages of the pandemic meant that there did need to be a pause in pay, but now that the Department has received a three-year spending settlement, it means that we can commence more coherent conversations with unions and others about what pay might look like in the years to come.