Mike Wood
Main Page: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)Department Debates - View all Mike Wood's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(6 years ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Rory Stewart
This is a good challenge. Birmingham was challenged, and we were focused on that situation. That is why we had put in notices to improve, why we had negotiated to bring in a new governor and why we had put in a new team. A judgment had to be made as to the point at which we decided that G4S did not have the capacity to turn things around on its own and we had to step in. I think we were correct in taking a number of steps before we formally stepped in, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right to challenge whether we could have done this a little earlier or a little later. That, in the end, was the judgment call we had to make.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
How many prisons have triggered urgent notifications since the system was introduced at the end of last year? How does that number break down between privately managed prisons and those run by the public sector?
Rory Stewart
The inspector has clarified that so far this year the prisons that have triggered urgent notification have been Exeter and Nottingham, and that he would have triggered a UN on Liverpool. Birmingham is the fourth, so the answer is: three out of the four since the beginning of this year have been from the public sector.