Oral Answers to Questions
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Alex Chalk
I am delighted to hear from my right hon. Friend, who was such a distinguished Minister in this Department. He did indeed introduce virtual hearings in our courts, and time has proved how prescient he was, because that was the right thing to do. I welcome the recent decision by the Judicial Office to make remote hearings the default arrangement for bail applications. In a wider context, a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), which is currently making its way through Parliament, will amend legislation so that magistrates and judges in magistrates, county and family courts will be able to hear cases remotely when that is appropriate.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)
The National Audit Office report on the management of legal aid was a valuable piece of work, and we are considering its conclusions carefully. The Government hugely value the work of legal aid lawyers, which is why we commissioned a review of civil legal aid to identify options for the delivery of a more effective, efficient and sustainable system for legal aid providers. A Green Paper containing policy options is planned for July this year.
Mohammad Yasin
There are no providers of housing legal aid in the borough of Bedford, and the number of people living within 10 km of a provider of legal aid housing advice in England and Wales has fallen from 73% to 64% in the last decade. Does the Secretary of State agree that whatever legal redress is provided in the Renters (Reform) and Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bills will be meaningless if there is no legal aid system to enforce those reforms?
Alex Chalk
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the £10 million that is going to the Housing Loss Prevention Advisory Service, which is a revolutionary step to ensure that those who are at risk of eviction can access the legal aid they require in order to make their case. I respectfully invite the hon. Gentleman to come and see me so that I can discuss this with him further and he can be a voice for his constituents, signposting them to the support that is available, because it is important for them to be aware of the support that the Government are providing.
Gareth Bacon
In response to the Wade review, we have increased sentences by introducing statutory aggravating factors for murders that are preceded by controlling or coercive behaviour, that involve overkill or that are connected with the end of a relationship. We have also consulted publicly on sentencing starting points for murders preceded by controlling or coercive behaviour and for murders committed with a knife or other weapon. The Government are carefully considering the responses to the consultation and will publish their response in due course.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Edward Argar
No, I do not accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question, which may not surprise him. In respect of Bedford Prison, which he and I have spoken about, we continue to put the investment into both staff and the prison to make progress following that urgent notification.
HM Prison Bedford
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(12 months ago)
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Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
I am pleased to have secured this Adjournment debate on conditions at His Majesty’s Prison Bedford. I thank the Commons Library, the Howard League, the Prison Officers Association, the residents living by the prison, the Prison Reform Trust, the independent monitoring board, Victim Support and Charlie Taylor for their helpful information and data, which will inform the debate.
HMP Bedford, which is also a young offenders institution, was inspected on 9 November, and the findings by His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons are shocking—shocking, but not surprising. In 2018, I was granted an urgent question when Bedford Prison was last issued with an urgent notification. The same problems —inexperienced staff, extreme violence, overcrowding, drug use, mouldy and filthy conditions, self-harm, and rat and cockroach infestations—are cited in the last report and the recent report. It is as heartbreaking as it is deeply frustrating to see the degrading and totally unacceptable conditions in which prison officers, staff and residents are expected to live and work.
HMP Bedford continues to have the highest level of violent assaults against staff in adult male prisons in England and Wales. Self-harm and drug use is excessive. I am sorry to say that the amount of force used by staff was also found to be high. Inspectors saw examples of inappropriate and excessive force alongside unprofessional behaviour. Many prisoners are locked in their cells for up to 23 hours a day, and even the minority who are in education or training find that it is often cancelled because there are no staff to cover those services.
I have been told that prisoners sleep with covers over their mouth to stop cockroaches crawling in while they sleep. The inhumane segregation unit, once described as a rat-infested dungeon, was supposed to be shut down years ago, but endless delays to the new unit mean that it is still in use. Will the Minister explain what he believes prisons are for? Locking people away in those conditions does not keep society safe. Where is the rehabilitation in the system?
Who can leave those conditions a better person, or less likely to reoffend? Overcrowded, squalid and unsafe prisons will never help or allow people to turn their lives around and move on from a life of crime and hurting others. According to the report, staff and leaders are doing their best, and the POA has told me that staff at Bedford feel safer now than they did when the last urgent notification was issued. However, while many problems, such as problems with staff retention, inadequate prison capacity, too few and inexperienced staff and too much staff churn at leadership level, are symptomatic of a wider crisis, questions must be asked about why HMP Bedford has not learned the lessons of the past or been able to implement sustainable changes.
As His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons said in his report, many of the issues found at Bedford
“reflect wider problems across the estate.”
HMP Bedford is the fifth prison in a year to receive an urgent notification and the third reception prison. That is a damning indictment of not just the prison system, but the whole British justice system. Prisoners on remand are waiting far too long for trials because of the court backlog, which means that victims are waiting too long and are not getting justice.
In an ideal world, Bedford Prison would have been shut down years ago. It is a Victorian jail in the middle of an urban area and totally unfit for purpose. Residents living by the prison have had to tolerate unacceptable disturbances for years, with intruders breaking and entering gardens to traffic drugs over the walls and regular drone flights delivering contraband. The noise and disturbance from prisoners in solitary confinement cells mean that nearby residential windows are kept closed and some constituents have reported hearing sexual assaults and violence left unchecked. However, because the prison estate is full to the brim, it looks as though a more modern appropriate prison to detain offenders is not an option, even though it should be.
Despite all that, the Government have not improved the conditions, because they cannot or will not tackle the root causes of the persistent issues at HMP Bedford. Currently, 377 male prisoners are on roll, although the “in use certified normal accommodation” number is 229. More than 45%, or 170 men, are awaiting trial. Some reports say that that figure is higher, so I would be grateful if the Minister clarified the number of men currently waiting to be put before a judge or magistrate and how long the average wait is for a trial date.
It is totally unacceptable that prisoners languish on remand for months and even years in an overcrowded prison, all because this Government have decimated the criminal justice system. The Crown court backlog has hit a new record high of more than 65,000 cases and the magistrates court backlog is also rising. Does the Minister agree that his Government’s target of reducing the backlog to 53,000 by March 2025 is very unlikely to be met?
Serious questions are being asked about whether Bedford can remain as a remand prison. Will the Minister consider a complete re-role of the prison? Our prisons are so overcrowded that judges are being asked to delay sentencing convicted criminals. In HMP Bedford, 46 men have been convicted but are awaiting sentencing. How is that delivering justice for victims or perpetrators?
We will no doubt hear about more plans, promises and initiatives to turn the place around, but I have heard them all before. We have had the 10 prisons project and the prison performance support programme, just two years ago, where Bedford Prison was supposedly going to
“benefit from a new intensive support programme to help challenging jails to improve safety and rehabilitation.”
All have failed.
Will the Minister explain why, after years and years of action plans and interventions, the problems at the prison persist? What will his Government do differently this time to resolve the distinctive and systemic failures at HMP Bedford and across the wider prison estate? What will he do to support the governor to manage an overcrowded prison, to implement basic levels of cleanliness and to tackle a toxic culture, where prisoners are locked up for too long in squalor and do not seem to bother trying to keep their surroundings clean?
In 2017, when HMP Liverpool was described as having the “worst living conditions” ever seen by inspectors, the prison was successfully turned around through a significant population reduction. Huge investment and resources were channelled towards the prison. Bedford needs that level of sustainable investment now. In the context of the current capacity crisis, however, will the Minister confirm whether such a decanting measure is even possible? There is absolutely no excuse for any prison not to meet basic standards of decency.
The quality of leadership is vital. Governor Ali Barker has not yet been there a year, and I hope she gets all the resources she requires to achieve the higher standards needed at HMP Bedford. Meanwhile, nearly half of the prison officers working at the prison have less than two years’ experience. Being a prison officer is one of the most challenging of the uniformed professions. What plans do the Government have to support prison officers and tackle the huge lack of experience in the profession? Leadership and experience are key to improving the outcome at HMP Bedford, but leadership in Government also matters. Since the last urgent notification five years ago, there have been 10 changes in Prisons Minister. Amid such chaos and churn, there cannot be a serious plan for reforming the penal system and delivering justice for victims.
The decision to privatise the estates maintenance contracts has had a particularly detrimental impact on older establishments such as Bedford, where the maintenance needs are substantial. Those contracts were poorly funded and understaffed, and basic routine repair and maintenance work has suffered. What plans has the Minister to improve that and, at the very least, demand a better service from those contracts?
Full use of the recently announced measures, including the emergency release scheme and provision to delay the sentencing of individuals on bail, should be made in the Government’s response to the urgent notification. A presumption to suspend short sentences would also relieve pressures on reception prisons once the relevant legislation has been passed and enacted. Those measures are not about being tough on crime, but about implementing a justice system that works for victims—because today, the justice system is failing victims.
As Bedford Prison serves a number of courts, including in Bedford, Luton and London, there is a lot of intake churn. Because Beford hosts a prison, my constituents are too often the victims of reoffending criminals in the area, and many are understandably losing faith in the justice system’s ability to deliver justice to victims of crime, including violent crime.
The thorny question of what sentencing is for was tackled by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which codified for the first time the principles and purposes of sentencing: the punishment of offenders; the reduction of crime, including reduction by deterrence; the reform and rehabilitation of offenders; and the protection of the public. Apart from punishing prisoners—remember that many Bedford inmates have not yet been convicted of a crime—no other remedies in that list are being met.
A report by Victim Support cites a study conducted for the probation service that reveals that 94% of victims of crime said that the most important thing to them was that the offender did not commit the crime again. The same study found that 81% would prefer an offender to receive an effective sentence rather than a harsh one. The first recommendation of the report is:
“Effective rehabilitation has to be at the heart of the prison system.”
The second recommendation says:
“Though victims accept that any reforms have to be cost-effective, if individual sentencing decisions are seen to be motivated by concern for cost more than justice, they will not inspire the support of victims or the general public.”
Victim Support backs the reduction in short-term prison sentences, but wants evidence-based alternatives to stop reoffending put in place before they are abolished. It wants robustly enforced community sentencing to be applied as a meaningful and effective alternative to custodial sentences. It says that if alternatives such as drug or alcohol treatment programmes, or treatment for mental health problems, are ordered, they need to be adequately funded and proven to prevent reoffending.
The conditions at HMP Bedford, and indeed across the prison estate, are not conducive to the rehabilitation of prisoners—far from it. In fact, the recent urgent notification found that the preparation for release was “Not sufficiently good”. What will the Minister propose in his response to His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons that will finally turn Bedford Prison around, so that I am not standing here again next year asking the same questions? Will he find a solution that finally puts victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, a big part of which is to ensure that prisons rehabilitate offenders, rather than create reoffenders and more victims of crime?
Oral Answers to Questions
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of removing foreign offenders to serve sentences in their own countries, and we have removed 51,000 such offenders from our prisons since 2010. He is right to highlight that we have a number of nationalities within our prisons, including a high number of Albanian, Polish and Romanian prisoners. We are considering all these matters in some detail.[Official Report, 17 March 2020, Vol. 673, c. 7MC.]
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)
We have seen a slight decrease in assaults, and this year is the first time that we have seen assaults fall since 2013. However, we of course recognise that there is still more to do in this area.
Mohammad Yasin
When the Minister visits HMP Bedford tomorrow, can she look the governor in the eye and say that she is doing all she can to ensure the health, safety and welfare of his staff when the last Independent Monitoring Board report on Bedford prison revealed chronic levels of sickness, with nearly a quarter of officers off sick at times?
Lucy Frazer
I am looking forward to visiting the prison in the hon. Member’s constituency tomorrow and to speaking to the governor this afternoon. I recognise that the prison has some challenges, but I have heard that it is making real progress. I look forward to discussing the measures being taken in Bedford and talking about how we can support the prison to improve morale and the work of prison officers and to rehabilitate the prisoners.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
The Government remain committed to a role for the private sector in operating custodial services. The sector has an important role to play and currently runs some high-performing prisons as part of a decent and secure prison estate.
Mohammad Yasin
Publicly run HMP Bedford has been deprived of adequate funding, while public investment has been given to the notorious blacklisting construction firm Kier to build a new supersized prison nearby in Wellingborough, which will be handed straight to the private sector to run. Will the Minister explain why the public sector was banned from bidding for the new prison?
Prisons and Probation
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). In September, HMP Bedford became the fourth jail in a year to be issued an urgent notification. The prison has the highest rate of assaults in the country. Prison officers may not be allowed to strike under the law, but they are certainly protesting with their feet. So bad are the recruitment and retention problems in our prisons that, at HMP Bedford alone, some 77% of prison officers have less than one year of service. The cuts that led to the loss of about 10% of prison officers have resulted in an increase in violence of more than 250%. How can a Government who claim to be concerned about the level of violence in our prisons continue to fail to do their basic legal duty to protect staff and to ensure a safe working environment?
Prison officers do not go into work to be attacked and the courts do not send people to prison to be assaulted. The level of self-harm and drug addiction and suicide and reoffending rates among prisoners have reached record levels. The public expect prisoners to be rehabilitated and reformed so that, when they come out, they are not a danger to society. How can that happen when conditions are so poor?
The decline in HMP Bedford since 2010 is set out in the shocking inspection reports that led to the urgent notification last year. I am committed to building on the positive relationship that I have with the staff and management at the prison, who I know are working hard and doing their best in challenging circumstances.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
It might surprise the House to know that I have spent some time in HMP Bedford—I hasten to add, not at Her Majesty’s pleasure but as the director of a charity that worked with prisoners and their families. My hon. Friend talks about the dedication of the staff at the prison and one thing that struck me was the role of the prison chaplaincy there. Chaplains of all faiths and denominations do an incredible amount of work not just in the establishment in his constituency but across the country. I am sure he, and I hope the Minister, would like to acknowledge that and ensure that they get support to play the hugely positive role they can play in rehabilitating those serving sentences.
Mohammad Yasin
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Last year when I visited Bedford prison I noticed that and I am pleased with the service they have there.
The management at HMP Bedford are working really hard under challenging circumstances, but I remain concerned that the publicly run prison is deliberately being run into the ground and deprived of adequate funding. Meanwhile, money is being used to build the new super-size prison just down the road in Wellingborough, which will be handed straight to the private sector. Questions remain unanswered as to why the MOJ banned the public sector from bidding for that new prison, yet it is happy to hold a competition involving the failed prison privateer G4S and the recently collapsed private provider Interserve. Statistics show that private prisons are disproportionately more violent, dangerous and overcrowded than their public sector counterparts. If that is the Government’s response to the overcrowding and violence crisis in our prisons, it has already failed.
The Government’s refusal to publish the HMPPS estate and transformation team’s report into whether the public sector should be allowed to operate new build prisons has led to deep suspicion. If the Government admit that the public sector is the benchmark, why is it shut out of the bidding process? Marketisation has utterly failed in the prison and probation service and public safety has been compromised. It is time for the Government to listen to frontline workers who know exactly how to turn things around. The Government must end the two-tier workforce for pay, conditions and professional standards in the probation and prison service.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Edward Argar
The shadow Minister makes an important point, building on the point made earlier by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). I am concerned about the black, Asian and minority ethnic people in custody. As the Lord Chancellor has said, we take this matter very seriously. This runs through our response to the Lammy review and the race disproportionality work that we undertake in the Department. I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady on this topic, if she would like me to.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
We are making good progress with Wellingborough and Glen Parva Prisons, which will be modern and provide uncrowded capacity and will open in 2021 and 2022 respectively. This is against a background where the long-term population trend has put a stress on the prison estate. I am pleased that the prison population has decreased by around 2,000 in the past year. We will continue to look into how we can ensure further reductions, including looking at better community sentences. Our new prison estate will have up to 10,000 new uncrowded prison places, creating the physical conditions for governors to achieve better educational, training and rehabilitation outcomes.
Mohammad Yasin
Nearly two weeks ago, I raised concerns about broken screens at HMP Bedford that have resulted in my constituents having to put up with loud, intimidating and lewd behaviour from prisoners, and daily intrusions on to their properties by criminals smuggling contraband through their gardens and over the prison wall. The Minister committed to immediately raising the matter with the governor. Will he confirm what action has been taken?
Mr Gauke
The Prisons Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), has indeed visited Bedford Prison and is in contact with the governor. The prison is introducing new scanners to help to address some of these issues. We will look at anything that we can do to ensure that no burden is placed on the local community.
Joint HMI Prison and Probation Report
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
Yes. One reason that we have committed to building more than 200 additional places in approved premises is to provide what my hon. Friend requests.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
This morning I was contacted by residents near Bedford Prison, who say that the screens that prevent prisoners from seeing into neighbouring gardens have been smashed, and prisoners shout and intimidate them day and night. Will the Minister act immediately to protect my constituents from that continued disturbance and protect their right to privacy?
Rory Stewart
As the hon. Gentleman is aware, I visited Bedford Prison last week. I will immediately raise that with the governor and prison group director and attempt to address the problem.
Bedford Prison
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(6 years, 2 months 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.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the Government’s plans for HMP Bedford.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
May I begin by paying tribute to the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this urgent question? We spoke briefly on the telephone yesterday. I know that he is a champion of the interests of the people of Bedford and Bedford prison, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss this in more detail.
I begin by setting the broader context of what is happening at Bedford prison and will then talk more specifically about what we need to do to resolve the serious issues in Bedford prison.
A number of local prisons with significant challenges have come before the House in the past six months, of which Bedford is the latest. I want to clarify a number of things before I focus specifically on the issues at Bedford. The first is that some of these issues are fundamental to any prison. Prisons are challenging places to run at the best of times. By definition, the people inside a prison do not want to be there, and we are now facing a cohort of people in prison who have multiple needs. Nearly half the people in prison have a reading age of under 11, and nearly 30% have a reading age of under six. Very large numbers are coming to prison directly out of care at the moment, and only 18% of people coming into prison had a job beforehand.
There is also a rising tide of violence in prisons. I am pleased that Royal Assent has today been given to the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). The Bill clarifies that this is not just an issue in prisons. Assaults against police officers have risen to an all-time high, and assaults on ambulance workers have risen to a very disturbing level. It would have been almost inconceivable 30 years ago for someone to get into an ambulance and assault the paramedic who was trying to treat them. It was almost unheard of 30 years ago for prisoners to assault prison officers, yet last year there were more than 9,000 such assaults.
With your permission, Mr Speaker, in relation to Bedford prison, I will return to the question of how we address violence in prisons and how the new legislation brought in by the hon. Member for Rhondda, which we on this side of the House are proud to support, will help to address some of the issues.
The second thing I want to put on record is that although there are many challenges in prisons, there have been improvements. It is worth remembering in this difficult atmosphere that some things are getting better. The situation relating to escapes and security is much better than at any time in the past. Similarly, while any suicide is a tragedy, because of our understanding of the drivers of suicide and the evidence that we gather, the measures that we are taking are beginning to work. The suicide rate is now considerably lower than it was a year ago, two years ago or indeed in the historical past, because we are beginning to address that issue. We also have a much better idea about how to deal with some of the underlying issues around reoffending. Our first night reception centres are much stronger, as are the family links that we are able to promote. More prisoners are now actively in work or education than before, and the education strategy ensures that the education they receive is much more relevant to the workplace.
Nevertheless, as the hon. Member for Bedford and the chief inspector have pointed out, there are three very significant challenges in Bedford. The first is a big problem around decency and conditions in Bedford. The second is a problem around drugs in Bedford. The third is a problem around violence, particularly assaults against prison officers in Bedford. How do we deal with this? Bearing in mind that there are underlying problems in all local prisons and that the problems we are talking about—decency, drugs and violence—are familiar from inspections in other places, what is it that gives me some hope that we can turn this around? Do we have a plan to turn this around?
The answer is that there are prisons out there in the country—local prisons with similar problems to Bedford—that are already showing that we can tackle these issues. Hull is a good example, as is Preston. There has also been a significant improvement in tackling exactly these kinds of issues in Leeds over the past three months. In Bedford, we put the prison into special measures some months ago, and we are now beginning to see some key improvements. We are seeing improvements in the physical infrastructure, more investment is going into windows, the mental health provision is better than it was, areas such as the showers and the segregation unit are better than they were, and we are now bringing in a more experienced management team.
However, that still leaves those three fundamental problems to be dealt with. How do we deal with them? Addressing the issue of drugs is first a question of technology. We have done a lot to understand the criminal networks through gathering intelligence on how the drugs are getting in, but there is much more we can do to get the right scanners in place to investigate the drugs being carried in in people’s bodies, and to spend money on the scanners to investigate drugs being put in the post that is getting into the prison.
Decency is fundamentally a question of spending money, which is why we are putting an extra £40 million into addressing basic issues, such as windows. That is not just about producing decent living conditions for prisoners—
Rory Stewart
My apologies for taking up so much of the House’s time on this issue. To return in my final minute to the serious issues that we are dealing with today, this is about decency, drugs and violence. Dealing with violence fundamentally has to be about having the right training and support for the prison officers on the landing. They need the right legitimate authority to challenge acts of violence. They need training and equipment—body-worn cameras and CCTV—to do that. They need the law that has been introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda. Above all, however, prison officers need management support, standing with them day in, day out, to challenge the acts of violence, to take the action to punish them and to do so in a calm, legitimate fashion. Only by restoring order and control will we be able to address the many other issues, including education, rehabilitation, decency and drugs, that we need to deal with to protect the public.
Mohammad Yasin
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I thank the Minister for his phone call yesterday and his answer today. I have been raising concerns with his Government about levels of violence in HMP Bedford since my election. In May, it was placed in special measures, and officers fear serious assault every day. The situation is getting worse, not better. Will the Minister explain what the Government are doing differently this time to resolve the systemic failures at the prison?
Bedford prison is designed to hold 300 men, but at the last count it was holding more than 420. How can any prison operate safely with such overcrowding? Will the Government take urgent steps to reduce pressure on the system? The prison building itself is not fit for purpose, and I have been to see it for myself. The cells are cramped, I could smell drugs, and the building is very old. How can we expect to rehabilitate serial offenders if we cannot provide them with even basic facilities and dignity? The consequences of not getting things right are far reaching for society.
The people who live around Bedford prison are affected, and our emergency services are frequently tied up on long call-outs. Reoffending levels are high. Prison officers fear for their lives at work and are leaving the profession in droves. The Minister told us that he is putting in new managers, but how will that solve the recruitment and retention crisis among frontline prison officers? Will the Minister commit to an action plan that will make Bedford prison safe, bring in experienced officers, vastly improve facilities and properly invest our penal system before we have another riot on our hands?
Rory Stewart
Bearing in mind your warning, Mr Speaker, I will try to deal with those four quite different questions briefly, but they are serious questions that are worth spending a little time on. The question about numbers is a good one. During the previous Labour Government, the number of people in prison rose from about 40,000 to nearly 80,000—the prison population nearly doubled—so we inherited a prison estate with an enormous number of prisoners. That involves a serious conversation right across the House about the number of people we wish to put in prison, and that goes beyond this question about Bedford. However, we will undertake to look carefully at the population of Bedford prison and at the ratio between prison officers and prisoners, and we will come back within 28 days to the chief inspector of prisons with an answer laying out a plan.
The second question is on the building at Bedford, which of course dates from the early 1800s, as the hon. Gentleman said. Although we have a new wing in place, a lot of the physical infrastructure is very difficult, which is unfortunately true not only of Bedford. A third of the current prison estate was built before 1900—these are Victorian prisons—which is why we will be spending the money to create 10,000 new prison places with modern accommodation. There is a very clear relationship between old buildings and this type of problem, and only new investment and new builds will solve it.
On recruitment and retention, Bedford has, as the hon. Gentleman knows, quite a challenging job market. Wages have been rising, employment figures are quite high and Bedford is relatively close to the commuter belt, which means we have had some struggle recruiting and retaining.
We now have 3,500 more prison officers in place than we had in 2015. We need to invest more in training them, and we need to invest more in making sure they stay.
The hon. Gentleman’s final point returns to the question of violence. We do not want to fool the House. Turning around violence in prisons like Bedford will be a long, hard road, and that violence has deep roots. Part of this is about historical staffing numbers, and a lot of it is about new attitudes in society—the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill, tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda, addresses the assaults—and a lot of it is about new types of drugs.
There is no magic wand, but investing in making sure that we reduce the number of drugs coming in, making sure we have decent living conditions and, above all, building up experienced staff with the right management to challenge that violence on the landings day in and day out, hour in and hour out, is the only way that we will make these prisons safer.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
The urgent notification process was triggered at the beginning of this year, and the report has just been published. I do not have the exact figures for the number of assaults on staff over the past four months, but I am very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with those figures.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Government have had years to address the safety problems at Bedford Prison following the riot in 2016, but the prison is already back in special measures. When will the Government get a grip on the prison and publish an action plan, so that staff do not have to go to work in fear of their lives?
Rory Stewart
This question and the questions about Nottingham and Exeter reveal a fundamental challenge across the system in terms of assaults on prison officers. The solution has to be to have the right numbers of officers to restore the predictability of the regime, so that prisoners calm down; to have body-worn cameras and CCTV in place; and to make sure that in Bedford and all the other challenged, violent local prisons we bring these measures into place.
Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill
Mohammad Yasin ExcerptsFriday 27th April 2018
(6 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 View all Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 27 April 2018 - (27 Apr 2018)
Alex Chalk
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. It would be a very dark day indeed if Members of Parliament in this place were effectively directing independent prosecutors how to exercise their discretion—I know she is not suggesting that for a second—so we have to tread extremely carefully. Ultimately, when a prosecutor decides which charge to choose, they will have to weigh two things: first, sufficiency of evidence—is there sufficient evidence to make it more likely than not that a jury properly directed would convict?—and secondly, is it in the public interest? They have to weigh certain factors in considering the public interest, ranging from the likely sentence at the end of a conviction to protection of the public, and all sorts of things. What we say in this Chamber, however, is capable of forming part of that public interest. If we send the message out that we expect condign punishment, to use a faintly pretentious expression, to be visited on those who assault our emergency workers, that factor can properly be weighed into the mix when prosecutors decide—in the circumstances of the emergency worker who attends the nightclub or the police officer who has their finger bitten off—what offence to choose. The message will ring out from this Chamber that we expect our protectors to be protected.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
It is a great honour to speak in this important debate and it has been nice to hear legal experts making some very important points.
In March, I received a letter from the Bedfordshire police and crime commissioner explaining why the Bill is so important to protect our emergency workers. In Bedfordshire, a police officer who has been assaulted is contacted by a member of the senior team within 72 hours of the assault. Sadly, such calls are a weekly event. Some 24,000 police officers were assaulted in 2016-17, as were more than 70,000 NHS workers and staff in England alone. Assaults on emergency workers should not be viewed as an occupational hazard. While some judges will add an additional penalty if an assault on an officer is proven in court, that is not automatic. CPS judges have historically viewed an assault in the course of arrest as to some extent just part of the job. We must not tolerate that any longer.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech and important points. He is right that some people seem to accept the situation, so as well as this being a matter for legislation, do we not also need to change the whole culture?
Mohammad Yasin
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need to change the culture in this country because it is currently not acceptable.
We must put legislation in place to guarantee that a tough line will be taken on anyone who assaults an emergency worker. This must extend to spitting—a disgusting and aggressive attack—and sexual assault. The regional Crown prosecutor for Bedfordshire advises officers and staff to give the same amount of attention to their own witness statements as to those of other victims, and to provide personal impact statements to the court. The chief constable of Bedfordshire police has agreed to supply a supplementary personal statement in the event of any serious assault, detailing its impact on the force and colleagues, to add weight to the argument for the maximum penalty. However, such good practice is weakened if there is not legislation to back it up. That is why this Bill is so important and why I support it.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this very important debate and to follow so many knowledgeable and impassioned speeches. I join every other Member in paying tribute to the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who have campaigned for so long to bring forward this Bill, which I entirely support.
I will in due course speak to some of the amendments and new clauses, but I wonder whether I might be permitted to say a few words about my general support for the Bill, simply because I have not yet had the opportunity to address this matter. I simply would like to say—