Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor for bringing forward a balanced and pragmatic Bill that identifies problems that have built up over a longer period, but I, like many colleagues, have several concerns about the sentencing and legal aid proposals. Speeches have been cut to six minutes, but my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell) highlighted subtly and beautifully all the points that I wanted to make about clinical negligence, so there is no point in me making any of them again.

I should like to discuss the sentencing proposals, however. Before I became a Member in 2005, I spent three years working for the current Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), who during that time was shadow Home Secretary. For a year, I went in and out of prisons and, for most of that time, in and out of young offenders institutions throughout the country.

One observation that I made during that year was that the young offenders all came from chaotic backgrounds. They had learning disabilities, many had mental health issues, very few had had a father at home and many had drug problems. They could not read or write, they lacked confidence and they had had very little education, mainly because no one had been there to take them to school from an early age. They had never got into the routine of attending school, and their lives before they entered the young offenders institution were abysmal.

The YOIs gave them three meals a day, however; they got into a routine whereby they went to bed at night and got up in the mornings; they were introduced to drug rehabilitation programmes; they had a chance to learn such skills as bricklaying; some of them painted for the first time in their lives and learned how to be decorators; and at Thorneywood YOI in Warrington they worked in the kitchens for a while with the caterers. It was good to see the work that was being done with some of the people in those institutions.

I believe that prison works. It works because it takes the young offenders away from their chaotic lifestyles and puts them where work can be done. The Lord Chancellor mentioned “radical reform”, but I would like to see radical reform that introduces really serious drug rehabilitation programmes. I would like sentences to be served in full so that work can be done with these people when they come into the prison or YOI.

One of the main problems with reoffending was that once people left the YOI, there was no housing for them. The probation officers used to tell me, “We have nowhere for them to live.” So they would go back to the squats and the friends they had been with before, and therefore straight back into the lifestyle that put them into the YOI. They became recidivists and ended up back in prison. That is where the social impact bond scheme in Peterborough is doing so well and where its real strength could lie. Let prison work and ensure that people serve their sentences in full. Do not put 2,650 people back into the chaotic environments they came from. Ensure that we have true prison reform so that they go somewhere they can receive true education and be taught skills, come off drugs and build up their confidence. Put them into the institutions because prison can work.

Will the Minister confirm when he winds up whether it is the case that private prisons in the UK operate at a cost that is 40% less than state prisons? If so, why are we looking at putting 2,650 prisoners back on the streets to save costs? Why do we not take on the Prison Officers Association and address the reason why it costs 40% more to run state prisons than it does private prisons? Why not look at marketeering in prison reform as well as in education and health?

My main point is that people should not be put back out on the streets: we should make prison work. We have institutions that can offer everything that people need—education, skills training—to ensure that they do not offend when they get out.