Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

That is not part of the Bill as it stands. No doubt, from what the hon. Gentleman says, this is a matter that will be discussed.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

13. What measures are in place to encourage the teaching of literacy in prisons.

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

The basic skills of English and mathematics underpin almost all other learning. Assessing prisoners’ learning needs, and then meeting them, is at the heart of the reforms set out in “Making Prisons Work: Skills for Rehabilitation”, the new offender learning strategy published jointly last year with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

[Neil Carmichael]

Given that a large number of prisoners do not accept the formal education system within the prison, what measures can the Minister use to encourage the Shannon trust’s “toe-by-toe” mentoring scheme?

[Mr Blunt]

I recently met David Ahern, the chief executive of the Shannon Trust, and I assured him that we will continue to support his excellent scheme. I would be surprised if the new arrangements we have put in place for getting the commissioning of offender learning much closer to prisons and the institutions themselves did not see a much greater take-up of schemes such as toe-by-toe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

The right hon. Gentleman is on to the very important issue of the continuity of care that is required, particularly for drug and alcohol addicted offenders, from custody into the community. I am delighted to say that the Department of Health’s drug treatment pilots look likely to be a vehicle by which we will be able to identify to areas when prisoners are being discharged to their area, so that they will know when a drug-addicted offender is being discharged to them. We will see how those pilots go, but I think we will have a much more effective system of ensuring that we deal with the gap in provision between when people are in custody and when they are in the community.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

T4. rose—

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

It’s contagious.

[Neil Carmichael]

I have just got a new BlackBerry and I was so impressed with it.

What is the Minister’s overall assessment of the recent Brighton declaration in terms of the European Court of Human Rights?

[Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is fair to say that the Brighton declaration was an excellent achievement for Britain. In his speech to Strasbourg on 25 January the Prime Minister outlined three achievements that he hoped for, the first of which was that there should be subsidiarity, with more decision making at the national level in the courts. That has been achieved. The second was that there should be more efficiency in the whole court structure, and that has been achieved. Thirdly, he hoped we would have a greater and better quality of judges in the Court, and that too has been achieved. We are going to have fewer cases going to Strasbourg and those that go will be dealt with efficiently. We dealt with 46 other countries, representing a total population of 800 million citizens, and I think it is a wonderful achievement on the part of Britain’s chairmanship to have got agreement between so many countries.