Prison Capacity Strategy

Neil Shastri-Hurst Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

My hon. Friend will know that we are straining every sinew to ensure we get this right. This is a whole-system approach. Justice is a system, and we need every part of it to be working for it to work correctly. My colleague the Prisons Minister in the other place is due to visit Texas to learn from the interesting model there, where offenders earn time off their custodial sentence for good behaviour. Texas has cut crime by a third. We are also looking at new advances in technology to see how they could help. For example, in Singapore artificial intelligence, combined with surveillance cameras, monitors offenders and spots moments that could escalate into violence. That is also being done in the Netherlands. A lot of options are available to us.

The other thing we are doing in the immediate term is increasing the sentencing powers of magistrates courts from six to 12 months’ maximum imprisonment for a single triable either way offence. That will also help us to bear down on the large remand population by ensuring that those on remand are sentenced far more quickly.

[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

This strategy does little more than commit to deliver the 14,000 places that the previous Government committed to delivering, except that it will cost more and take longer. To what extent have the Government factored in optimism bias when working out the delivery timeframe?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Honestly, the display from the Conservative party is staggering given the inheritance we were left with, and there is still no humility whatsoever. We have published a realistic strategy for how we plan to deliver this, with contingency timelines built in, offering real solutions. As I said, this is less of the rhetoric than we got from the Conservative party, and more actual action on delivering these places. You failed to build—[Interruption.] The Conservative party failed to build these places, but we are going to deliver them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Shastri-Hurst Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

Since the beginning of this year, 17 inmates have died at HMP Parc. It has been under the control of G4S since opening in 1997. What consideration has the Lord Chancellor made of returning the prison to the Ministry of Justice?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

As I said in answer to an earlier question from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), HMP Parc is receiving a lot of attention at the moment. The Minister for prisons in the other place, Lord Timpson, will be answering questions tomorrow in thorough detail and the hon. Member might wish to attend that meeting.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Neil Shastri-Hurst Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate, and the way in which the House has conducted itself on both sides of the argument is a credit to this place.

I stand here not only as a medical practitioner who worked as a surgeon for about a decade, but also as a healthcare barrister, so I have looked at the debate from both sides of the argument. I have been deeply moved by some of the stories I have heard about patients who are facing a terminal illness. I am also instructed by my own experiences—my personal experiences of my relatives, and of those patients whom I failed. I failed because I did not give them the good death that they deserved, despite the very best efforts of palliative care.

It is true that we can improve the palliative care offering in this country, but it is not a binary choice. It is not a choice of palliative care or assisted dying; it is a choice about someone having an option over how they want autonomy over their body at the end of their life. I understand the concerns raised in this House—I genuinely do—but this is not the point to cancel the debate. This is the point to engage in the debate. This is the point at which we move it forward, so that people can contribute to it in Committee and say how things can be improved, and so that we can work together to make a societal change, improve our society and support those who want that ultimate choice in those last days.