Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Khalid Mahmood

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am pleased to hear that, and I hope we will never again be in a situation where someone who led a review is not aware of what is going on years later. That simply cannot and should not happen, as I am sure the Justice Secretary would agree.

There are concerns about the Ministry of Justice listening, and the extent to which justice has been a priority for the Government over the past decade. The coalition Government chose not to make the Ministry of Justice a protected Department when they implemented spending cuts That led to 40% cuts over the past decade, including to the prisons that today we expect to play a vital role in offender management. We know that 21,000 police officers disappeared from our streets, and prison officer numbers have been slashed. There are currently 18,912 front-line prison officers, which is not yet back to 2010 levels. That loss of prison officers has not just reduced the capacity of prisons to deal with rehabilitation; it also means that years of experience of working in challenging environments in our prisons have been lost.

In 2019, 35% of prison officers had been in post for less than two years, compared with just 7% in 2010. I do not mean that those officers are not doing their best in difficult circumstances, but the Government needlessly threw away valuable experience in our prisons.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that lack of prison officers, the privatisation of some of our prisons, and having those young officers, has led to problems in Her Majesty’s Prison Birmingham, which has seen a number of riots over the past couple of years? It adds more to the Treasury’s costs if we have to take away people with experience and later bring them back.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority about HMP Birmingham, and he is right to identify that if prisons are run in such a way there will be consequences because the time available for meaningful activity is reduced.

The Justice Secretary talked in the media at the weekend about improvements in our justice system since Mr Acheson’s report. He repeated that in his speech and he has repeated it in an intervention a moment or two ago. I therefore thought I would compare what the Justice Secretary is saying with the views of the independent chief inspector of prisons. The latest annual report from Peter Clarke states that

“far too many of our jails have been plagued by drugs, violence, appalling living conditions and a lack of access to meaningful rehabilitative activity.”

That should be a wake-up call to the Government. Mr Clarke went on to say that

“levels of self-harm were disturbingly high and self-inflicted deaths tragically increased by nearly one-fifth on the previous year.”

That is no way for the Prison Service to be run and things must change.

There is also, if I may say so, an issue at the Ministry of Justice with the Government failing to provide it with stable leadership. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is the seventh Justice Secretary since 2010. Of those seven, five have served for 18 months or less. The role of Lord Chancellor should have been respected and not been subject to a revolving door. No wonder there is such a lack of direction and no wonder there is no long-term planning. Justice Secretaries are simply not in post long enough. There are even indications from 10 Downing Street that half the Cabinet could be out by Friday.

I say in all sincerity to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I very much hope he survives in this role—I hope I have not jinxed him by saying that; I could have just ruined his Friday—because there is an enormous job to do. There are 224 terrorist prisoners in England and Wales, of whom 173 have been assessed as having extreme Islamist views. We also know that there is a growing threat from far-right terrorism. If we want properly to manage the risk of terrorist offenders, we need the most effective targeted de-radicalisation programmes to be delivered by staff working in the best conditions we can provide for them.