Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of the voluntary sector in helping us reduce reoffending. The great advantage of payment by results, which we will pilot for community orders and post-release supervision of offenders, is that the providers make the evaluation and take the risk, and we will pay for what works. That is different from the situation until now, whereby Ministers backed projects without necessarily knowing whether they worked in reducing reoffending.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I urge the Minister to take an urgent look at the ongoing evaluation of the Choose Change project at Manchester prison and the intensive alternative to custody pilot, which Manchester probation service is running as part of a national scheme. I visited both yesterday and they seemed very effective and in line with the Minister’s objectives, yet they face financial uncertainty. Will he see what he can do?

[Nick Herbert]

I would be happy to look at those projects. Our aim, assuming that the pilots are successful, is for all such schemes to be paid for by results. If they work, they will receive the funding. In spite of the prison population’s reaching record levels and despite funding, reoffending rates have risen. We therefore need to institute a new system, whereby we pay for what works.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Earlier, in Health questions, the Health Secretary confirmed that he has been working with the Justice Secretary on plans to divert mentally ill offenders from prison—something that I broadly welcome. When I pressed him on how much additional funding was being made available for this, he was unable to tell me, but referred me to this statement, so can the Justice Secretary tell me how much additional money will be made available?

[Mr Clarke]

This is about both our budgets, so I had better not pre-empt my discussions with my right hon. Friend. I hope that he gave a helpful response to the question, because the two of us, together with our Departments and our officials, are working very seriously on trying to improve the situation for mentally ill people who ought not to be in prison or ought to be better treated in prison. It is not an easy subject. The reason we have so many people in prison who obviously ought not to be there because they are suffering from mental illness is that it is difficult to devise services that will not only help them but improve their behaviour and make them less of a risk to the community at large. At this stage, we are consulting on it. However, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that there is a genuine commitment on the part of my right hon. Friend and me to ensure that the Department of Health, the NHS, the National Offender Management Service and the Prison Service work together properly so that people are dealt with in a more suitable and civilised fashion. The main benefit one can give to the public regarding those whose main problem is mental illness is to help them to cope with the behavioural problems that are causing the crime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I suggest to my hon. Friend that he can look forward to the Green Paper with great interest.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

According to the latest figures, more than half the prisons in England and Wales are officially overcrowded. If the Minister is ultimately successful in reducing the number of prisoners, what will his priority be—to close prisons or to reduce overcrowding?

[Mr Blunt]

It is a bit rich for the right hon. Gentleman to ask that question. As a former Prisons Minister, he bears part of the responsibility for the level of overcrowding that we have inherited.

Sadly, the answer is that we are not in a position to create enough prison places to be able to address the problem of overcrowding. That will probably have to wait for more economically propitious times. It will take us a while to get the economy into the shape that will enable us to deal with the prison overcrowding that we have inherited.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am not sure that that is my responsibility at present; I will consult my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. I can only say that the last time I can remember a Government attempting to do that, the idea was not met with a great deal of favour by the BBC—but I shall find out exactly where we are now.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Like many others, I would like to see less use of short-term prison sentences, but will the Justice Secretary expand on his curious remark a little earlier that there is little evidence that prison does any good to anyone?

[Mr Clarke]

If I said that, it was one of those slips of the tongue that I very rarely make. Prison is the best and only punishment for serious criminal offenders; it is the one that we all want to use. It has a strong punitive element if the just and correct sentence is given, and the public are, of course, spared from the crimes of the individual for so long as he is in prison—but we should also strive to do much better than we have ever done before in reducing the likelihood of the person reoffending and committing new crimes as soon as he is released. I am, however, delighted to hear that the right hon. Gentleman agrees with me that short-term sentences are used too much. He should have a word with his party’s newly appointed Front-Bench spokesman, before that Front-Bench spokesman slips into the folly of the last 10 years.