Transforming Rehabilitation

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I do not expect this to lead to wholesale redundancies in the probation service. It certainly means a new world for many people in the probation service in being part of the new organisations, new social enterprises and new consortia that will deliver the services. Yes, of course there will be some changes, but this does not involve, suddenly and instantly, mass redundancies in the probation service—that would not be right.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Of the 50,000 prisoners on short-term sentences who are released each year, a growing proportion are EU and other foreign nationals. These people do not deserve rehabilitation; they deserve deportation. Will my right hon. Friend dig deep within the security provisions of the EU free movement directive to ensure that if any EU national commits an imprisonable offence in this country, of whatever sentence length, they are deported on release and barred from returning to this country?

[Chris Grayling]

I agree with every single word that my hon. Friend said. We have far too many foreign national prisoners in our jails. The challenge of returning them, of course, is that there has to be somebody willing to take them at the other end—I am not willing simply to release criminals on to the streets. I absolutely agree that we need to be able to return prisoners as quickly as possible. I intend to do everything I can to use the prisoner transfer agreement, which more and more countries are now ratifying, as much as possible to return offenders to other countries, and to do everything I can, with my hon. Friends in the Home Office, to make sure that they do not come back.