Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I reiterate to the right hon. Gentleman the Government’s appreciation for the work that he put into the review. We shall be responding in detail to his recommendations, including the one that he mentioned.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

But is it not the case that according to the Ministry of Justice’s own figures, there is a direct correlation between the length of a prison sentence and the likelihood of an offender reoffending? In other words, the longer that somebody spends in prison, the less likely it is that they are going to reoffend.

[Mr Lidington]

It is true that short-term sentences appear to have the least effect in reduced reoffending, but the comparison with them is with alternative community sentences, which are available for that similar type of crime. Those community sentences work best when they link up with services such as drug and alcohol treatment programmes sometimes provided by other authorities in the community.

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[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman is incredibly persistent and tenacious in fighting for his constituents. Before moving ahead with any building project, we will of course carry out all the necessary legal and local authority searches. If they turn up any objections, we will take those into account accordingly.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

With a population of more than 80,000, our prisons are bursting at the seams, yet according to the Ministry of Justice’s own figures, we transferred a pathetic 110 foreign national prisoners to prison in their own country last year, and this year’s number is 56. Surely we can do better than that.

[Mr Gyimah]

I think my hon. Friend is referring to the numbers transferred under prisoner transfer agreements. Last year, the overall number of prisoners deported from this country was a record high. We continue to work consistently with foreign Governments, and there is an inter-ministerial group that links not only the Department for International Development, the Foreign Office and the MOJ, but the Home Office, to make sure that we iron out all the issues that can be impediments to transferring prisoners to serve their sentence abroad. I assure him that this is a key focus that we will continue to pursue.

Local Authority Funeral Charges

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Lee]

I will of course consider taking that on. As I said, the bereaved may need to draw on a range of support.

A question was raised about burial fees increasing because of austerity. We do not shy away from telling people that further difficult decisions are required to eliminate the Government’s deficit, but it has already been demonstrated that we made difficult decisions with local government finance and the public have broadly been supportive.

A number of issues were raised. A question was asked about the increase in public health funerals, which are the responsibility of local authorities. Funeral costs beyond burial and cremation fees are a commercial matter. I am grateful to those providers that already reduce or waive fees, particularly in relation to children. Transfer fees are at the discretion of local authorities. A child funeral fund was suggested, and that is a matter directly for the Treasury. I ask the hon. Lady to write to officials with details of the constituency case she raised. We will fully consider it.

I thank those Members who have contributed by way of intervention: the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden. This debate has been a valuable opportunity to discuss matters that, if not considered openly, can only add to distress at the most difficult times in our lives. In participating in today’s debate, I believe we have gone some way towards positively addressing this issue.

Question put and agreed to.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Will those not staying for the next debate please be kind enough to leave quickly and quietly? We now come to an important debate on English language teaching for refugees.

Prisons Policy/HMP Long Lartin

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

We have some excellent trainees coming into the Prison Service. For example, one trainee I met had spent seven years in the NHS and was being deployed in HMP Woodhill, a prison where there have been high rates of self-harm and also self-inflicted deaths. That person is more experienced in dealing with the problems that prison is facing today than many who have been in the Prison Service for a long time. These are not raw recruits; in some cases, they are bringing new experience to the Prison Service. In the second world war, someone could be a bomber pilot at the age of 20, so I think someone can serve in the Prison Service at the age of 21 as well.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

If we want to significantly reduce the number of foreign nationals in our prisons, we need compulsory prisoner transfer agreements in place with countries around the world, so that these people are sent back to serve their sentence in prison in their own country—rather than being sent back when they have served the sentence already in this country.

I understand that about half the foreign nationals in our prisons are EU nationals. While we are a member of the EU, we are meant to be under the prisoner transfer directive. How many EU national prisoners have been sent back to the EU countries they came from?

[Mr Gyimah]

I do not have that exact figure to hand but am willing to write to my hon. Friend with the answer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

There will certainly be an opportunity, as the hon. Lady wishes, for representations to be made and consideration to be given to that sort of change. While the most recent legislation did indeed exclude non-asylum immigration matters, much family law, including cases involving vulnerable children who might be taken into local authority care, is still eligible for legal aid.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

While it is undoubtedly true that fewer people have access to legal aid than was the case before the reforms, it is also true that lots of people who are entitled to legal aid are not getting it. What can the Justice Secretary do to make sure that those people receive the finance that they need to get the access to justice that they require?

[Mr Lidington]

If people believe that they are entitled to legal aid, I would strongly encourage them to apply to the relevant authorities and to one of the legal aid providers that are contracted to provide that kind of advice. Even after the exclusion of certain categories in the most recent legislative reform, last year’s legal aid expenditure still amounted to £1.6 billion, which is nearly a quarter of my Department’s entire expenditure.

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[Mr Gyimah]

It has nothing to do with “cheery press releases”. There are 868 people on the payroll, who have started work in our prisons and are doing a heroic and brave job. We promised to invest £100 million to recruit 2,500 new officers by the end of 2013, and we are on track to deliver that target. Of course there are wider issues in our prison system, such as the retention of officers, but we are working on those. We are also going beyond that, recruiting smart graduates to work on the frontline, and we have exceeded our targets for the Unlocked programme.

Those are not boasts. It was the Opposition who talked prison officers down and said that no one would want to work in our prisons. It is good to see people stepping up to do what is a brave and challenging job.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Lidington)]

My priorities as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State are to uphold and defend the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, and to ensure that our prisons are safe and secure places that also work effectively, and with the probation service, to rehabilitate offenders. That means strengthening the frontline in the way described by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), but it also means that we need to respond better to reports from prison inspectors. I am therefore setting up a new unit, ultimately accountable to Ministers, to ensure that we respond to, and follow up, inspectors’ reports swiftly and effectively.

[Mr Hollobone]

How many foreign-national offenders are there in our prisons, and why is not more being done to send them to secure detention in their own countries?

[Mr Lidington]

As of 30 June this year, there were 6,792 convicted foreign-national offenders serving sentences in our prisons. In 2016-17, we removed 6,177 such offenders from the United Kingdom—that is including prisoner transfers—and that is the highest number since records began.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Spice is a blight on our communities as well as in our prisons, where it fuels the disorder and violence that we see there. We take this extremely seriously and I am working with my colleagues in the Home Office to deal with the issue not only in the custodial system but in the community.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Banning psychoactive substances is one thing, but physically keeping them out of our prisons is quite another. Will the Minister tell the House what active measures he is taking to prevent these substances from getting inside our jails?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is right. We are determined to keep these drugs out of our jails, and that is why we have trained 300 dogs to detect them. We have also introduced a new drug test for psychoactive substances, and the UK is the first jurisdiction in the world to do that. The testing has been rolled out, although we cannot comment on its impact because it started only last year. However, we know from the evidence that drug testing has a deterrent effect on use and possession.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that this issue is concerning and I am very happy to look at it.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

How many foreign nationals do we have in our prisons, and what steps are being taken to send them back to prison in their own country, at the expense of their own Governments?

[Mr Gyimah]

We are taking active steps to ensure that every foreign national who should be deported from our prisons is deported. Since 2010, 33,000 foreign nationals have been deported from our prisons. In 2016-17, a record 5,810 were deported, and I am sure that that progress will continue.

Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors: Property Act Receiverships

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. The debate runs until 7.30 pm. Jo Stevens has three minutes to sum up at the end, which means I have to call the Front-Bench spokespeople no later than seven minutes past 7 pm. The Opposition spokesperson and the Minister each have 10 minutes. Three hon. Members are standing from the array of Labour parliamentary talent I see before me. I am going to have a five-minute time limit on speeches so that everybody has equal share, and we will start with Mr Adrian Bailey.

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[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will address that point now—I was going to make it later. Our economy continues to struggle. We see sluggish productivity and low growth, particularly with smaller businesses, and one of the reasons is the lack of access to finance for those small firms, which undoubtedly causes them problems. I am in no doubt that the reputational damage done by these scandals and the lack of trust among smaller firms in the banks are factors that contribute massively to the problem.

We have seen businesses distressed and put out, people’s livelihoods destroyed and people’s lives damaged as a result of the behaviour of some of the banks, and of the people working in them and the people working for them as supposedly outside professional consultants. In the debate last December about alternative dispute resolution we heard about the activities of lawyers who are seconded into some of the banks and about the way they carried out similar activities. The convictions for fraud involved management consultants, and today we are talking about surveyors. There are conflicts of interests, whereby professionals are seconded into banks and then take decisions in the interests of those banks—why would they not do so, when their future lucrative work depends on those relationships?—and referring their own firms for the ongoing work, no doubt for fear of losing such work in the future.

With the LPA, the contracts have now been written in such a way that they favour the lender over the borrower. The borrower cannot then challenge the valuation of surveyors, because the valuer’s duty is to the client, not to the borrower. The original intention of LPA receiverships, which was to create a balance between borrower and lender, has been completely overwritten by the way that the banks prepare their standard terms and conditions in their contracts. Of course, most smaller businesses cannot afford the cost of legal action to challenge what is happening, especially when they are up against the financial clout of the financial institutions causing these problems.

So what is to be done? How can such scandals be avoided in the future? What are the remedies for what has happened before? There needs to be a sea change to ensure that the chances of repetition are reduced. There needs to be compensation, not just a scheme that is administered very slowly and internally without proper independent scrutiny and operation. I am talking about RBS, but in fact it is ahead of the other banks, given that it has any scheme at all. Perhaps the Minister can look at how we can ensure proper scrutiny, independent regulation and a proper complaints process within RICS and other professional bodies, so that RICS members do not get scrutinised by other RICS members. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) explained the situation extremely well: there is a judge, jury and executioner system within RICS and elsewhere. That has to change if there is to be proper scrutiny to prevent such injustices and an opportunity for remedy when they happen.

We have to prevent such things from happening again, and there has to be compensation. Whatever Government are elected on 8 June have got to take these things seriously. It is long beyond time for that. Justice delayed is justice denied. It is 10 years on, and many former small business owners have lost everything and are completely unable to get compensation for what has happened to them.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) talked about the Serious Fraud Office’s potential interest, and he is absolutely right. I would like to hear what the Minister says about the potential for an SFO investigation into each and every one of these scandals. What prospects are there in the future for further fraud investigation?

We have got to prevent such things from happening again, and we have got to have proper regulation. The FCA’s remit does not include the regulation of business lending; it is there to regulate consumers. It does have a role in regulating sole traders and smaller partnerships. Is it time that small and medium-sized enterprises are given the same protection as consumers?

There is also the issue of the LPA receivership system. The Labour Government introduced the Enterprise Act 2002, which reformed aspects of insolvency law, but LPA receiverships were not included at that stage. Given what we have heard, is it time that LPA receiverships were given the same status as administration? Should we go down the route of having the chapter 11-type system that exists in the United States? In some way, we need to return to the original intention of LPA receiverships of achieving a balance between the interests of borrowers and lenders and some kind of limit on the level of fees that agents can charge.

My final point is about the process that can be used to deal with complaints. It seems to me that having self-regulation, whether through RICS or elsewhere, is not working, given the examples we have heard about. Is it time to look at meaningful arbitration and proper dispute resolution? I have raised a number of times the issue of the small business commissioner, which the Government are creating. They have acknowledged that there is an issue with the unfairness of contracts for the SBC. We will have a chance to look at that. When that post is created, will the Minister consider the need for proper, meaningful dispute resolution—perhaps binding arbitration—and giving that responsibility to the small business commissioner in relation to these matters, as well as in relation to late payments, which are its primary purpose?

There are a number of issues that need to be picked up. The Minister can respond to them now. The next Government really will have to act, otherwise—my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) was right to intervene on this point—we will continue to have a system where the relationship between small businesses and the banks is very poor. Unless that is resolved, we will not improve the performance of our small businesses, which are a crucial part of our economy. In the meantime, those who have suffered very seriously by losing their livelihoods will not see the remedy that they should, and there will continue to be a danger of a repeat performance by financial institutions, if that is not already happening.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

If the Minister would be kind enough to finish his remarks no later than 7.27 pm, that would allow Jo Stevens three minutes to sum up the debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

No, it is not. [Interruption.] The problem is not overcrowding. There are some issues around staffing, which is why we have brought forward our plans on creating a new role for the youth justice officer. Those individuals are going to be attracted to work specifically with children. We are also developing the youth custody service as part of our plans around Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, because we believe that there should be a distinct service to deal with children in the criminal justice system.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Youth reoffending rates are among the highest of all prisoners, and we have just heard that reoffending costs this country a total of £15 billion a year. Surely the obvious answer is to make sure that all prisoners serve their time in jail in full before they are released out into the public.

[Dr Lee]

Specifically in the youth justice system, I believe that the most important thing is to ensure that when young people are in custody, we take every opportunity to treat them if they have mental health problems and to provide the necessary education for future employment prospects, so that when they leave the institution, they are less likely to reoffend.

Prison Officers Association: Withdrawal from Voluntary Tasks

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

The precipitous action, if I understand the hon. Gentleman correctly, is unlawful strike action, which will do nothing to make our prisons safe.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It would be easier to manage the 85,000 prisoners in our jails if we did not have to incarcerate 10,000 foreign nationals who should be in prison in their own country. This week Jamaica rejected the Government’s offer of returning its foreign nationals. What steps are the Government taking to get these people back to secure detention in their own countries?

[Mr Gyimah]

Since 2010 we have deported 33,000 prisoners —5,810 in 2015-16 alone—to their home country. There is a lot more work that we can do, and I am engaging directly with the Governments of the top 10 countries from which foreign national prisoners come in order to speed up the process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I do not accept that the sort of changes we are proposing to consider once the situation is known about our exit from the EU would be a crisis-making combination. This country has always had a proud respect for human rights; it long predates the Human Rights Act, and I think we can all agree on that.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

15. How many foreign national offenders are in prison; and what steps she is taking to return those people to prison in their own countries.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

As of 30 September 2016 there were 6,688 foreign national offenders serving a custodial sentence in our prisons. A further 2,374 foreign nationals are being held in prison on remand or in immigration detention centres. We are committed to increasing the number of foreign national offenders removed from our prisons, whether they are removed under the prisoner transfer agreement or the early removal scheme. In 2015-16, 5,810 FNOs were removed from prisons and immigration removal centres; that is the highest number since records began, and since 2010 33,000 have been removed.

[Mr Hollobone]

Poland has one of the biggest national groups of foreign national offenders in our prisons. Poland’s derogation from the compulsory EU prisoner transfer directive was due to expire in December 2016. Are we now in a position to send these Polish prisoners back to prison in their own country?

[Mr Gyimah]

All eligible Polish nationals have been identified and deportation orders sought. We have referred cases to the Polish courts, and transfers will take place once Polish legal procedures have been completed.

HMP Birmingham

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have been very clear about the issues in our prison system. Since I secured this role in July, I have been focused on dealing with them, making sure that we make our prisons safer, invest in prison staff and invest in mental health facilities in our prisons in order to deal with this situation.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

In her statement, the Justice Secretary said that the prisons Minister chairs daily meetings with the chief executive of the Prison Service to monitor prisons for risk factors that might indicate potential violence and unrest. Why was the risk of serious violence at HMP Birmingham not raised in the relevant daily meeting, and if the biggest rise in violence in our prisons for 26 years was not raised, what is the point of having daily meetings?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I am sure he will recognise that with an operational service such as the Prison Service, we can reduce and minimise risk, but we cannot eliminate it completely. That is what the efforts of the daily meeting are about—reducing the level of violence and giving governors what they need to keep our prisons as safe as possible. When the incidents occurred, they were dealt with extremely effectively by the tornado teams. I want to see a more stable prison estate, which means building extra capacity so that we do not have overcrowding, and investing in staff so that our prisons can be staffed at a proper level. I have to tell Members that this will take time. While we are seeking to minimise risk, we cannot of course prevent every incident from happening.