Business of the House

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. I can tell her that the Justice Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), is meeting with probation officers today and will of course look very carefully at what Dame Glenys’s report shows up. We are now providing support and supervision to an additional 40,000 offenders leaving prison and have invested an additional £22 million a year in services for offenders on release. We will be creating new arrangements for offenders to build a more stable and resilient probation system. We will set out our detailed proposals later this year, but they will take very careful account of the report the hon. Lady mentions.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Happiness, Mr Speaker, also has to be Nadal beating Federer, I think.

The Wellington monument is an iconic symbol on the Blackdown hills in Taunton Deane and very much the gateway to the south-west. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking all the people involved in a fantastic project to restore that monument, which celebrates one of our greatest war heroes, the Duke of Wellington? It is proving to be much more than a monument. We are nearly at our £4 million target and, in recognition of its importance in so many ways, the National Trust has made restoring it one of its three top national priorities.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Good. My hon. Friend is a great champion of her constituents in Taunton Deane and they are very fortunate to have her. This very worthwhile project is undoubtedly pulling the community together. I understand that the Wellington monument will be the tallest three-sided obelisk in the world. I am sure that we all wish her constituents great success with its refurbishment.