Rehman Chishti
Main Page: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)Department Debates - View all Rehman Chishti's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
Mr Speaker, sometimes you hear contributions in this House that are beyond parody. To be fair to the hon. Gentleman, he was not in the House during the last Parliament because he lost in 2005, but I do not recall that he called for the resignation of previous Labour Ministers when levels of overcrowding were higher.
Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what I have done in Wales. I have recognised the fact that that the prison system in Wales has a problem because north Wales does not have a prison, which means that prisoners from north Wales cannot be housed close to home. What have I done? I have won from the Chancellor £250 million-plus to build a new prison in north Wales. That is doing the right thing for the people of Wales.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
On prisons and overcrowding, according to a written answer to a question I asked, prisoners were given additional days for bad behaviour on 11,550 occasions in 2009. Will the Secretary of State clarify that this Government have done a lot to address the issue of bad behaviour, thereby affecting capacity in prisons?
Chris Grayling
We have introduced a tougher and more spartan regime in our prisons, as well as tougher penalties for those who abscond post-prison and break their licence conditions, who can now go to jail for much longer. Interestingly, the penalty that staff appear to believe is most valuable in dealing with troublesome prisoners is the removal of prisoners’ television sets from their cells when they behave badly.