Prison Officers Association: Protest Action Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateRichard Arkless
Main Page: Richard Arkless (Scottish National Party - Dumfries and Galloway)Department Debates - View all Richard Arkless's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Given my experience on the Justice Committee over the past year, it is abundantly clear to me that this is a toxic mix of policy and resource. The policy is that we are sending far too many people to jail on shorter sentences, and the resource problem is that we have an ever-increasing ratio of inmates to prison officers. Officers are utterly demoralised. On the ground, inmates are being kept in cells for 23 hours a day because there are not enough resources in the prison estate to ensure that they have meaningful and purposeful work. Everybody agrees that meaningful and purposeful work is the way to better rehabilitation. Does the Lord Chancellor recognise the huge resource issue? If so, how many prison officers do we need to recruit to get to a 2,500 net increase, bearing in mind the retention problems that have been adequately articulated in the Chamber today? Is she inclined to look at reducing the number of young people who are sent to prison for short sentences which, quite frankly, do not achieve anything?
We are recruiting 2,500 officers across the estate, but we are also taking immediate action to stabilise the position and ensure that security measures are in place. In response to the hon. Gentleman’s question about young people, I want more early intervention to prevent those people from going into custody in the first place by dealing with issues such as mental health and substance abuse at an early stage. That is what we will be announcing shortly.