Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

We do not need to legislate for that. We are absolutely committed to an enhanced prison education service, and I am pleased to be able to say that, in a prison close to the hon. Lady’s constituency, we are rolling out additional curriculum and neurodiversity specialists to drive reform. We absolutely believe in education and we are putting in the resources to ensure that it gets better every day.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

What progress his Department has made on the proposals in its September 2020 White Paper, “A Smarter Approach to Sentencing”. [R]

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)]

Last week, we introduced the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. This landmark piece of legislation will deliver on the commitments that I made in the White Paper to make punishments tougher for the most serious offenders and those who commit crimes against women and girls, and to introduce more effective community sentences. We are working on those non-legislative reforms in the White Paper that aim to tackle the underlying causes of criminal behaviour and to improve the rehabilitation of offenders in our community.

[Rob Butler [V]]

I thank the Lord Chancellor for that answer. Over the years that I have been involved in the criminal justice system, I have often been struck by the potential for technology to play a greater role in keeping the public safe, punishing criminals and helping to reduce reoffending. I wonder whether my right hon. and learned Friend can tell the House how measures in the White Paper will enable the courts, prisons and probation services to exploit new technology.

[Robert Buckland]

As ever, I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s continued commitment to this issue. We are expanding the use of electronic monitoring to support robust and responsive community supervision. Following its well-received launch in Wales, as I mentioned, courts in England will shortly be able to impose the alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement—the sobriety tag—to help tackle offending. We will shortly lay legislation to impose GPS tracking on offenders released from custody who have committed burglary and theft offences. The Bill will extend the maximum length of a curfew from 12 months to two years, making the use of those powers more flexible, and we will use those powers to test the house detention order concept outlined in the White Paper to see how that can contribute to reducing reoffending.