HMP Birmingham

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

Since I was appointed Secretary of State for Justice in July, I have been absolutely clear that we need to improve safety in our prisons and that the levels of violence we currently have are unacceptable. We are investing a further £500 million over the next three years, which was announced in the autumn statement, as part of our prison safety and reform plan to do just that.

The hon. Gentleman talked about psychoactive drugs and asked what we had done about them. We have put in place tests to detect those drugs and also trained up officers to detect them. We have rolled that out across the prison estate. We are also rolling out new measures to deal with mobile phones and investing in a £3 million intelligence unit.

The most important thing is our staff. I have huge respect for prison officers and their work. That is why we are strengthening the front line by 2,500 officers. That will ensure that we have one officer for every six prisoners, which will enable us not only to make prisons safer, but to turn lives around. We are getting a new apprenticeship scheme and creating a fast track so that we train existing officers and get them promotion within the service. That is a long-term programme—we are taking immediate action but hon. Members need to recognise that it will take time to bring those people online and get them trained up. In the meantime, we are ensuring that there is a full investigation at HMP Birmingham. There is a full police investigation and the perpetrators of the incident will feel the full force of the law. The reality is that their actions put both staff and prisoners at risk.

The hon. Gentleman asked about G4S. It will cover the cost of what happened at HMP Birmingham, including the resources employed by the public sector, but we need to be honest that this is a problem across our prison estate—we have seen issues at our private sector prisons and our public sector prisons. That is why our staff investments will be across the board, and why our reform measures and increased transparency, which the hon. Gentleman asked about, will apply to both public sector and private sector prisons.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the prison population. The reality is that it rose by 23,000 under the Labour Government between 1997 and 2010. It has been stable under this Government since 2010. He talked about short-sentence prisoners. The number of short-sentence prisoners has actually gone down by 1,500 since 2010; the increases have been in the number of, for example, sex offenders rightly being put away for those heinous crimes.

We are reforming our prisons but it will take time. We have the right measures in place to turn the tide, and we need to turn our prisons into places of safety and reform. We have taken immediate action to reduce risk across the estate, but everyone in the House must recognise that it will take time to ensure that our prisons become the places we want them to be.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and her frankness about the seriousness of the situation, which does her credit. I join her in paying tribute to the professionalism of prison staff, especially the tornado teams and others who operated very efficiently. She is right to say that the problem has built up over many years, and it is one for which all parties must accept a measure of responsibility. Will she ensure that the report not only looks at the immediate issues that arise from what has happened in Birmingham prison, but learns the broader lessons about how best to deal with dispersing disruptive prisoners; how to deal with pressures on the estate under those circumstances; how to deal with contractual difficulties with repairs to the estate, which sometimes create tensions; and how to deal sensibly with the problem of retaining experienced officers? I have just received an email from a prison officer indicating that one reason he is leaving after years of service is the failure of senior management to listen consistently to the concerns of officers on the line. Can we learn those lessons so that we can turn the tide around, which will take time?

[Several hon. Members rose—]