End of Custody Supervised Licence: Extension Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Justice
Robert Neill
Main Page: Robert Neill (Conservative - Bromley and Chislehurst)Department Debates - View all Robert Neill's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
This is a perfectly rational, sensible and pragmatic response to the pressures in our prisons, and the Minister should take credit for it. However, I do ask him to reconsider the point about the transparency of data—precisely because it is a sensible thing to do, there is no reason why we should not release the figures in better time. But the underlying problem, which all parties in this House must face up to, is that the pressures in our prisons, to which the Justice Committee has repeatedly referred, stem from decades of underfunding by Governments of all parties? Prison costs £46,000-plus per year for each place, so it is a very expensive way of dealing with people, and not always the best means for handling lower-level offenders. May we have a more intelligent debate on sentencing and the purpose of prison, and perhaps we could start with the Minister committing to bringing back the sentencing Bill, which would enable us to have a more nuanced approach?