Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of violence in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

I am sure that the whole House will join me in expressing our deep horror at the recent attack against a prison officer in Nottingham prison. It is completely horrifying to see this happen. It must not happen again. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to our prison officers for the work they do in very difficult circumstances keeping us safe. There are three main things we can do to stop this kind of thing happening again. We need to improve perimeter security, which means really searching people for weapons and drugs at the gate; we need to make sure that the conditions in the prison are decent and work; and, above all, we need to provide the training and support for prison officers to have the right kind of relationships with prisoners whereby things like this do not occur again.

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[Alex Norris]

As the Minister mentioned, on Sunday 14 April a prison officer at my local prison in Nottingham had his throat slashed with a razor by a prisoner in what his union calls a cowardly, unprovoked act. According to doctors, this young public servant—a brave man in his early 20s—came within millimetres of losing his life. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to this prison officer and to his thousands of colleagues facing this sort of violence every day, and does he agree with the union—the Prison Officers Association—that this ought to be treated as an attempted murder?

[Rory Stewart]

I absolutely agree that these are extraordinary public servants. This is a horrifying and completely unacceptable act. We need to punish the person who did it, and we need to punish them properly. At the moment, the charge that is being brought forward carries the maximum life sentence, as it should, but there is more that we can do. That includes body-worn cameras, the rolling out of PAVA spray and ensuring we have enough officers on the landings, which is why I am pleased that we now have the highest number of prison officers at any date since 2012.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

I absolutely undertake to look again at the traffic assessment and to sit down with my right hon. Friend to examine it in more detail together.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Previous cost cutting in the Prison Service such as reducing staff has proved to be a false economy. In Nottingham Prison, the prisons Minister has needed a surge of staff to try to stabilise what had become a very violent and dangerous prison. Can I have an assurance from him that, once things improve at Nottingham, those staff will not be withdrawn again?

[Rory Stewart]

Some of the staff at Nottingham, to which the hon. Gentleman is referring, have come from other establishments in other parts of the country, but when they return they will be replaced because we must ensure that Nottingham is fully staffed. That is essential particularly in order to continue with delivery of the key worker programmes so that each prison officer can be paired with six prisoners. That will be vital to getting violence under control in Nottingham.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

T2. On Friday, I visited Nottingham Prison; I am grateful for the support of the prisons Minister in securing that meeting. Drugs continue to be a significant problem in our prison, as in many others, and body scanners are a really important way of tackling that. What is the Government’s current position on the use of body scanners and when will we get them in Nottingham?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

First, I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the work he does in supporting the work of Nottingham Prison, which is one of the 10 priority prisons. We are therefore bringing scanners into those prisons. We are currently shipping those scanners over, but a range of different types of scanning will be taking place: X-ray scanners used on an intelligence-led basis, which can penetrate through the skin; metal detectors on a more regular basis as people go through; and additional dogs.

Bedford Prison

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Thursday 13th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Drugs can get into prison only by being flown, thrown, dragged or carried there. A secure environment with the right standards, the right checks on mail and the right bars and grilles should therefore be able to reduce significantly the number of drugs that get into a prison.

On protecting and supporting prison officers, we owe them the trials around pepper spray, the body cameras and the CCTV cameras, but above all, the staffing numbers to get the key worker schemes in place so that they can develop the relationships with individual prisoners. Prison officers also need support from their managers, particularly band 4 and band 5 managers, day in, day out, to ensure that if they are assaulted, we respond calmly and professionally and bring back order and control.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is the fourth prison in the urgent notification process. In the past, the response has tended to involve three things: change the leaders, put more staff in, reduce the number of prisoners. All those are sensible, but they have an impact on the rest of the estate: there are only so many leaders, new staff and places to which to move prisoners. How many more times can the Minister respond in that way before it has an impact on the whole Prison Service?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good question and challenge. This is about prioritisation. As I said, many local prisons suffer from significant problems and we currently have more than a dozen in special measures. It is no coincidence that the prisons that we put in special measures are likely to be those that go on to receive an urgent notification from the inspectors. We and the inspectors absolutely agree on where those problems are—we can see them. The issue is to which of those prisons we prioritise resources. Those moves—reducing the number of prisoners, bringing in extra staff and getting extra support—are absolutely necessary, but we need to target them at the places where the need is greatest.

HMP Birmingham

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has made seven visits to Chelmsford Prison and has worked closely with the acting governor there on the steps that are being taken to turn it around. [Interruption.] I hasten to add that she made those visits as a visitor. The key point that she raises is the one on mentoring, particularly the role that more experienced prison officers at band 4 can play in providing the day-to-day model for and partnership with the staff on the ground, to teach them the jail craft that is essential for everybody’s safety, and ultimately for turning around lives.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is clear that drugs have played a significant role in the problems in Birmingham; similarly, drugs have played a significant role in the challenges in Nottingham Prison, and I suspect across the prison estate. What is the Minister’s latest assessment of the use of body scanners, and what is the latest legal advice he has been given about how widely they can be used?

[Rory Stewart]

There have been historical challenges with the use of body scanners. We have now gone through the legal advice very carefully, and I am clear that they can be and ought to be used much more frequently, so we have invested almost £6 million in additional scanning. That will allow us to detect, as we already do at Belmarsh, drugs carried by people inside their body, as well as drugs carried on their person. That will go along with the new scanners that we are bringing in to detect mail infused with Spice and all the work that we are doing to combat drones and other ways of getting drugs into prison. Protective security measures must work alongside demand reduction and therapy, but without protective security we cannot get on top of the drugs epidemic.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

T2. Another week, another inquest into the death of a prisoner at HMP Nottingham. Three months on from the prison being declared fundamentally unsafe, what update can Ministers give us on the progress of the recovery plan and on the prison’s ongoing safety?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, there has been an urgent notification process. We have put a plan in place. I have now visited HMP Nottingham, and I pay tribute to Tom Wheatley, the governor, for the work he is doing. He has a much better care process in place, and he has highly trained staff. We expect to see improvements soon at HMP Nottingham.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

11. What recent assessment he has made of the performance of private sector probation companies.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

There have been a number of challenges with the community rehabilitation companies—CRCs—particularly in transition. It is not all bad news: in fact, the number of people reoffending has come down by 2% and certain CRCs, such as Cumbria and my own county, are performing well. But we need to focus particularly on the questions of assessment, planning and meeting, and that is what we have focused on in the report on London that is due on Thursday.

[Alex Norris]

Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation recently warned that private sector probation companies’ focus on contract compliance rather the true quality of supervision was inevitably having an impact on culture and was undermining the established values of probation professionals. Does the Minister agree that it is time to put proper probation ahead of private profit?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is a Nottingham Member, and I had a very interesting meeting with the CRC last week on my visit to Nottingham Prison, where the CRC is providing very good Through The Gate services—in fact, services for prisoners in prison that did not exist before the transformation reforms. Before, they were outside the prisons. I do not believe this is a question whether it is done by the private sector, the public sector or the voluntary sector, but it is a question of getting the basic standards right. As I say, that is exactly what we will be assessing the London CRC on on Thursday.

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[Rory Stewart]

That is an interesting example of a community rehabilitation company in Devon and Cornwall. The particular strengths of the Torbay approach seem to us to be in the partnership working with the police and children’s services and in the work done with Catch22 on accommodation.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

T7. In December, the previous Prisons Minister wrote to me saying that the spate of deaths at HMP Nottingham was a random occurrence, blaming a phenomenon called “suicide cluster”. In January, an inspection of the prison deemed it fundamentally unsafe. Last month there was another death, reported to be a suicide. Will Ministers now accept that there is nothing random going on at this jail and that it is not a safe environment?

[Rory Stewart]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, I had a serious visit to HMP Nottingham last week. I pay tribute to the prison officers and the governor for their work, but there are a number of serious challenges in the prison. We are particularly focused on safety. We have a new manager in place and a new violence reduction strategy, and the ACCT process will be central to solving these problems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Norris

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely correct. Indeed, Christian communities and many other minority religious groups are increasingly under threat across the world. That is true of Christian communities in the middle east. It is true of Christian communities in Africa. It is true of Christian communities in Pakistan. We will support civil society organisations. In Pakistan, we support the rights of Christian communities, Shi’a minority communities and other groups. We continue to advocate for them with the Government of Pakistan, and we will continue that civil society support.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

19. This month, FIFA’s advisory board urged FIFA to press the Qatari Government on the impact of the kafala system on migrant workers building stadiums for the 2022 football World cup. Do Ministers support this call? Will they press the Qatari Government on this and other important human rights issues?

[Rory Stewart]

We have looked seriously into this issue. We have pressed the issue with the Qatari Government, and we will continue to press exactly this issue with the Government of Qatar.