Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

These reforms are going exactly according to plan and no test gate was due to start in June. We are on time and the teams on the ground are making good progress. I and my colleagues have visited the trust’s successor organisations, and members of my team are going out to hear what is happening on the ground. This is a nine-month process of delivering change in the public sector, before we reach the point of a change of ownership. We are trying to ensure that the new system is bedded in well, and so far I am happy with the progress being made. There is, of course, still work to be done, but good progress is being made.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

As usual, the Justice Secretary has his head in the sand. He was warned against his plans to privatise the probation service, but he ignored those warnings. Preferred bidders were supposed to be announced this week, but now he tells us it will be before the end of the year. There were supposed to be dozens and dozens of private companies, charities and voluntary groups bidding for the contracts, but there are not—in some areas, only one company is bidding for a contract. Staff—both those who respond to surveys and those who do not—are complaining of chaos at the probation service. Morale is at a record low and experienced and dedicated staff are leaving. Given that, are there any circumstances in which he would put a stop to the botched privatisation of the probation service?

[Chris Grayling]

I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman is plain wrong. He needs to stop listening to the trade unions; of course the trade unions still think this is a bad idea, but in reality our reforms are bedding in well and we will deliver the changes necessary to provide support and supervision to people who get none at the moment. The Labour party has no answers about how it would deliver that.

On competition, the right hon. Gentleman’s facts are plain wrong. I think we have 86 bids, with an average of four bidders in each area and a good mix of organisations from the public, private and voluntary sectors,. I am completely confident that we will shortly deliver a really innovative approach to rehabilitation, despite the blind opposition of the Labour party.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)]

I love doing things that are enormously popular and I also like doing things that are right. Magistrates’ sentencing powers are being reviewed and I will be able to come back to the House at its very early convenience, I hope, with some ideas.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has previously said, and he said it again today, how proud he is of his prison reforms. The Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that suicides are up 69% in a year. More people died in prison last year than ever before. Self-harm is up 27% since 2010. Serious assaults are up 30%. The riot squad has been called out 72% more times than it was in 2010 and one in five prisons are now rated as “of concern”, double the figure 12 months earlier. We heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) that four reports by the chief inspector of prisons have been pretty damning; the reports on Glen Parva, Doncaster, Isis and Wormwood Scrubs. What will it take for the Secretary of State to accept that we are in the midst of a prison crisis?

[Chris Grayling]

As always, the right hon. Gentleman paints a very partial view of what is going on in our prisons. Our prisons are less overcrowded than they have been at any point since 2001. They are less violent than they were under the last Government. More work is being done in our prisons today than under the last Government. The number of prisoners going through education is rising. Today we have an excellent report on Chelmsford prison, which I visited last week. Two weeks ago, we had an excellent report on Parc prison in south Wales.

There are staff shortages in parts of our prison system but across the prison system we have a dedicated staff working hard and doing the right job. I take very seriously the issue of suicide in our prisons. We saw a rise in numbers earlier in the year. We saw a fall in numbers across the summer. We may see a rise or a fall in future. These things are difficult to track. We work very hard to tackle what is a real problem.

[Sadiq Khan]

This is classic, head-in-the-sand syndrome.

“The Government cannot pretend any longer that there is no crisis in our prisons.

Even their own backbenchers say the system is shambolic.

Mr Grayling’s priorities, regardless of his budget, must be the security of the public and prison officers—and the welfare of inmates.

His department’s failing on all three.”

Those are not my words. They are from an editorial in The Sun. The House should bear in mind that the Secretary of State was appointed by the Prime Minister to appeal to the red tops. What has gone wrong?

[Chris Grayling]

I will think that I have a problem in our prisons when I am forced through bad planning, as the last Government were, to release tens of thousands of prisoners weeks early to commit crimes that they should not have committed. I will know that I have a problem when I have to hire thousands of police cells when we do not have enough space in our prisons. The truth is that we have space in our prisons. They are less overcrowded. We are increasing education. They are less violent than they were under the last Government. We face challenges given budget pressures but we are doing a much better job than they did.