Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We are keen to see as many work and training opportunities in our prisons as possible and we continue to look for more such opportunities. I pay tribute to the team in Lincoln for achieving that. Causing damage to a prison is wholly unacceptable. We have taken steps that will lead to inmates being charged for the damage that they cause from their prison pay. That has not happened in the past, but it must happen in the future.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

If I may correct the Secretary of State, it was the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) who decided that Oakwood should be run by G4S. He may be socially liberal, but he is not Labour. I echo the comments that have been made about the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) and welcome him to the Front Bench. It really is nice to see him there.

“We have a very good model for prison development in Oakwood… That site has multiple blocks and first-class training facilities. To my mind, it is an excellent model for the future of the Prison Service.”—[Official Report, 5 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 114.]

That is what the Secretary of State for Justice told us earlier this year. Oakwood was his blueprint for the future. In the light of today’s damning report, which states that the prison has failed at every level, does he stand by those words?

[Chris Grayling]

I invite the right hon. Gentleman to go to Oakwood to see the facilities, which were praised in today’s report. I am afraid that he is just not right. I have checked this information today. The contracting process, including the invitations to tender to the private sector to run Oakwood, started under the last Labour Government.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

My hon. Friend is right. He will recognise there are two encouraging statistics and one depressing one in this context. The two encouraging statistics are the number of young people coming into the criminal justice system in the first place and the number of those who are incarcerated, but he is right: the one that is depressing is the rate of reoffending, which is over 70%. We need to take a look not just at rehabilitation more broadly, as he knows we are doing, but specifically at the youth custodial estate. He will hear, in very short order I hope, what we plan to do to reform that.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

This Justice Secretary and his Government have failed to stand up to G4S or Serco, which, as my hon. Friends have reminded the House, failed with the electronic tagging of prisoners and with the transfer of prisoners, and are failing in Oakwood prison, and he is refusing to rule out both companies from the process in relation to probation. Why should we believe that his plans for privatising probation will fare any better?

[Chris Grayling]

It is important to make two points. First, the investigation into the contracts for electronic monitoring refers to events that took place in 2009 and to contracts that were let in 2005 by the previous Government. It is also important to bear in mind that these very serious issues are currently subject to investigation by the appropriate authorities. The right hon. Gentleman will therefore understand that there are strong legal reasons—this is easy to avoid when in opposition but not when in government—why we have to be measured about what we say, and I intend to continue to do that.

[Sadiq Khan]

He may be six foot four, but he is weak. Experts, the Ministry of Justice’s own risk register and Opposition Members have all warned about the dangers to public safety from putting private companies such as G4S and Serco in charge of people who have committed serious and violent offences in the way the Government plan—and all this is to be done with no piloting. Why is the Justice Secretary playing fast and loose with public safety?

[Chris Grayling]

Let us be clear what our proposed probation reforms do. At the moment, and during all the years the previous Government were in power, anyone who goes to jail in this country for less than 12 months walks on to the street with £46 in their pocket, but no help and no supervision whatsoever, and the majority of them reoffend. It is time that changed, and that is what our reforms will do.