Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

First, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that our hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) has done a first-class job in advocating for his constituents, as he always does. That is his job, but my job is to look at the prison estate across the country. I am afraid that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) is not correct about the costs of running a prison, which are made up of several components, and a significant one is the cost of maintenance and the cost of maintaining accommodation standards. On our estimates, it would cost £50 million to bring that up to standard, which is why we concluded that it was right to close the prison. There is a separate consideration about whether it is right to retain the site, but for reasons that I have explained we have decided that it not the right thing to do.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Can the prisons Minister reassure the House that he and the Justice Secretary know the figure at which Operation Safeguard kicks in, and that their officials have not advised them to introduce it and that it will not be needed?

[Jeremy Wright]

I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that we are nowhere near requiring the provisions of Operation Safeguard. I have to remind him that his Government needed to use Operation Safeguard which, for those who do not know, is about using police cells because we have run out of prison cells. Not only did the previous Government need to do that but they had to let people out early because they so mismanaged the prison population. It takes some cheek for him to ask whether we are properly prepared.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I can give my hon. Friend the absolute assurance that both the Home Secretary and I are looking at ways of tightening the rules. There are provisions relating to article 8 in the Immigration Bill, and I am hopeful that our proposed reforms to human rights laws will strengthen the position of victims of crime in the terrible situation that his constituents have found themselves in. We will make sure that the offenders do not get away with it.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

As a number of Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members have commented, the Justice Secretary is cutting and changing the funding for innocent victims of crime. For example, spending in Surrey and Hertfordshire will be £21.14 per victim, while the average in England and Wales will be £15 per victim. Why, under his plans, will spending per victim in London, at just £10.11 per victim, be 41% less than the national average?

[Chris Grayling]

It is nice to see the right hon. Gentleman launching his London mayoral campaign. I follow his Twitter feed, and for every tweet about justice, there are six about London. I will tell him simply and straightforwardly that under this Government the funding available for victims of crime in London has increased significantly, as it has across the whole country.

[Sadiq Khan]

It is funny that the Justice Secretary says that, because I used the Mayor of London’s figures for that question. According to the Mayor, the reason for the cut in London is that the Justice Secretary has decided to use a formula based solely on population, while failing to take into account crime levels and the number of victims in police force areas. That means that London loses more than £3 million a year, according to the Mayor of London. As the Justice Secretary said, our justice system relies on the confidence of victims and witnesses, so he should be aware that the Metropolitan police have the lowest victim satisfaction rate of any police force in the country. What impact does he think his decision will have on that?

[Chris Grayling]

I wish the right hon. Gentleman well with his campaign, but I know that the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) is the frontrunner at the moment, so he has a bit of catching up to do.

Only in the world of Labour party mathematics and economics could an increased budget be described as a cut.