Oral Answers to Questions

Sally-Ann Hart Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I cannot begin to imagine what Ellie Gould’s parents must have been through. In addition to the point that I made about introducing a sliding scale to reflect age and severity, I want to make it clear that we are considering a particular minimum threshold for those who are 17. My hon. Friend mentioned the knife already being present at the scene of crime, in the home. He will know that the Sentencing Council has produced guidelines for judges on domestic abuse, which outline that the domestic setting of the offending behaviour makes it more serious. As he knows, these are matters that we are looking at in our sentencing White Paper.

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to increase the use of community sentence treatment requirements.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

My hon. Friend is right to raise community sentence treatment requirements as an important area to push, expand and develop. The Government firmly believe that, where someone has mental health problems, or drug or alcohol addiction causing the offending behaviour, treating the causes of the offending is very often a much better sentence than a short custodial term in terms of rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. So we certainly intend to expand the roll-out of these. They operate already in 14 areas and we intend to make sure that half the country is covered for mental health treatment through CSTRs by 2023-24. We are looking at other ways in which we can speed up the roll-out even further.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

The new probation system is set to be in place in the next few months, with unpaid work and key programmes to stop criminals reoffending to be delivered by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service from next June. Seetec has recently been awarded a Ministry of Justice contract for a co-financing organisation activity hub in the south-east region, to deliver support to help offenders reintegrate back into society. The hub will be based in Chatham, with a satellite provision in my constituency at St Leonards-on-Sea. Can my hon. Friend confirm that there is still a role for the private sector in offender rehabilitation, even if not by community rehabilitation companies?

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend asks a good question. CRCs are being transitioned out and the probation service will take over organising this activity, but within that there will be opportunities for private sector, or indeed charitable sector, organisations to bid to provide certain kinds of activity and certain kinds of rehabilitation work via the dynamic framework. We envisage eventually spending about £100 million a year on procuring these services via the dynamic framework. Any organisation, such as the one she mentions, that has something to offer and can help with rehabilitation is, of course, strongly encouraged to bid for those services to make sure we are drawing on the full range of available services as we try to rehabilitate offenders and build a better life for their future and protect our constituents as well.