Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Peter Grant

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

T4. The University and College Union has described the Chancellor’s Budget as a “missed opportunity to…address the urgent financial challenges facing our education system”. Will the Minister agree to make representations to the Chancellor and ask him to follow the example of the Scottish Government by delivering a 5.1% real-terms increase in the next spending review?

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Matters relating to our university lecturers and staff and how they are paid are matters for universities, as they are autonomous institutions. As for the new pension arrangements and their potential impact on universities, there will be a consultation to which they can contribute.

Prisons Policy/HMP Long Lartin

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Peter Grant

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

New psychoactive substances are a game-changer. They are particularly difficult to detect. There have been instances of letters to prisoners being impregnated with them: looking at such a letter makes it possible to inhale the drug and to suffer the adverse consequences.

We have trained 300 sniffer dogs to help us with detection, and the UK is the first jurisdiction to develop a test for such drugs. We are redoubling our efforts to deal with the supply side by increasing investment in intelligence. We are investing £3 million, not just at establishment level but across the prison estate, so that we can deal with what is essentially a product of serious and organised crime. People want to get drugs into our prisons because they sell at a higher mark-up: 10 times the price outside.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I fear the Minister might have misunderstood the situation described earlier by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), because the main difference in Scottish Government policy has not been to suddenly release prisoners early; it has been to give the courts a way of sentencing and punishing low-level offenders without sending them to prison in the first place. Every Member in this House representing a Scottish constituency has seen significant community benefit work carried out in the local area by people who would otherwise have been in prison. I hope the Minister accepts the invitation to meet Scottish Ministers to talk about the investment programme, and I urge him to also speak to others involved in the justice and prison system in Scotland and find out that—although I appreciate this would be a difficult decision for a Conservative Government to take—moving to a presumption against short sentences reduces offending.

[Mr Speaker]

No one could accuse the hon. Gentleman of excluding any consideration that might in any way at any time to any degree be judged material in his question.