Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. The ultimate arbiters of our laws will be our own courts here in the UK. That is incompatible with being in the single market.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

5. What assessment she has made of the effect of increasing the number of prison staff on the (a) safety of prison officers and (b) capacity of prison staff to spend more time directly engaging with and supervising prisoners.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

12. What assessment she has made of the effect of increasing the number of prison staff on the (a) safety of prison officers and (b) capacity of prison staff to spend more time directly engaging with and supervising prisoners.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Elizabeth Truss)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns), whose 30 years in the House have been a joy to behold—although I have been here for only seven of them. We recently visited Chelmsford prison together, and I saw at first hand his commitment not only to his constituents but to the cause of improving prisons in this country. Chelmsford prison is one of the 10 prisons we selected for the early recruitment of prison officers. We said that 400 prison officers would be recruited by the end of March. I can confirm that they are now in training or in post in those prisons, including Chelmsford.

[Sir Simon Burns]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the extremely kind and generous comments at the beginning of her answer. I welcome the fact that, following the recognition that more staff are needed at Chelmsford prison, new staff are now being trained up. Does she know when those staff are likely to come on stream, to ensure that we have proper staffing levels and the proper protection for prison officers?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The training period for a prison officer is 10 weeks, so we will see them come on stream very shortly. Since November, 43 job offers have been made to new prison officers at Chelmsford. Following our visit to Chelmsford prison, we announced a rise in starting salaries for prison officers there, so they will now be paid a minimum of £26,500.

Prisons

Simon Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to the prison population later in my speech and address the specific issue of sex offenders.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Very quickly.

[Mr Speaker]

There was no danger of the Secretary of State not hearing the right hon. Gentleman. I rather assumed that she would give way, because Chelmsford prison has been referred to.

[Sir Simon Burns]

The extra prison officers my right hon. Friend proposes to recruit are welcome, but I understand that it takes about nine months to fully train a new prison officer. As a short-term stopgap, would it not be sensible to relax the rules or give more powers to governors so that they could bring back into work retired, experienced prison officers on short-term contracts?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. Friend’s assessment is absolutely right and we are, indeed, bringing back former prison officers on a temporary basis.

I will move on to what we are doing on recruitment and retention, because that is the most important issue we face as a Prison Service. We will not achieve our aims of reform if we do not have enough officers and if we do not train them properly and have proper career development to make the most of our workforce. In October, we started by announcing our plans to recruit an extra 400 staff in 10 of our most challenging prisons. I am pleased to say that we have so far made 389 job offers. We were due to do that by the end of March, so we are ahead of target. We recently launched a graduate scheme called Unlocked, which is like Teach First for prisons, to attract the top talented graduates. We had more than 1,000 expressions of interest in the scheme and within 24 hours, we had 350 graduates from Russell Group universities applying for it.

The idea that people do not want to do the job is not right. There are a lot of people out there who want to reform offenders and to get involved in helping us turn around our Prison Service. We need to talk up the job of being a prison officer, because it is incredibly important. One prison officer described themselves to me as a parent, a social worker and a teacher. What could be more important than turning somebody who lives a life of crime into somebody who contributes to society? We find that when we go out and recruit, a lot of people are interested in the role.

Of course we have to retain our fantastic existing prison officers, but I want to correct the hon. Member for Leeds East. In fact, 80% of our staff have been with us for longer than five years, so the idea that we do not have a strong depth of prison officers is wrong. However, we do need to ensure that they have career and promotion opportunities. That is why we are looking to expand the senior grades in the service and to promote our existing staff. We want to give them a career ladder so that they have opportunities to train on the job and get the additional skills they need.

We are giving prison governors the opportunity to recruit locally for the first time. We have launched that in 30 of our most hard-to-recruit prisons. That means that the governor can build much more of a relationship with the local community, get people involved, show people what life is really like inside prison and encourage people to work there. The local recruitment and job fairs have been really successful.

Of course this is challenging. Recruiting 4,000 people in one year is challenging, but I think we can do it. We have the opportunity to do it, we are enthusiastic about it and we have the budget to do it for the first time in a number of years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We need to recruit 4,000 officers over the next year. I announced initially that we were recruiting officers for 10 of the most challenging prisons. We have already made job offers to almost all those 400 people, so we are making good progress. We have recently launched a graduate scheme, Unlocked. Within 24 hours of announcing that scheme, we had expressions of interest from more than 1,000 candidates, so there are people interested in joining the Prison Service. It is challenging to recruit that number of officers, but we are absolutely determined to do so. It is what we need to do to turn our prisons around and make them places of safety and reform.[Official Report, 26 January 2017, Vol. 620, c. 2MC.]

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that the greatest support that we can give to prison officers is to make sure that they have the correct levels of staffing in their prisons? Is she aware that there have been significant problems, highlighted by recent reports, in Chelmsford prison, which have been attributed to the understaffing of the prison? May I ask her what is being done to get the levels of staff to the correct ones, and would she agree to the prisons Minister having a meeting with me to discuss that?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to recruit staff at Chelmsford, in addition to other prisons. I know that my hon. Friend the prisons Minister will meet my right hon. Friend soon. I am keen to visit Chelmsford myself to meet my right hon. Friend and see the situation on the front line.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

As I have said, each of those suicides is a tragedy. The Government are fully aware of that, and I am aware that the Secretary of State for Health will be visiting a prison. I was at Peterborough prison last week discussing mental health provision there, and I visited the mother and baby unit at the same time. I am under no illusions about the challenges involved in addressing the problem. We are fully aware of the problem and I intend to make further statements on the subject because the mental health of prisoners is such a key problem.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

However important it is to improve and enhance mental health care in our prisons, little will be achieved without continuity of care once prisoners leave prison. What is the Department doing, with the health service, to ensure that continuity of care is provided for prisoners from day one when they leave prison?

[Dr Lee]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question which, as ever, is a wise one. Yes, continuity of care before, during and after prison is key, not just for the mental health of prisoners, but for their physical health too. We have ongoing discussions with the Department of Health on the matter, and my intention is to make the continuity of records and the continuity of care as a consequence much better in the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

I am afraid I cannot name the country with the fewest deaths in custody, but what I can say is that we in this country work to create decent and humane prisons, and we are a signatory to the relevant United Nations protocols. As the Secretary of State has rightly pointed out, the rise in the number of deaths in custody is too high, and for that reason we shall shortly be publishing a safety and reform plan in our White Paper.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

3. What steps she is taking to tackle bullying and drug abuse at HMP Chelmsford; and if she will make a statement.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Elizabeth Truss)]

I share my right hon. Friend’s concerns about what has happened at HMP Chelmsford. I can confirm that it is one of the 10 prisons for which we are training up additional officers. This will provide a 30% increase in officer numbers to help tackle the scourges of bullying and drug abuse.

[Sir Simon Burns]

I welcome that answer. It is crucial that more is done to eliminate bullying in the prison. On drug abuse, can the Secretary of State confirm whether sniffer dogs are being used on a regular basis on not only the prison inmates but all types of people entering and leaving prison?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can confirm that that is happening. We have trained 300 sniffer dogs to be able to detect new dangerous psychoactive substances, and that testing was being rolled out across the prison estate in September. [Interruption.]

Welfare Cap

Simon Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Marie Rimmer]

Not at the moment. Hon. Members will hear what I have to say.

We need reforms that address the structural drivers of social security spending. We need good, secure employment; we need to get rid of zero-hours contracts and low pay; and we need to ensure an adequate supply of affordable homes.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Marie Rimmer]

No. Hon. Members need to learn that I will not give way until I have had my say. [Interruption.] Yes, the House needs to know what type of woman I am.

We need to shift the balance of expenditure from the cost of failure towards investment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) has said, the large rise in housing benefit expenditure in the 20 years before the financial crisis came at a time when the number of households receiving help to pay their rent stayed broadly flat. That should have triggered a major focus on those trends and led to serious reform of policy and spending, but it did not. As a consequence, the benefits system was extremely vulnerable to economic shocks, as large numbers of people were in more expensive private rented accommodation. When the crisis really hit in 2010-11—it came a couple of years later—housing benefit shot up, and in response we have seen a series of arbitrary attempts to hack back the costs. We have seen 14 changes to housing benefit, including the bedroom tax, which was entirely unrelated to the causes of the rising expenditure. We need to get down to the policy and the causes.

Ministers are leaning too heavily on the political dividing-line and not enough on designing a cap that would advance structural reforms. Although it is set over five years on a rolling basis, the Government’s cap will bite on an annual basis. With the Office for Budget Responsibility warning about the overshooting of the autumn statement, we call today for compensating action in the next Budget.

We have had emergency cuts, not long-term saving. The cap has been set in nominal cash terms. Higher expenditure, driven by inflation, will trigger policy action, which risks locking in lower living standards for those reliant on benefits. General price rises feeding through into uprating decisions do not count as a structural divide in spending. In line with consumer prices index forecasts for the coming years, the Chancellor set out a margin of error of 2%, which will not trigger action.

The cap makes no distinction between contribution-based and income-based benefit spending, consistent with the drift of social security policy over decades, but they are different, and should be treated as such. Entitlement to contributory benefits, which are financed by national insurance contributions, should stand outside the mainstream of Government revenue and be taken out of the cap, strengthening the integrity of the national insurance fund.

I urge the Government to backtrack on the political ideology-driven trajectory that they are on, with 80% of cuts coming from public spending and welfare and 20% from tax, and with tax cuts being provided to people who do not need them and will not spend the extra money, so it will not go into the economy and will not feature in the drive for more jobs. The Government should invest in proper affordable housing for those who need it. Never mind all these dressed-up schemes—let us have some honesty in this place and address the issues for the public out there. I think the Government are living in a virtual world; it is certainly not the world that I move in.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That, pursuant to the Charter for Budget Responsibility: Summer Budget 2015 update, which was approved by this House on 14 October 2015, under Section 1 of the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011, this House agrees that the breach of the Welfare Cap in 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19 resulting from the decision not to pursue proposed changes to tax credits, as laid out in the Autumn Statement 2015, is justified and that no further debate will be required in relation to this specific breach.

Riot Compensation Bill (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Riot Compensation Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act by local policing bodies, by way of compensation for damage, destruction or theft occurring in the course of riots, out of money so provided.—(Mike Penning.)

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s concerns very seriously. The Prime Minister last month made it clear that we will put in place new enforcement mechanisms to ensure that all employers live up to their responsibility to pay an appropriate wage for the job. That enforcement mechanism and that investigatory mechanism will ensure that those people, whom the hon. Gentleman and I both care about, are paid the right rate for the job.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

T5. Will the Minister with responsibility for prisons tell the House when the inquiry that is currently being held into allegations of a prisoner from Chelmsford prison engaging in sexual activity in an NHS hospital will be concluded? If the allegations, which were published in The Sun newspaper, are proved to be true, what action will be taken against the prison officers who were meant to be keeping an eye on that prisoner?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that what took place was completely unacceptable. I can tell him that very thorough investigations are currently taking place. They have not yet been concluded, although some staff have been suspended. I can also tell him that every governor has been written to in the strongest possible terms and told to take immediate action to ensure all escorts and bed watches are properly conducted.

Police

Simon Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

The Liberal Democrats are part of a Government who inherited a growing economy. With the greatest of respect, we will take no lessons from a party that pledges the abolition of tuition fees and 3,000 additional police officers, and then props up a Government who impose unprecedented cuts on our police service.

Looking to the next Parliament, I have been very clear about what we did in the last Parliament and what we would do now. Now, as I will argue later, we would follow the 12% proposed—including by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary—because that can be achieved without harming the front line, and we will go into the next general election as the party of neighbourhood policing. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait for our proposals on how we intend to achieve that.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is tying himself in knots, so perhaps I can help him out. Can I take it from his evasions that the answer to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Minister is no?

[Jack Dromey]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can help me. Has his party declared its manifesto on the police for the next Parliament? No, it has not. We will say to the country, “Judge us on our record.” Labour is the party of neighbourhood policing. Labour built neighbourhood policing and will defend it. The Government are undermining neighbourhood policing, and we will take no lessons from the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey]

I totally agree. Numbers are crucial, but how officers are best deployed is too. I have seen at first hand inspiring examples—I am sure the hon. Gentleman has seen the same in his constituency—of developing relationships with parts of the community in an intelligent way and doing things in a smart way with other partnership agencies, and of sharing buildings and back-office resources. That was at the heart of the 12% HMIC proposal—it said that we should be better and smarter, but cutting 20% is going too far, too fast, with unacceptable consequences for the front line.

[Mr Simon Burns]

If everything is as terrible and devastating as the hon. Gentleman says, why is crime falling?

[Jack Dromey]

I will come straight to that point. Precisely as a consequence of what has happened, there are worrying signs that crime, and especially violent crime, is starting to rise for the first time in nearly two decades. The latest crime figures show disturbing signs that a generation of progress in some areas is being reversed. For example, there is a worrying increase in muggings. Violence against the person has increased in 16 police force areas and violence without injury has increased in 19 police force areas. According to the British Retail Consortium, shoplifting, which is often associated with assaults on shop staff, is at a nine-year high.

Increasingly, the victims of crime are being let down as criminals get off scot-free—7,000 fewer crimes of violence have been solved under this Government. Despite a sharp increase in sexual crime, there has been a significant fall in the referral of cases to the Crown Prosecution Service for prosecution. Victims of the most heinous crimes are being let down.

On top of that, police forces are stretched to breaking point. They are taking up to 30% longer to respond to 999 calls and there was a reduction in overall crimes solved in 22 forces—nearly 14,000 more crimes were unsolved last year than when the Government came to power. In addition, crime is changing. Fraud has increased by 34%, but we know that that is just the tip of the iceberg, because much online crime goes unreported.

Despite those worrying indications that a generation of progress is being reversed, all we have heard from the Government is the constant assertion that crime is falling. However, the Government’s independent statistics watchdog has said that the statistics can no longer be relied on, and has downgraded its precious gold standard. The UK Statistics Authority chair, the eminent Sir Andrew Dilnot, has said that the more accurate the statistics become, the more likely it is that they will show that crime is rising. That is the result of three years of cutting too far and too fast, and yet here we are again. The Government refuse to see the damage being done by their reckless cuts to police and local authority budgets.

Not only Her Majesty’s Opposition are raising concerns. The Association of Chief Police Officers president, Sir Hugh Orde, has warned that we may now be at the tipping point—he has used those words. Tony Lloyd, the chair of the police and crime commissioners national body, and the Greater Manchester police and crime commissioner—he is highly respected across the spectrum as a former Member of the House—has said:

“I have warned since before I was elected that the government’s reckless programme of cuts is endangering community safety…We are now standing at the edge of a cliff . The chief constable”—

the eminent Sir Peter Fahy—

“has told me that he cannot provide the levels of policing that Greater Manchester people expect and deserve”

in future. He adds that, if the cuts continue:

“There simply will not be enough money in the pot”

for the police to discharge their duties.

The independent commission on the future of policing, led by Lord Stevens—it is a royal commission in all but name—and on which some of the most eminent figures in police and crime sit, has sounded a warning bell about the future of neighbourhood policing, which has been hit hard by Government cuts.