Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Elizabeth Truss

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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

Debate between Simon Burns and Elizabeth Truss

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

Debate between Simon Burns and Elizabeth Truss

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

Debate between Simon Burns and Elizabeth Truss

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Elizabeth Truss

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

In my opinion, it is never too early for a gin and tonic! I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Now that the British people have made the decision to leave the EU, the Great British Food Unit is even more important. We already have missions planned for the Gulf, China and Japan to open more markets for fantastic British food. I am going to increase the resources going into the Great British Food Unit to make sure that we turbo-charge our efforts to export more British food right around the world.

[Sir Simon Burns]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that Essex is home to some of the finest food, drink and countryside in the nation? What does she think is the link between food and tourism, and what more can be done to promote it?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We know that for a third of all visitors, food is a major factor in deciding where to visit. It is hugely important, which is why DEFRA is backing food tourism. We recently backed the “tour culinaire” to Yorkshire, which accompanied the cycle race and featured fantastic Yorkshire products such as liquorice. I would be delighted to discuss with my right hon. Friend how we could do something similar in Essex in respect of fantastic products such as Tiptree strawberry jam.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

T4. What precisely is being done to ensure the availability of high-quality early-years provision?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

We have raised standards for early-years teachers so that they have to pass the same maths and English tests as primary and secondary school teachers, and this year we have seen a 25% increase in the number of students applying for those courses, so they are proving very popular.