Oral Answers to Questions

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to the Hillsborough report. I understand that the Home Secretary will make a statement on that tomorrow.

The hon. Lady is right to say that every self-inflicted death in prison is an absolute tragedy. We are committing to reduce the number of self-inflicted deaths in prison. There have been no more this year than there were last year, but every single one is absolutely a tragedy. We will overhaul how mental health is treated in prisons, giving governors a much greater say over what services their prisoners need and how the available budget is used. However, it was Labour’s inexplicable refusal to introduce waiting times for mental health care at the same time as introducing them for physical healthcare that set back the cause of mental health for so many years, and in some cases saw people being sentenced to prison in order to access the support that they could not get in the community.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am very disappointed that the Secretary of State is not sitting at the very heart of his ministerial team. I hope the right hon. Gentleman is not lurking uncharacteristically in the shadows—we would not want that.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

2. What progress his Department has made on ensuring that offenders are engaged in meaningful work in prison.

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[Mr Speaker]

What a worthy representative the hon. Gentleman is of his Government.

[Dr James Davies]

Is the Minister aware of an outstanding pathfinder project at North Wales Women’s Centre in Rhyl, in my constituency, which offers holistic support to women offenders in line with recommendations in the Corston report? Will he join me in urging the Government to pursue improved provision and rehabilitation for women offenders to help to avoid the cost and family disruption of incarceration for relatively minor offences?

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[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Question 6, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady was quite close, but we are on Question 5. She is ahead of herself, and not for the first time I am sure.

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

5. What progress he has made on reviewing sentencing for causing death by dangerous driving.

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[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

19. Claudia Lawrence from York was last seen on 18 March 2009; she is still missing, as are around 2,500 people in the UK. In the midst of their grief, families have to battle to deal with financial and property affairs, and they need access to justice. There is a simple solution: guardianship on behalf of the missing person. The Government promised this over a year ago. Will the Secretary of State commit to putting it in this year’s Queen’s Speech?

[Mr Speaker]

That is a very good example of what I call “shoe-horning”. The hon. Lady shoe-horned in a later question into this one, and was just about in order. She is very ingenious.

[Mr Vara]

The hon. Lady raises a very good point. There is a huge amount of sympathy across the political divide for the individual about whom she spoke. She will appreciate, however, that it would be inappropriate for me to pre-empt what will appear in the Queen’s Speech.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway) is to be congratulated on her marathon on Sunday. She is looking in remarkably good nick.

[Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Perhaps my colleagues would like to join me next year, as I try to smash my time of seven hours and 17 minutes.

Last month, I visited a prison in Nottingham that serves as a primary prison for many offenders in Derby. Today, an ongoing inquest into the death of a Derby man who died in his cell revealed that traces of legal highs were found in his body. What assurances can the Minister give me that the Department is doing all it can to tackle the levels of legal highs in our prison system?