Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer]

If I may return the compliment, the hon. Lady has handled this appalling incident in her constituency with a great deal of skill. I am committed to working with her and the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), who is leading on some of the initial responses, alongside the local authority. The call for evidence on where we go on regulation will commence in the next few months; the decision, of course, will have to wait for the public consultation. This afternoon, I am meeting the two major trade bodies to discuss how they can assist with voluntary inspections, to ensure that after this terrible incident—what has been happening is quite horrific—which nobody thought could occur, we get this right, so that people have confidence in the vast majority of funeral directors, who are entirely respectable and treat the deceased with the respect and care that we would expect.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to reduce reoffending.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

Reducing reoffending is a core mission of this Government. That is why, for example, we rolled out the genuinely transformational policy of 12 weeks’ guaranteed accommodation for offenders on release, and it is why we have invested heavily in employment; there are prison employment leads in every resettlement prison. The plan is working: the reoffending rate has fallen significantly since 2010, from 31% to 25%, and in the two years to March 2023, the proportion of prison leavers in employment six months after release more than doubled.

[Stephen Crabb]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his answer. He may be aware that the Welsh Affairs Committee has recently heard from businesses such as Timpson and Williams Homes about the work being done to train and recruit prisoners in Wales. While there was a lot of praise for the New Futures Network, which brokers partnerships between employers and prisons, what is being done to expand the number of release on temporary licence schemes? As we have heard, they are really important for improving employability and giving prisoners a better chance of holding down a job when they get out of the gate.

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the interest he is showing in this issue. He is absolutely right to pay tribute to the New Futures Network, which does exceptional work in custody. Of course, it is very often able to liaise with employment advisory boards—local business people in the area—to ensure that prisoners are trained in the skills that they need for jobs in that area. When I went to HMP Berwyn, which is of course in Wales, one of the things that I was so impressed by is that its employment hub has a video suite, so that prisoners can be interviewed by employers on the outside. On my right hon. Friend’s point about ROTL, that is something that prison governors keep under review. Certainly in the right cases, where ROTL is safe for the public, it can be a useful tool to ensure that prisoners are rehabilitated and get into work, so that they can be law-abiding citizens in the future.