Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve McCabe and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I can tell my hon. Friend that for as long as my right hon. Friend and I are in charge of prisons, they will not be places of luxury. We have made it clear that when prisoners want to wear their own clothes, and to have access to television or to more of their own money, they will have to earn those privileges. As my right hon. Friend said earlier, we are going further than that in saying that prisoners who cause damage to their cells will not only be punished for that within the prison system but will be expected to pay for the damage.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Has the review that was promised after the Reece Ludlow revelations about prisoners having access to graphic images of their victims been concluded, and has that practice now ceased?

[Jeremy Wright]

I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to prisoners having access to legal papers relating to their cases. This is a difficult problem because, as he will recognise, prisoners have certain rights of access to their legal papers, but it is a cause for concern to us, and to him, that they might have access to materials that they can keep in their cells and show to other people. That is clearly inappropriate, and we are looking into how we can best restrict that access. He can rest assured that we are seeking to do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve McCabe and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I can. We are saying that there should be an element of punishment in every community order, unless there are exceptional circumstances, but that does not prevent a sentencer from passing whatever other measures in the order they believe appropriate for the purposes of rehabilitation. My hon. Friend is right to identify some of those, but there are of course many more. This is all about reducing reoffending. That is partly about punishment, but it is also about ensuring that someone does not go right back to the same cycle of offending.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Work in the community is obviously a valuable element of punishment, but it is quite a crowded field, with various voluntary youth organisations and the unemployed also jostling for that work. What other specific types of punishment does the Minister have in mind? Will he give us a flavour of what will happen?

[Jeremy Wright]

It is first worth pointing out that we have toughened up the work requirement, so we will now expect people sentenced to community payback to go and do it very soon afterwards. We expect them to do it for four days a week and we expect them to do it properly. If they do not, they will have breached the order and there will be consequences. The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that there will be other elements to a community order which can properly be seen as punitive, whether it is a restriction on movement, an exclusion order from certain places or a financial penalty. There is a range of options available to the court, but we think—and I think his constituents would think—that each order should include a punitive element.