Tom Brake
Main Page: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)Department Debates - View all Tom Brake's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for the work she did in bringing the Bill through and turning it into an Act. It is an important piece of legislation, which extends our powers to work alongside network providers. We are taking significant steps in dealing with the security threat posed by mobile phones. We have to prevent them from getting into prisons. We have to use detection methods to find them and stop them working, and we are making advances on that. We also need to exploit the data that is held on them.
Having also recently visited Downview, I know what the right hon. Gentleman is talking about, and I fully agree that restorative justice and the work of charities such as the Sycamore Tree project can have a vital role to play in making our prisons safer and more rehabilitative. Restorative approaches are already used across the youth estate and, as the right hon. Gentleman highlighted, in a number of other prisons. They have real benefits, in terms of both defusing conflict and repairing harm after an incident in prison.