Oral Answers to Questions

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was asked—

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

1. What recent assessment she has made of the level of funding available to regional arts organisations.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am sure that the House will allow me briefly to pay tribute to Sir Colin Davis, one of the world’s finest conductors, who died last week.

Over the life of this Parliament, we will invest almost £3 billion to help to create rich cultural experiences for as many people as possible across the country.

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the Minister for his answer and I echo his tribute to Sir Colin.

Does the Minister share my real concern that the Arts Council appears ready to allocate a further £20 million of taxpayers’ money to London’s South Bank when so many arts organisations in the regions are crying out for funding? Given that our capital city is so wealthy and has such deep pockets, surely a much greater proportion of private and charitable funds should be financing that otherwise very worthwhile endeavour.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is a capital allocation for the further redevelopment of the South Bank, and obviously some of our major national arts institutions are based in the capital, but something like £174 million is going to arts organisations outside the capital this year, and that level of funding will continue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Miller]

I can understand why my hon. Friend has raised that issue. As I said earlier, the role of superfast broadband and connectivity in our lives is growing. It is one of the most important ways that people can do business in this country. We are ensuring that it is a priority to get connectivity, whether it is through 4G or superfast broadband, to all areas of the country. I am pleased to consider specific examples, but I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), is meeting BT weekly to go through each of the procurement plans in detail. Indeed, 60% of our programme for rural areas has been procured and it is going ahead at great speed.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

T2. Has the Secretary of State had any luck in breaking the logjam of appointments in Downing street, or is the Prime Minister still blocking anyone who is not a member of the Conservative party from serving on trusts and boards?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is perhaps thinking back to a bygone age, when that was an issue. I can reassure him that we want to have the best people in place to do the job. What I will say directly to the hon. Gentleman is that we are trying to do a better job of ensuring that we get more women involved in those appointments and that we have diversity on our boards, not just in business but in trusts.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

In all these things, I take the view that the status of the person involved—whether they are classified as public sector or private sector, or who exactly they work for or which union they belong to—is a slightly subordinate issue. This is a rather sterile debate of a few decades ago about whether there should be private sector or public sector provision. What matters is the quality of what is done, the quality of the person, the relationships they develop, and what is available to them to make a community sentence more effective.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

7. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the system for recovery of criminal fines.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

In the financial year 2011-12, Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service collected £279 million in respect of criminal fines, further reducing the cost of enforcement and achieving the best ever performance against the payment rate measure. But now we want to do better, so we have developed better-quality performance indicators for publication and are exploring the potential for creating a partnership with a commercial company to build on the improvements we have already made in fines collection.

[Tristram Hunt]

What the Minister did not reveal is that over £600 million in outstanding fines is owed by criminals, of which £10 million relates to Staffordshire, and a further £5.5 million of unrecovered debts have already been written off. When faced with falling living standards and the effects of ill-planned spending cuts, my constituents want to know why this Government are allowing criminals to think that crime does pay.

[Mr Djanogly]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the collection backlog, and thereby raises the collection inadequacies of the previous Administration which we are now having to sort out. In 2011-12, the payment rate was 106%, and last year, for the first time since 2003-04, the outstanding balance was reduced by £16 million—that is, 3%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

Plainly I do not agree with my hon. Friend’s proposition. Prison is there for prolific and serious offenders and, by any judgment, the examples he has given are of prolific offenders. I would need some explanation of why there are such cases, where people simply have not responded to the treatments available, particularly in the new environment where we can deliver effective rehabilitation. If such people fail to address that and pick up the services that are made available, they should expect to go to prison.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions he has had on research into the effect of imprisonment on reoffending rates among women.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

The Ministry of Justice recently published research showing that reoffending for women offenders under probation supervision was 6 percentage points lower than for similar women who served short-term prison sentences. We also publish a statistical report on women in the criminal justice system that is informed by an independent advisory group. This group has expressed interest in looking at whether reoffending rates for women vary by sentence length in the same way as it does for men.

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the Minister for his answer. He will know from Baroness Corston’s 2007 report that much can be achieved to prevent female ex-prisoners from reoffending by proper intervention that addresses drug use, prostitution and domestic violence. Chepstow House in my constituency, which is run by the Brighter Futures housing association, does exactly that—cutting reoffending rates and saving taxpayers’ money. Will the Minister agree to visit Chepstow House in the coming year to show his support for a charity that is putting some of the principles behind breaking the cycle into action?

[Mr Blunt]

I would hope to have the opportunity to do so, but I cannot promise to do so. I have yet to visit a substantial amount of the prison estate and a number of probation trusts, but I would certainly like the opportunity to visit. I suspect what is underlying the hon. Gentleman’s question is the funding issue. On funding for centres such as Chepstow House, what I can say at this stage is that we have identified funding to sustain those projects that have demonstrated effective performance and we will make an announcement shortly about what will replace the current funding arrangements.