Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

Release on temporary licence has a huge role to play in helping prisoners to gain employment in the wider world. I have been speaking with Timpson’s, for example, which employs a lot of ex-offenders, and that is how they are trialled before release. We are looking at that to ensure that the guidance that governors receive allows them to do more with release on temporary licence, specifically in relation to employment opportunities.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

5. What plans the Government have to increase the autonomy of prison governors to enable them to make reforms.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Elizabeth Truss)]

We will turn around offenders’ lives only if governors have the levers they need over education, work and health in prison. That is why our reforms devolve power over budgets and services to governors.

[Victoria Prentis]

Procurement is a complicated business. What guidance and training are governors being given to ensure that they can complete the procurement process properly, be that for the provision of mental health services or even the recruitment of the dogs that bark at drones?

[Elizabeth Truss]

It sounds like my hon. Friend is asking for some of those patrol dogs at her local prison, HMP Bullingdon, which I am delighted to say will be one of the 30 prisons that will be recruiting locally to build up a local cadre of staff, starting next January. The answer is that we will be setting up a What Works network to help governors gain the expertise they need to take those decisions and make those things happen locally.