Prisons

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

A future Labour Government will not treat our hard-working, hard-pressed prison officers as the enemy—[Interruption.] I hear the roars of disapproval from those on the Government Benches. Anybody would think they were presiding over a successful Prison Service and there was not a prison crisis. If they would listen rather than roar at me, I would be grateful.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

rose—

[Richard Burgon]

I really do need to make progress, I am afraid.

The ambition set out in the White Paper to increase staffing levels is welcome, but 2,500 officers represent less than half the number of prison officers cut by Conservative Justice Secretaries since 2010, and in order to get 2,500 extra officers, 8,000 will have to be recruited in just two years. I wonder whether the Justice Secretary has confidence that that will happen, because I do not come across many in the justice sector who think it any more than a pipe dream under her management. In the year to September 2016, she had about 400 fewer officers. There is a crisis in staff retention; they are leaving more quickly than she can recruit them. The Prison Officers Association membership has very recently rejected a pay deal offered by the Government. What plans has she made to improve the offer and begin to make those jobs more attractive to the public? She currently faces a recruitment drive that is in danger of failing before it has begun.

Announcements that ex-service personnel will be recruited to the Prison Service might grab quick headlines, but in truth this is nothing new. There have always been former members of our armed forces taking jobs in our Prison Service. The role of soldier and prison officer are not exactly the same, by the way, as prison officers who have been in the Army have told me. The Secretary of State must explain how she can compensate for the fact that, as we have heard, so many experienced officers have left, and are leaving, our Prison Service.

Overseeing a transformation to a prison estate populated by more experienced prisoners and more inexperienced prison officers presents a clear and present danger. Inadequate staffing levels have a range of consequences. Prisons are less safe because staff are far outnumbered. Prisoners are spending more time in their cells because they cannot be managed outside, and prisoner frustration is heightened by the lack of time out of their cells.

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[Richard Burgon]

I am certainly not aware of any such policy announcement being made. [Interruption.] Conservative Members are making some strange gesticulations. It is not Labour policy to release half the prisoners. Why on earth would that be the case?

We need a lasting way to manage the prison population. In November 2016, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, appeared before the Justice Committee. Not surprisingly, he was questioned on the prisons crisis, and he offered a view on what could be done:

“The prison population is very, very high at the moment. Whether it will continue to rise is always difficult to tell, but there are worries that it will. I am not sure that at the end of the day we can’t dispose of more by really tough—and I do mean tough—community penalties.”

Prison has always been seen as a punishment. A person breaks the social contract that governs much of our relations with one another, and they may be imprisoned. Members from across the House rightly see prison as a fitting sanction, and it must be right that when a convicted person is a danger to the public, they are kept away from the public until such time as they no longer pose a threat. A significant minority may never be safe to release. But we must ask whether prison is the right place for some of those who offend. We should always reflect on that, because if we do not, we find ourselves in the position that the Government are in now.

[Victoria Prentis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

I have already said that I will not give way any further.

The warehousing of thousands of people without any support or access to rehabilitation means that when they leave prison, as they inevitably will, they will be in exactly the same position as when they entered. They might still be drug-dependent. They might still be homeless. They might still be in poverty. It is right—in fact, it is our duty—not to be complacent, but to reflect and ask ourselves whether the way in which we deal with at least some of those who break the law is working. With many offenders, it is not. Their stay in prison is too short to teach them new skills, or for them to obtain a qualification or stabilise a drug addiction.

In recent weeks I have met stakeholders who question whether it is worth sending people to prison for a few weeks or a few months, and I have met prison officers who lament that they see the same people over and over again. When stakeholders, people at the frontline and experts raise such matters, we must take them seriously. We must punish and we must deliver smart sentences as well as strict sentences, always asking ourselves what the best way is to protect the public. I firmly believe that MPs must have that urgent discussion.

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[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones). One of the most exciting parts of the speech made by the Secretary of State concerned the pilots on blocking mobile phones in prisons. Mobile phones increase the amount of organised crime that can be carried out on a daily basis in prisons, so it is critical that we deal with that. It is also a pleasure to follow a number of distinguished exes who have offered fantastic ideas. Aren’t we lucky that we do not have to recall them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) would like us to believe, to benefit from the brilliance of their ideas to improve the serious problem of prison safety?

The Justice Committee published its report in May 2016, when we urged the Government, as the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said, to act quickly on prison safety. It is clear from everything that has been said, not least by the Secretary of State, that the MOJ is bursting with ideas. The Justice Committee welcomes the White Paper. In due course, we will scrutinise, and probably welcome a great deal of, the police and crime Bill—we have been given some nuggets this afternoon. However, to do our job of holding the Department to account, we need adequate information.

On 29 November, when the prisons Minister kindly appeared before us, he said that he would give us monthly reports on safety indicators. We have not had them, despite our chasing, so I urge him again to produce them as quickly as possible because we need that information. We also welcome the extra money that has been given to our prisons. About a fifth will be spent on staff, which we support, but we need more information about where the rest of it will go. Substantially higher funding will be given to Bristol, Hewell and Rochester so that they can improve safety. We will want to know if that works, so we need the data to assess that.

I understand the Department’s frustration with Members who say that reducing prison numbers is an easy solution to its problems. My ideas about who to release—they are not, I stress, the Committee’s ideas, many of which have been mentioned—include IPP prisoners; foreign national prisoners, although we know that is not easy; and women prisoners and veterans, who have low reoffending rates. However, that is tinkering at the edges of the large prison population. If we cannot recruit—I accept that the Department is trying desperately hard to do so—will the Minister make a commitment at least to consider whether there should be a shift in the sentencing framework, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) suggested, towards community-based alternatives? I would also ask the Minister to consider the fact that we desperately need more secure mental health beds so that we can screen prisoners immediately on reception and divert them to the best place. No one on the Justice Committee thinks that the prisons Minister has an easy job, and we welcome many of the reforms that the Government have recently set out, but we need the data so that we can do our job of holding him to account.