Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I agree with the hon. Lady’s point about the statistics—we should be led by the evidence—and I hope to make further progress on this matter in the time that is left ahead.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I very much hope that a large amount of time is left to my right hon. Friend, who has been a truly reforming Secretary of State in this area, and I endorse everything said on this question by my fellow members of the Select Committee on Justice. However, does the Secretary of State agree that it is very important that if we do have community sentences they are robust and well enforced? Given that the original question was asked by a Scottish MP, I am conscious of the fact that one in three community payback orders in Scotland are ignored by criminals.

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that point, and much though I believe that we should make rapid progress in this area, I think that we should do so in a way that ensures the system works properly, and I do think that the link with, for example, strengthening community sentences and the way the probation system works is very important. I hope that we are moving in a direction whereby we can make progress and we focus on ensuring that these prolific petty offenders do not reoffend and we are led by the evidence on what is the most effective way to achieve that, and my sense is that there is a large cross-party consensus on this point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

8. If he will make it his policy to end the requirement for 12 months of probation supervision for people with sentences of less than 12 months.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)]

It is absolutely vital that prisoners get the support they need after release to turn their lives around. It would be premature to reverse reforms that, for the first time, saw those released on short sentences supervised after release, with a period dedicated solely to rehabilitation. We have already looked at ways of making that process more proportionate, but as my hon. Friend will know, I want to look at the broader question of short sentences and measures that actually serve to reduce reoffending.

[Victoria Prentis]

If I may trespass for one moment on your good will, Mr Speaker, given the previous question, perhaps you would like to join me in congratulating the Nacro winners, who are in the Public Gallery at the moment and who are about to join me for tea in the Pugin Room—where are they? They are putting their hands up so they can be congratulated by all of us in the House today, who appreciate what probation staff and those who work with prisoners do for us.

Does the Secretary of State agree that we should put real resource into alternatives to custody, so that we can end the cycle of reoffending and stop all our constituents from suffering from further crime?

[Mr Gauke]

I join in the congratulations to the prize winners in the Gallery and welcome them to the House of Commons.

I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of alternatives to custody, and I am keen to ensure that we make greater use of curfews, exclusion zones and new ways in which we can restrict offenders in the community in a way that can be more effective in reducing future reoffending.

Prisons and Probation

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Sometimes, Opposition day debates can be a bit of knockabout, but there is a lot that we ought to debate and discuss in respect of the prison system and how it operates, and leadership is a really important aspect. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and congratulate him on his promotion. He pursued with great vigour the theme of the importance of leadership—of having the right governors and leadership teams in prisons—and it is absolutely key. To be honest, that matters more than whether an institution is run by a private company or by the public sector. The quality of the leadership is a much more important factor. I hope we have an opportunity to debate that issue and others like it in future.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

That is what has struck me during this debate: what matters in prisons are the standards under which people are kept and the results that are shown in stopping people reoffending, not who keeps the prisoners. Does my right hon. Friend agree?

[Mr Gauke]

That is exactly right. If the private sector is not working, I am prepared to step in—I have no problem with doing that—but the most important thing is that we should look at the outputs and outcomes and base what we do on that, rather than take a simplistic view that the public sector is good and the private sector is bad or, indeed, vice versa. That is the approach that I wish to take.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

Obviously, that is a tragic case, and, as I have before, I express my sympathies for the family of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. As regards identifying and attributing blame, I am not in a position to comment on that. CRCs manage those who are assessed as low and medium-risk offenders.

If I can return to my comments, I want to make a wider point about the crucial role that can be played by the private sector and, indeed, the voluntary sector in supporting probation work. It is the dedication and commitment of these organisations, many of them small and community-led, that enables offenders to turn their lives around. The work of the voluntary sector, particularly with vulnerable offenders such as those with learning difficulties and other complex needs, is irreplaceable and the Government are committed to supporting it. We have been clear that the public, private and voluntary sectors all have a clear role to play in building a strong probation service. That does not mean that we cannot learn from the experience of transforming rehabilitation.

I have been clear that under CRCs the quality of offender management has too often been disappointing. I am determined to learn from what has gone well and what has not under the current system. That is why the Government have acted decisively to end CRC contracts early, invest an additional £22 million a year in through-the-gate provision, and hold a consultation on the shape of future arrangements. I am grateful to all those who have responded to the public consultation, as well as for the work of Dame Glenys Stacey, the Justice Committee and the Public Accounts Committee in providing helpful scrutiny and challenge as we consider how best to deliver a stronger, more resilient system. It is important to recognise, as those partners have, the role of external factors in creating a challenging operating environment for CRCs, but we have also looked very carefully at their findings about the complexities of contractualising offender management and the challenges of ensuring continuity of supervision and integration among providers.

I look forward to bringing detailed plans for the future of probation to the House in due course. I will be driven by the evidence and what works. This must not be a matter of ideology or dogmatism but one of single-minded focus on delivering the probation system we need.

[Victoria Prentis]

When?

[Mr Gauke]

I think the phrase I just used was “in due course”.

[Victoria Prentis]

Is it?

[Mr Gauke]

It certainly is “in due course”.

Finally, as we debate these issues we should recognise that the challenges in the current system are not down to the work of probation staff. Their hard work and professionalism, in both the NPS and CRCs, is tremendous and I pay tribute to them. Probation is a vocational career, and as part of the future arrangements we are looking to establish an independent statutory body so that probation staff have the same professional recognition as their peers in health and education.

In conclusion, as I said at the beginning, the role of the private sector and the voluntary sector in the criminal justice system is an issue for debate. We should constantly examine and re-examine what the right role should be, but the approach from the Labour party is that this is the only issue that matters. We hear nothing from Labour about how to deal with repeat petty offenders and the role of non-custodial sentences. There is nothing about the measures to properly tackle drugs and violence; nothing about offender management in prisons; nothing about how we are recruiting additional prison officers or getting people jobs through our education and employment strategy. The only thing we ever hear is nationalise, nationalise, nationalise. As Sadiq Khan, one of the predecessors of the hon. Member for Leeds East, said in 2011, defending the Labour Government’s use of private sector prisons,

“our policy was and is based on what works, rather than dogma.”—[Official Report, 31 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 527.]

That is as it should be. On this side of the House, we will always work to put the public first in reducing reoffending, protecting the public and building a stronger justice system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this point. I am happy to write to him on the individual case, which has a number of complexities, as I am sure he is aware. I have mentioned the joint action plan to improve IPP prisoners’ sentence progression. These measures include case reviews led by psychologists for those prisoners not making the expected progress, an increased number of places on specialist progression regimes, and greatly improved access to rehabilitative programmes. I continue to be ambitious to ensure that we do everything we can in this area, remembering that public protection must remain our priority.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for what he has said about his ambitions for IPP prisoners. Does the joint action plan have an end date—that is, is there a date beyond which we should not detain people under these sorts of sentences?

[Mr Gauke]

In the end, it comes down to the decisions made by the Parole Board, which has to make its decisions based on public protection. In some cases— regrettable though it may be—if someone is not safe to be released, the Parole Board must make that decision. We need to ensure that we do everything we can to progress these cases as best we can. As I have said, we have made progress in recent years.

Worboys Case and the Parole Board

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

What I would say is that it is really important to get this system working well. In many cases, it does work well—in many cases, the Parole Board is making difficult decisions, and in the vast majority of cases, it gets them right—and there are times when we need to recognise and support that. Unfortunately, however, this case has revealed that some things went wrong, and they need to be addressed.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

Rule 25 did not exist for most of the years that I conducted litigation on behalf of the Parole Board, and I must say that I welcome its demise. I thank the Secretary of State for taking such timely action, and for making such a thorough statement today. However, I ask him to remember that Parole Board hearings often happen many years after an offence and that victims will have moved on. While it is right that we have open justice—the press are rightly interested in probing how the system works—it is also very important to protect victims, who may well be starting to move on from what has happened to them. In that respect, I urge him to look at the excellent recommendations made by the Justice Committee, which should have reached his in-tray today.

[Mr Gauke]

I will, as always, look very closely at the excellent recommendations of the Justice Committee.

Parole Board: Transparency and Victim Support

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I can well understand why the right hon. Gentleman raises this issue. It is a matter for the CPS and Metropolitan police, however, and there is nothing I can say to inform the House this morning on that point.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I should declare that during my 17 years in the Treasury solicitors department I frequently acted for both the Secretary of State and the Parole Board and sometimes for both together.

I commend the Secretary of State for his detailed work on this case. Can he reassure us that the views not only of the statutory victims but of the wider group of victims known to the authorities will be taken into account?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. There are different systems in place for the statutory victims versus others, but sometimes, as in this case, there will be many people who essentially are victims but not in respect of any convictions—in this case, Worboys’s convictions—and we need to ensure that the system works for them as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

10. What steps his Department has taken to ensure that people do not face financial difficulties while waiting for their first universal credit payment.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr David Gauke)]

Advances are available at the start of a universal credit claim to ensure that those who need it have money to tide them over until their first payment. Our data shows that around half of claimants are receiving advances, and we have recently undertaken an exercise to improve awareness and access to this support.

[Victoria Prentis]

I thank the Secretary of State for his very reassuring answer. In Banbury, we are fortunate to have very low unemployment rates. Can he tell me what will be the likely impact on jobs of universal credit roll-out in my constituency?

[Mr Gauke]

In total, it is estimated that universal credit will help around 250,000 more people into employment. On average, that works out at around 400 extra people in work in each parliamentary constituency, but universal credit will, of course, have larger impacts in areas with a higher proportion of benefit claimants or a higher prevalence of single-parent and out-of-work families.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The numbers are based on the ONS projection that was used at the last Budget. No account is taken of the achievements of the renegotiation secured by the Prime Minister. On the Treasury analysis, a large number of independent economic commentators have argued that it is broadly in the right direction. My hon. Friends who advocate that we should leave the EU should come forward with their own analysis, setting out exactly what model they would follow and what the economic consequences would be.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to help first-time homebuyers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Prentis and David Gauke

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We achieved a huge amount in the previous Parliament on tax loopholes. In the Budget, the Chancellor set out plans for additional resources for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to raise even more in dealing with tax avoidance and tax evasion. The particular example that the hon. Gentleman mentions relates to the long-standing treatment of the capital gains tax applying to private equity—something that has existed for many years and applied in most other countries. The Budget contained a number of measures that were designed to close loopholes for the private equity and hedge fund industries.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

12. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the level of employment.