Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans his Department has to restructure the counter-terrorism programme.
Following the two recent attacks at Fishmongers’ Hall and HMP Whitemoor, the Government announced a package of funding and legislative changes, including major investment in counter terrorism resources in prisons and probation, which is overseen by the Joint Extremism Unit (JEXU) a joint Home Office and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation (HMPPS) unit.
The package of measures include:
Tougher sentences for the most serious terrorist offenders, which will mean dangerous terrorist offenders who receive extended determinate sentences serve their entire sentence
Doubling the number of Counter-Terrorism specialist probation staff. These specially trained staff will deliver a set of new, intensive national standards for managing terrorists on licence;
These new standards will mean terrorists are subjected to closer monitoring and reporting requirements.
An increase in the resources dedicated to training front-line prison and probation staff and;
The introduction of polygraph testing.
An independent review of our Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA).
Following the attack on 2 February in Streatham, the government announced emergency legislation to ensure an end to terrorist offenders getting released automatically, having served half of their sentence with no check or review.