Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

No, I will not take points of order now. I am always interested in the views of the hon. Gentleman, but not now. We will hear from him in due course, and we look forward to that with interest and anticipation. Well done—the hon. Gentleman should stay in his seat, and we will hear from him in due course.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I commend the Prisons Minister for following up his predecessor’s strong support for Lord Farmer’s review. Will he meet me to discuss extending its reach to the welfare of prisoners’ children, especially at the point—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is very good of the Foreign Secretary to drop in on us—we are deeply grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. However, I think that the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) should be given a chance to reprise her question, because I have interrupted her. Blurt it out from start to finish.

[Fiona Bruce]

Will the Prisons Minister meet me to discuss the welfare of prisoner’ children, especially at the point of sentencing? There are 200,000 such children a year, and they often fall through the care system completely.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. One of the most terrifying statistics is the very high number of prisoners’ children who go on to offend themselves. I should be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss not just the issue of families, but the issue of children in particular.

Prisoners: Parental Rights

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). I am pleased that she said that, in a healthy situation, it is vital for a child to have contact with their parent who is in prison. I will speak about that with particular reference to the excellent recent Farmer review about the importance of strengthening prisoners’ family relationships, where appropriate, to aid rehabilitation.

The Farmer review calls that a “golden thread” that needs to run through the prison system, along with the threads of employment and education, as a priority for prison governors. It says that that third strand is essential if we are to

“put a crowbar into the revolving door of repeat reoffending and tackle the intergenerational transmission of crime.”

I therefore urge Ministers to consider adding a new deputy director for families to the existing deputy director roles in the prison system. Before I highlight two ways in which prisoners’ family ties and, importantly, parental ties could be strengthened, I pay tribute to Dr Samantha Callan, Lord Farmer’s adviser, whose intelligent, thoughtful and dedicated contribution to the production of the review was invaluable.

First, I encourage Ministers to consider providing Skype or other face-to-face digital platforms where family visits may be difficult. BT’s slogan, “It’s good to talk”, might be a cliché, but it is incredibly important for people to keep relationships with their families or other significant individuals alive while they are in prison. Men who can ring their children every evening have a reason to stay out of trouble throughout the day. One prisoner told the Farmer review:

“If part of your prison routine is to do homework with your child or ring home regularly to hold a quality conversation with her, this is a strong deterrent to taking a substance that would mean you were unable to do that because you were ‘off your head’.”

The high cost of phone calls is frequently raised by external prison organisations such as the Prison Reform Trust as a cause of considerable resentment across the prison estate. I understand that costs should fall when the contract with BT is renegotiated in April 2018, and plans to digitise the entire prison estate with cable networks and to put a phone in every cell will further reduce call costs. However, that system will not be fully installed and functioning until 2021, and a prison service that values relationships needs to do more to help people stay in touch with their families and particularly their children.

Although phone calls are highly valued, the prison service should consider adapting to new forms of communication that are becoming commonplace in the community. That is not about giving every prisoner an iPad, although I have been told that women in some high-security prisons in the US have access to iPads in the interests of staying in touch with their children. Virtual video visiting is gradually being made available in prisons in Northern Ireland, such as Magilligan Prison. Although I would be concerned if we got to the point where that replaced face-to-face visits, Skype-type technology can enable prisoners to “visit” their own homes and see their family members in that context, and remind them of what they have to gain by settling into their sentences, getting out as soon as possible and not returning.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am sure the hon. Lady is aware that children whose mothers are in prison are, on average, 64 miles away from them. I agree wholeheartedly with what she says, particularly about electronic interaction. Does she agree that, if we are to overcome the sheer distances, particularly for Welsh prisoners—there are no women’s prisons in Wales, although I am not advocating for one—we must find new technologies to enable mothers to interact with their children?

[Fiona Bruce]

I absolutely do. Although keeping prisoners close to home has to be the goal wherever possible, the challenges of the prison population make that hard, so it is not unusual for prisoners to be some distance from home—so far that families may even have to stay overnight if they visit. I wholeheartedly concur with the hon. Gentleman.

Technology that is being put into prisons to facilitate virtual court appearances could be adapted to improve contact for families on the outside who may otherwise have to make a superhuman effort to come into prison. Foreign nationals are unlikely to get visitors. In his report, Lord Farmer mentions meeting a man in prison who had been in local authority care since he was a child and whose only relative was his 93-year-old grandmother. It is impossible for her to visit, but if someone helped her with Skype she would at least be able to see him again. Imagine an A-level student close to her exams who was unable to visit her dad in prison but could communicate with him using a tablet, or a mother with a child with a health problem who would otherwise have to choose between visiting her partner in prison or keeping a vigil by that child’s bedside.

Of course there have to be safeguards. The Farmer review recommends that, in the interim period before full digitisation, empowered governors should be able to make Skype-type communication available to the small percentage of prisoners whose families cannot visit them due to infirmity, distance or other factors. A booking system and application process would mean that prisoners’ requests to access video calling technology had to be cleared by the governor. Alternatively, tablets could be made available in visiting halls, as apparently happens on the juvenile estate in Tasmania. Family members might need help to access video calling technology. Funds from the assisted prison visits scheme could be made available to people who needed to travel to a local voluntary organisation for help to make a call, for example. Will the Minister consider what can be done between today and full digitisation to ensure that families can maintain contact through these innovative means?

The second point I will make—more briefly—relates to the use of ROTL: release on temporary licence. The latest, up-to-date policy on ROTL procedures is unpublished and awaited by governors. I urge Ministers to ensure that it is published as soon as possible. Research indicates that the use of ROTL to maintain and develop family ties contributes to reducing reoffending. Respondents to the Farmer review—prisoners, families, organisations and academics—considered that it should be used more. They told Lord Farmer that that would give prisoners the opportunity to adjust gradually to family life outside of prison and to spend more time in responsible roles such as parent or partner.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree that the emphasis when making decisions about release on temporary licence should be that it is not a privilege for the offender but in the best interests of the offender’s child and family?

[Fiona Bruce]

I do. If we are to reduce the disturbing statistics on the number of prisoners’ children who themselves go on to offend, we must take their interests into account. It is important that families’ involvement in decisions regarding ROTL is also considered and included. We cannot assume that ROTL will always be good for prisoners’ families; they need to be involved in that decision.

However, where ROTL can be granted, it really should be. Colleagues may remember the terrible riots that occurred at Strangeways—I was a young lawyer practising nearby at the time. As a result of those riots more than a quarter of a century ago, Lord Woolf published a review which said that home leave—now ROTL—

“should be extended”

because it

“restores prisoners’ self-confidence, helps maintain family relationships, and is an incentive to behave well in prison.”

However, the Ministry of Justice’s own indicators suggest that use of ROTL has fallen significantly, even since 2013, partly because governors are waiting for guidance on how to apply it. They want to be confident to apply it. They can see evidence that it is effective, but they need the guidance. Will the Minister explain why it has not been issued yet and let us know when it will be forthcoming?

An expert on social mobility, with particular reference to the opportunity areas planned around the country to help improve social mobility and opportunity for children, said that while education is important, one thing which underlies everything is parental engagement in a child’s life. If that is true outside the prison borders, it surely must be equally true within them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing this important debate. I found her contribution and the other speeches interesting and profound, and I have learned a great deal.

I could have left the role of prisons and what goes on there for other colleagues to debate. I represent St Ives and the Isles of Scilly, and there are no prisons nearby and crime is relatively low. I can count on one hand the people I have met who have had contact with prisons, and only two of them, as far as I could see, should ever have ended up there. There are therefore plenty far more pressing concerns that could legitimately occupy my time. However, within each person is a heartbeat, and I believe that we have a responsibility to work to create an environment and opportunity that allows everyone to play their full part in society. On that basis, how we treat and manage prisoners is important and can lead either to full lives and safer communities, or to broken lives and chaos.

For me this is about the purpose of prisons. Prison is a method of keeping communities safe for the time that the prisoner is inside, but it is also a place where lives can be reset and people can be rehabilitated. It is right to take someone who is judged to be a risk to society out of that community, but I believe that from the day a prisoner arrives in prison, work must be done to prepare for their release.

Other than keeping an individual away from a life of crime, prison achieves little if nothing is done to address their behaviour when he or she is released. Families play an important part in that process and I want to spend a few moments considering the need to enable prisoners to fulfil their parental responsibilities, which I believe could, and should, be a focus for reform. Bringing men in particular face to face with their enduring responsibilities to the family is indispensable to the rehabilitation culture that we urgently need to develop in our penal system, and that must be integral to the changes sought. Consistently good family work can help to equip a father to play his role in the home, and that will pay dividends once the sentence is served.

The inspirational prison reformer Elizabeth Fry—she has also been mentioned by the Justice Secretary—called for arrangements by which prisons

“may be rendered schools of industry and virtue.”

The best family work taking place in prisons has brought men face to face with their enduring responsibilities to the family left in the community, particularly their wives, partners and children, but also their parents, siblings and grandparents. It helps them to forge a new identity for themselves—an important precursor to desistance from crime—based on being a good role model for their children, a caring husband, partner and friend, and a reliable provider through legal employment. Some men are already alive to those responsibilities when they go to prison, but they mistakenly think that using the proceeds of crime is the best way to fulfil them. If prison is to have any role in rehabilitation, work must be done to harness the virtue but adjust the means.

Responsibilities are not discharged in a vacuum. Families need to be willing and able to engage with the rehabilitation process, and harnessing the resource of good family relationships must be a golden thread that runs through processes in all prisons—my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) also made that point. Prisoners’ responsibilities to their families should be seen as an important lever for change, and families are often significant assets for offender management during and at the end of sentences. Prison staff find that their responsibilities and efforts are aided when good family contact and engagement is nurtured and maintained. Unfortunately, however, experience has shown that sentence planning by the offender management team rarely takes into account the understanding and knowledge that family members have about a prisoner. There are exceptions such as HMP Forest Bank and those Scottish prisons that involve a prisoner’s family in release planning, but it is uncommon.

In Scotland, the integrated case management case conference provides a mechanism for involving a prisoner’s family in release planning. An ICM case conference is a meeting held at set intervals during a prisoner’s sentence, between the ICM case co-ordinator, prison and community-based social work, and the prisoner. The prisoner may invite his family to those meetings if he wishes. The ICM case conference provides an important opportunity to prepare and advise families about the issues arising on a prisoner’s release, thereby supporting them in their own right as well as preventing reoffending.

At one men’s prison in Louisiana USA, families are involved as soon as the individual arrives in prison. The director of re-entry invites a family member or someone close to the prisoner to the prison for an informal meeting, allowing the director to learn about the prisoner’s background and how he can be best supported. There are further examples of where families are integral to the penal system. For example, in HMP Winchester, staff from the charity Spurgeons carry out first-night screening, which includes detailed questions about a father’s responsibilities. That also gives them an opportunity to hand out dad packs, where appropriate, which include top tips on how to be a father inside prison. That is an early way of grounding someone in their family responsibilities at the start of their sentence, when it is easy for them to turn in on themselves.

A new personal officer model is being trialled in 10 pathfinder establishments. That could be used to carry out a more ongoing form of assessment. Those officers will have daily contact with the prisoners, and be aware of how their family relationships are faring. I researched the role of the personal officer. The article I read stated:

“During your first few days in prison you will be allocated a Personal Officer. This is a prison officer who has been assigned to act as your point of contact while within prison, and is the officer who is expected to provide a ‘reference’ for you whenever you apply for jobs, change of status from Basic to Enhanced etc. The duties of this officer are not very much, but a good officer will come and speak to you and ask if you have any issues they can help with, a poor officer will introduce themselves once and then may favour you with a grunt as you pass on the landing.”

It seems to me that a personal officer model could and should be extended to include a family liaison aspect, which could make the role much more rewarding and productive.

[Fiona Bruce]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, particularly given the examples of best practice that we have heard today, there is a need for that to be drawn together, from across the country, so that it can be shared more effectively among different prisons?

[Derek Thomas]

That is right, and I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention because it helps to support the point I want to make in concluding. As I said earlier, everyone has a heartbeat and we need to do what we can to support prisoners, their families and the wider community. The gold standard would be to ensure that, whatever their sentence and wherever they were sent, they will receive equal support and access.

There is a further matter to consider if we are serious about parental rights and parental responsibility. My constituency covers west Cornwall and Scilly, and a prisoner from Cornwall can be sent a very long way from home. If someone is sentenced to prison, the prison should be as close to their home as possible, wherever they live in the UK. Addressing the parental responsibilities of a prisoner is a significant part of the journey to a reformed life and a safer society. Therefore, where the prisoner is held in relation to their family home is an important consideration.

Prison Reform and Safety

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

There are three issues that could promote the progress of effective prison reform, all of which relate to improving prisoners’ contact with their families. As time is short, I will summarise those issues at the outset. First, there is a need to consider the appointment of a deputy director for families, mirroring the staffing priority given to drugs and violence in prisons. Secondly, there is a need to speed up the long-awaited policy announcement on the revised procedures for release on temporary licence. Thirdly, could Skype and other innovative face-to-face digital platforms be used to strengthen prisoners’ family ties?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for successfully championing the importance of good-quality family contact to prisoners and their rehabilitation when he was Prisons Minister. His leadership paved the way for the excellent Farmer review.

The need to replicate the good practice that exists across the prison estate in supporting prisoners’ family ties and to address inconsistencies in that area was one of the key messages of the Farmer review, “The Importance of Strengthening Prisoners’ Family Ties to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime,” published earlier this year. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) for his wholehearted commitment to implementing in full every one of the Farmer review’s 21 recommendations.

Another reason for the Farmer review so successfully gaining traction in government is that senior officials are personally committed to the families agenda, often because they have been No. 1 governors in prisons and have seen at first hand the difference made by good family contact. However, this important agenda cannot be dependent on an individual official’s conviction that it matters. Civil servants move on.

Indeed, Paul Baker, the most senior official working on the implementation of the Farmer review, is leaving at the end of the year. I pause here to acknowledge the decades of excellent service he has given to our Prison Service, his dogged pursuit of reform and his championing of prisoners’ families, who are among the most neglected and stigmatised people in this country.

Mr Baker currently heads that work alongside his responsibilities as deputy director of custody for London and Thames Valley, a large group of prisons. In other words, the families agenda is tagged on to a very demanding existing work load. Does the Minister agree that now would be the ideal time to give this agenda the same priority within the management structure of the prisons system as drugs and violence, each of which has a dedicated deputy director? If the importance of family and other relationships is to be the golden thread running through our prisons, we need senior staff who are mandated to keep the issue salient until it is embedded in the estate as firmly as action to combat drugs and violence. Indeed, family involvement drives improvements in those other areas.

Will the Minister kindly look at speeding up the development and announcement of the release on temporary licence policy? ROTL allows for the temporary release of prisoners, where it is safe to do so, to undertake purposeful activities that will benefit their resettlement, including rebuilding closer ties with their family. If men undertake parenting and other family learning courses, such as on how to be a responsible father, open conditions such as ROTL give them the opportunity to put theory into practice.

Exceptional negative incidents will always be reported, but the evidence showing high rates of compliance with ROTL terms and a consequential reduction in reoffending rates is positive. For example, an offender could attend parent-teacher evenings, as well as case conferences to discuss their child protection and care proceedings. This also helps families adjust to having the person around more. Many prisoners begin to feel less legitimate as a parent, which makes it difficult to build rounded relationships with their child, and ROTL would help boost their confidence as a parent. Indicators suggest that all forms of ROTL have fallen significantly since 2013. Governors have been waiting for guidance on this for more than a year and do need it now.

Finally, may I ask the Minister whether Skype or other face-to-face platforms could be used to aid prisoners’ family contact time, enabling digital visits to homes to see their family members in that context?

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

7. What steps the Government are taking to empower prison governors.

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

We have given governors greater freedom over their prison’s daily routine and timetable, staffing and family services. We intend to give governors control of areas such as education and training provision. As other current contracts expire, I will look for opportunities to devolve further powers.

[Fiona Bruce]

There were 21 recommendations in the Farmer review and Ministers have made the welcome commitment to implement them all. What further support and incentives are being given to prison governors, as they have increased autonomy within their prisons, to ensure that that implementation happens on the ground?

[Mr Lidington]

The budgets have already been devolved to governors, enabling them to commission family services that are tailored to the specific needs of their prisoners. I have seen examples of that when visiting HMP Parc and HMP Bronzefield. Governors will be supported in future by new family services guidance, which will incorporate elements of Lord Farmer’s report, in the hope that they will all develop best practice.

Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 20th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I am delighted to support this Bill, not only because the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and I are rarely on the same side of something that is discussed in this place, but because a few months ago the all-party group on alcohol harm, which I chair, published “The Frontline Battle: An Inquiry into the Impact of Alcohol on Emergency Services”. It is a catalogue of attacks on police, fire, ambulance and hospital staff.

Throughout our inquiry, we heard countless first-hand accounts of the physical and emotional challenges for emergency service personnel of responding day in, day out, to alcohol-fuelled incidents. It is completely unacceptable that every 13 seconds a police officer is assaulted in the line of duty. It is unacceptable that medical staff have TVs thrown at them, or that an A&E consultant is kicked in the face. Assaults on people who work in these crucial areas should not be without consequence. We heard about police officers who were assaulted while breaking up drunken street fights, pumping the stomach of a young person and tackling house fires caused or exacerbated by alcohol-induced forgetfulness. We heard about our frontline emergency service staff being attacked day in and day out.

What really interested me was that the report received nationwide press coverage. It was covered not only by several national newspapers, but by breakfast TV. However much as we in this House may like to think that all-party groups are important—I am sure they are to all of us—it is very rare for them to receive such national coverage. That is a reflection of the public concern about this issue.

We also learned how much such behaviour—attacks on emergency personnel, fuelled by the fact that people have drunk excess alcohol—has a significant impact on the morale and the health and wellbeing of those in our emergency services. We were shocked to hear how emergency services personnel were depressed, with some of them leaving the services simply because they could not tolerate any further assaults on such a scale.

One police force told us its staff survey showed that

“90 per cent of police officers expect to be assaulted on a Friday or Saturday night when they police during the night time economy”.

I was really shocked by an account involving female police officers going into licensed premises while policing the night-time economy:

“There is one thing that is specific to female officers and that is sexual assault. I can take my team through a licensed premise, and by the time I take them out the other end, they will have been felt up several times.”

That is completely unacceptable.

Frontline officers are in the firing line. Some 86% of police officers surveyed in the north-east told us they have been assaulted by people who had been drinking, and 21% of them had been assaulted six or more times during their service. Over 52% of ambulance service staff whom we heard from had suffered sexual assaults or harassment while on duty. One submission to our inquiry showed the devastating impact that assaults can have:

“Assaults can affect workers both physically and mentally: some frontline emergency staff have moved on to work in other fields. Others are forced into early retirement as a result of stress, or medically discharged.”

A hospital trust has recorded that in one year just three of its patients were responsible for more than 100 assaults on staff each. The Bill is necessary to protect the protectors. As I have said, making this an aggravated offence will stop patients such as those three each being able, time and again, to assault more than 100 staff members in one hospital without facing a penalty for such behaviour. There has to be a deterrent, and the Bill sends the message that this behaviour is not acceptable and will no longer be tolerated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Will Ministers give the House their response to Lord Farmer’s recent report on the importance of strengthening prisoners’ family ties to reduce reoffending?

[Mr Gyimah]

Lord Farmer’s report is excellent. Family ties are important not only to help people to turn their lives around, but to improve stability in prisons. We will publish our response in due course and will make the House aware of that.

Prison and Youth Custody Centre Safety

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

We can deliver our reform package without any further legislation. We will not rule out further legislation if there is a requirement for it in future, but the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that there are pressures on parliamentary time and this is something we are having to accommodate. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no reason why we cannot continue with the reform programme we have planned.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that although there are challenges, dedicated officers are doing much positive and transformative work in prisons on issues such as mental health, as well as through chaplaincy services and restorative justice programmes? An example is the work I have seen being done at Thorn Cross Prison over many years by Shawn Verhey and Lorraine Turner. Will he join me in thanking them, and the many dedicated officers like them who do such a tremendous job?

[Dr Lee]

Yes. That is another example of how, throughout the system, positive schemes are being followed. People who work in a variety of areas, particularly mental health, are delivering care to the prisoners who need it, so that they can rehabilitate properly before they return to society.