Privatised Probation System
Khalid Mahmood Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Rory Stewart
There is an issue here of correlation and causation. It is true that people who serve 40 or 50-year sentences are less likely to reoffend, for two reasons. The first relates to the offence type. For example, murderers are generally less likely to reoffend than shoplifters. Secondly, the mere fact that they are locked away for 40 or 50 years makes it difficult for them to reoffend. Generally, short-sentence prisoners who are in for under 12 months are overwhelmingly dominated by chaotic individuals who often have drug or alcohol problems and who often commit offences such as shoplifting. They are a much more difficult target group to deal with than the people who are locked away for 40 or 50 years.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
After the failure of Working Links and in the light of the National Audit Office’s damning report into the implementation of Transforming Rehabilitation the first time round by the former Secretary of State—who was then promoted to the Department for Transport, proving that Conservative rehabilitation does not work—as well as continual criticism by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons proving that the mixed system is not beneficial to the taxpayer, why is the Minister continuing with the TR2 programme?
Rory Stewart
The first thing is to absolutely reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are looking very carefully at the responses to the consultation and listening carefully to what is being said around the House. Our response will address many of his fundamental concerns. We should see a better resourced, more unified and higherquality probation system at the end of this.
HMP Birmingham
Khalid Mahmood Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will first provide some information about my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). The prison is in her constituency, but she is unfortunately in a meeting and I am unsure whether she has received notice of this urgent question, so I apologise on her behalf that she is not here.
My question to the Minister is simple. He has made a huge commitment to clean up our prisons, but the real issues are with staff, training, and allowing drugs and other things into prisons. Tackling all that will require resources, so how will he ensure that it happens?
Rory Stewart
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is about staff. We now have 3,000 more prison officers than we had when we made the announcement, and having more staff will make a difference. The next stage is getting the training right, particularly the training for the band 5 and band 4 uniformed staff who are out there on the landings day in, day out. It is about getting the staff college right for governors, and it is also about making sure that, in places like our Newbold Revel training college, we have the right support for our prison officers. It is an amazing profession, but it needs support and training.