Caroline Lucas
Main Page: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)Department Debates - View all Caroline Lucas's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(9 years, 11 months ago)
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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.
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Chris Grayling
The approach that we have taken on privatisation has been to privatise individual services in the way that was recommended by the Prison Governors Association, because we needed to drive through savings quickly across the whole estate, rather than across part of it, but my hon. Friend’s point is sensible. I do not want a prison population the size of the one we have, but nor do I ever want a court to be unable to send an offender to prison when it believes that it should do so. That is why our rehabilitation strategy is so important. The way we will bring down the population of our prison estate is by preventing people from coming back to it, rather than by not locking them up in the first place.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
What consideration has the Secretary of State given to treating drug addiction as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue? If he did that, he would have far more space in his prisons.
Chris Grayling
My Department and the Department of Health have jointly launched an integrated drug rehabilitation service in north-west England, which will ensure that rehab continues beyond the prison gate and is afterwards delivered by the same people. I am very much of the view that we have to tackle drug addiction, but we have to make the best use of the time in which we have people in custody, so that we ensure that they do not come back because of their addiction, that we get them off drugs, and that they do not reoffend.