Chris Bloore
Main Page: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the Chair and his Committee for their report, and I am grateful to the staff at HMP Hewell on the edge of my constituency for all the work they are doing to support prisoners. I would be interested to know what metrics he will use to measure progress on meeting his report’s recommendations by the end of this Parliament. What should we be asking him in 12 or 24 months’ time to see if the Government have truly met the recommendations in this report?
Andy Slaughter
First, I am pleased that my hon. Friends are making links with their prisons. I hope all Members who have a prison will visit it regularly; I had the Scrubs in my patch for 20 years. I am also pleased that my hon. Friend wants to set targets for the Committee, rather than leave that for the Committee to deal with. We will monitor this and follow it up on a regular basis because, as I have said, without control of the drugs problem in prisons, so many other things become impossible to do. If he wants to set some benchmarks, I will ensure that we try to keep to them.