Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s continued focus on this important issue. As the Prime Minister said in his speech on 8 February, we believe in humane treatment and care. In our work in prisons we are going to give prison governors more say in this area, and we are going to move towards full co-commissioning for governors with NHS England, meaning that prison leaders can have more of a say in defining what kinds of services prisoners need and the budgets available for them.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

T2. Will the Secretary of State welcome back, after her long illness, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire)? Will he also consider giving the House a report on the Peterborough prison experiment, where a social impact bond involved voluntary and private sector investors to reduce the amount of recidivism in prisons? May we please have a report on how that is going?

[Michael Gove]

First, may I take up the hon. Gentleman’s kind offer, because we are all delighted to see the hon. Member for Bristol West back in her place—fully recovered, I hope—and look forward to her playing a prominent part in our debates in future; she is a real asset to the House. Secondly, the social impact bond that ran in Peterborough prison helped to inform some of the changes that we made through Transforming Rehabilitation. I have had the opportunity to visit Peterborough prison, which is run by a private company. It provides a significantly improved level of care, compared with the mean level offered by many other custodial establishments. I think that the spirit of the SIB lives on, both in Transforming Rehabilitation and in the way in which Peterborough prison operates, but I am open to other ideas about how social investment can help to improve the justice system.