Prison Communications

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I do not believe that this is a criminal matter, because the guidelines are set out in prison rules. I would certainly take a pretty dim view if any member of staff had intentionally broken the rules to listen in to a set of calls involving a Member of Parliament. We will obviously wait to see what the investigation throws up, but I suspect that this is a case of error rather than intent. I am setting up the investigation to confirm that.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his statement. He was right to bring this matter to the House’s attention expeditiously. Does he have information yet about the division between prisoners on remand whose calls were listened to and post-conviction prisoners, or will we have to wait for the inquiry for that?

[Chris Grayling]

I do not have that detail of information yet. The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) was absolutely right to point out that many of those may well not have been convicted of any crime, but have been simply awaiting trial. It is particularly important to ensure that such people are protected, but that is a matter for Nick Hardwick’s investigation.