Prison Safety

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered safety in prisons.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. Since I was elected nearly two years ago, my office and I have been inundated with letters and calls from staff, prisoners and members of the public about the conditions at HMP Lowdham Grange in my constituency. I have heard repeated reports from prisoners of self-harm, deaths in the prison and instances of discrimination. I have also been contacted by staff sharing the impact of these incidents and the pressures on them, such as staffing and violence. These unsafe conditions are deeply concerning not only in their own right, but as a reflection of the wider challenges facing our justice system.

To truly improve safety in our justice system, we must tackle the drivers of this violence. I thank the Minister for visiting HMP Lowdham Grange recently after I raised concerns with him. As he will be aware, the inspectorate released its report just yesterday, following the most recent inspection. It is reassuring to see some progress in areas such as visible leadership, improving health services and security relating to drugs. However, I remain deeply concerned about ongoing problems relating to self-harm and suicide.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that prison safety cannot be separated from mental health? When inmates are in crisis, they can self-harm and there is a potential risk of dying through suicide. It can affect the safety of staff and other prisoners, too. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to tackle physical safety and mental health?

[Michelle Welsh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As Members will hear in my speech, mental health and safety need to go hand in hand.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Richards]

As I was saying before we were interrupted by votes, I want to put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest, her team, and her neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Michael Payne), who has raised this issue with me. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest intimated in her opening speech, on the back of her representations I visited HMP Lowdham Grange in April. I had an important meeting with the governor and her leadership team where I raised many of the concerns raised by my hon. Friend and was reassured to a large degree. I felt that the leadership team there understood the issues and were working at pace to attempt to address them.

However, I also want to place on record that I challenged the team about the work that needs to be done. We have seen in the report published yesterday that although there have been improvements, there is absolutely no doubt that there is a long way to go. I hope that the governor and the leadership team at HMP Lowdham Grange would agree with that.

There is more work to do there and elsewhere. Poor safety in our prisons fundamentally reflects a system under strain. In the summer of 2024, this Government inherited a prison system that was in crisis—in utter collapse—and very soon to run out of places completely. Too many prisons are still struggling at or near capacity, with an increased risk of violence hampering their efforts to turn offenders’ lives around, as we have heard.

I will go on to address some of the particular issues, but we have taken fundamental action to reduce the risk linked to capacity challenges. Ultimately, we can only do all the good work on reoffending, education and rehabilitation if we have a functioning prison system. That is why we are delivering 14,000 new prison places—the biggest expansion of the estate since the Victorian era. We are investing £4.7 billion in that prison-building programme over the next four years, and we introduced landmark sentencing reforms in the Sentencing Act 2026, which received Royal Assent earlier this year, to finally put the prison system on a sustainable footing for the future. That Act was not easy. Difficult decisions have been made, but that legislation means that we can reassure the British public, for the first time in essentially a generation, that there will always be prison spaces for offenders when we need them.

However, there is much more to be done on rehabilitation, education and mental health support. I accept that absolutely.

[Lee Pitcher]

I know that the Minister is a huge champion of mental health, and of men’s and boys’ mental health in particular. In my constituency, I have the Moorland, Lindholme and Hatfield prisons. Will he join me in celebrating the amazing work being done by the Samaritans in those prisons to support people, and Andy’s Man Club as well?

[Jake Richards]

Absolutely, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am a massive champion of Andy’s Man Club up and down the country, but especially in south Yorkshire. It does really important work with ex-offenders and indeed more generally. We have continued as a Government to fund the Samaritans’ Listener scheme, which trains prisoners to support other prisoners who are in crisis. It is a brilliant initiative and I urge any parliamentarian to engage with it in their area.

I want to touch on what we are doing to try to protect our prison staff, because numerous Members raised that issue. We have invested £15 million in protective equipment, including up to 10,000 units of protective body armour. As I think my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest set out in her opening speech, that is a transformative approach to protecting our prison officers compared with what the previous Government were able to do. Half those units are allocated to the long-term high-security estate, including at HMP Lowdham Grange. So, as we roll out body armour across the LTHSE, HMP Lowdham Grange will benefit.

That is why all staff in the adult male estate now have access to body-worn video cameras, batons, rigid-bar handcuffs and synthetic pepper spray as part of their standard equipment. It is why we have introduced PAVA spray in the Youth Custody Service. Very difficult decisions and considerations about the use of such equipment have to be made, but they are the right decisions to ensure that we protect prison officers, both in the youth estate and in the adult estate.

That is why we have trained and equipped up to 500 additional officers in the use of Tasers and why we are already installing up to 50 ligature-resistant cells, in order to prevent self-harm, and have confirmed funding for the installation of more. Because safety and security are innately intertwined, the Deputy Prime Minister has announced an extra £35 million this year to improve security at 17 of our most at-risk prisons, on top of the £40 million that we have already invested in this area. In addition, up to 13,000 new heavy-duty steel window grilles will be in place by next spring. The picture is getting better—we have stabilised the prison system and we are investing in security measures—but there is a lot more work to be done.

The rate of assaults on staff has decreased under this Government by 4.5%. I accept that that is a modest figure, but it is moving in the right direction. The rate of self-harm among prisoners has also decreased, by 8%, but I absolutely accept that it is far too high. As the Minister who shares responsibility for this area with my noble Friend in the other place, I get regular updates about serious incidents in prisons. They are far too frequent and far too serious, and much more has to be done.

Work for Serving Prisoners

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Catherine Atkinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. There is some really fantastic work being done, which I will come on to, and it is essential that we find ways of enabling even more of that, because time stuck in prisons does not improve behaviour; it makes it worse. In the last year of the Conservative Government, we saw assaults on prison staff increase by 23%.

The £15 million investment in body armour and Tasers announced by the Deputy Prime Minister in recent weeks shows that he is giving prison staff the tools they need to do their jobs safely, but anything we can do to reduce the chances of violent incidents deserves our full support—that includes meaningful activities such as work in prisons—because those on the frontline in our prison system deserve our full support.

Prison officers at HMP Ranby told me what a difference it made to the behaviour of prisoners when they were doing work—when their days had purpose. As well as the improved behaviour that work for prisoners leads to, nearly a fifth of the earnings of prisoners who work out of prisons on licence goes to the Prisoners’ Earnings Act levy, which supports victims of crime. We have a Government committed to investment and reform and taking a long-term view of what is needed for a justice system that works. Our Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending, Lord Timpson, was a businessman who throughout his career enabled offenders to turn their lives around and break the cycle.

I have sought to be candid about how bad things are in some of our prisons, but I also want to talk about some of the brilliant work already happening, which can be built on and scaled up. I praise the hundreds of employers who are pointing the way forward. In Derby, we have Pennine Healthcare, an employee-owned medical equipment manufacturer, and its successful experience of employing prisoners has led to its long-term vision for rehabilitation-focused employment opportunities, for itself and potentially across the sector.

Pennine supports a release on temporary licence scheme. I was proud to welcome the former Justice Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Sir Nicholas Dakin), to its headquarters in Derby. I went with him to HMP Ranby to see where Pennine is establishing a workshop, which it calls Project Phoenix. It will operate as an extension of the Derby site, and it will also prevent manufacturing from being offshored to competitors 7,000 km away in China. It could not have been more positive about the motivation and work ethic of the prisoners working for it.

That is a practical solution to meet some of the workforce challenges facing UK manufacturing, at a time when many employers share with me the difficulties that they can have in recruiting people with the skills that they need. It could create a pipeline of trained workers who can have jobs that they know how to do available to them when they leave prison. The difference that could make to offenders’ chances of avoiding another turn of the revolving door of reoffending is clear.

I am the parliamentary champion for the Rebuilding Futures Alliance—the RFA—whose mission is to break the cycle of reoffending by creating smarter pathways into work, often in rail. The evidence is extraordinarily compelling in showing that employment reduces reoffending.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I visited His Majesty’s prison in Hatfield in my constituency—I have among the highest number of prisons in the whole country—and it was absolutely amazing. The governor there had been creative and innovative in his thinking about rehabilitating the prisoners, working with Tempus Novo. By bringing that charity in, reoffending rates have reduced substantially, giving people hope and a second chance. That is great for their families as well, which we need always to remember, and it makes economic sense. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to get behind those kinds of initiatives to stop reoffending?

[Catherine Atkinson]

That is another fantastic initiative. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Impressively, some of the partner agents and partner charities working with the RFA have achieved reoffending rates of under 5%.

I was told at HMP Ranby that the most popular work with prisoners was for the rail industry, though sometimes a prison struggles to find long-term rail-related work for prisoners. The RFA is working to help address that. That is particularly important in a sector such as rail, which really needs more skilled workers and is anticipated to lose 90,000 workers by 2030.

The RFA has a tracking system that allows it to see how prisoners and placements progress. The Prison Reform Trust reports that, for years, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service

“has not published figures on the number of prisoners working in custody, due to the disruption to data quality.”

We need more data and we need it to be tracked.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

We are already on track to remove more foreign national offenders than the Conservative party ever did.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to improve the single justice procedure.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Heidi Alexander)]

I have listened carefully to concerns raised about the single justice procedure. As a first step, I have asked the Courts and Tribunals Service to redesign the SJP and make it clearer. I will also call in SJP prosecutors to discuss ways in which we can ensure that they consider the public interest in advance of making prosecutions.

[Lee Pitcher]

Earlier this year, a decision by the chief magistrate overturned the use of SJP for rail fines, potentially nullifying and requiring the refunding of as many as 74,000 fines. In the past few days it has been reported that LNER has brought similar prosecutions under SJP without supplying any evidence at all. I make no assumption about the guilt or innocence of anyone involved in those prosecutions, but justice must be open, clear and fair. It is unfair to expect people to engage with a process without it being clear what evidence has been laid against them. Will the Minister confirm that her Department will keep those principles at the heart of all our justice practices, including SJPs?

[Heidi Alexander]

I will raise the evidential questions that my hon. Friend raised with representatives of the train operating companies when they and other SJP prosecutors join me in discussions in the next few weeks. I am clear that the single justice procedure is vital for the efficient running of the magistrates court. However, it must operate fairly and effectively. I will not tolerate poor practice, and I will not hesitate to fundamentally reform the system if that is required.

Criminal Justice System: Capacity

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Legal aid underpins our system of justice and access to justice. Stabilising the situation in relation to legal aid is a key priority for the Government.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I have a number of prisons in my constituency, so I was particularly concerned to read about Serco’s failures on tagging. What is the Secretary of State doing to hold it to account?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Serco’s performance is unacceptable. We are having daily meetings with it to ensure it recovers the position. I have made it clear that improved performance is an absolutely priority. We are already imposing financial penalties, given its performance to date, and we will not hesitate to trigger relevant contractual penalties if it does not improve.

Criminal Law

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

That is precisely why we have ensured that we have an implementation period for this policy change. That work will continue at pace over the summer, so that the Probation Service has the time to prepare proper release plans for offenders who will be released as a result of the changes and to ensure that all our obligations to victims and the wider public are fulfilled.

Let me also be clear that this change is not permanent. We will review this measure within 18 months of implementation—at the very latest, in March 2026. At that point, we believe that the situation in our prisons will have stabilised and that we will be able to reverse the measure, returning the automatic point of release to 50% of a sentence.

I want to directly address a question raised during the oral statement in the House last week. We have not included a specific sunset clause within the legislation that would end it automatically. We have pledged to be honest about the challenges in our prisons and the changes that we put in place to rise to them; that is a marked difference from the previous Administration’s approach. Given the scale of the crisis that we have inherited, placing an artificial time limit on this measure would be nothing more than an irresponsible gimmick. We have taken the very deliberate decision not to reverse this measure until we are certain that prison capacity has stabilised. The last Government allowed our prisons to fall into crisis. We will not introduce legislation that could force us back there again.

Finally, we will introduce a new, higher standard of transparency. Every quarter, we will publish data on the number of offenders released, and we will make it a statutory requirement for a prison capacity statement to be published annually, introducing that legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows. We are clear that this is the only safe way forward. The House does not have to take my word for it: we have heard senior figures in the police, prisons and probation all warning of what will happen if these measures are not taken. We have even heard my predecessor as Lord Chancellor come out in support of this measure.

Thanks to the action—or rather, inaction—of the last Prime Minister, our predecessors ran the prison estate to within days of disaster. As a result, they were forced to introduce a series of emergency measures, such as Operation Safeguard, which turned police cells into prison overflow, and Operation Early Dawn, a daily triage system that managed the flow of prisoners from police cells to the courts. They even came perilously close to triggering Operation Brinker, which is effectively a one-in, one-out measure in our prisons. It is the very last, desperate act available to forestall, by a matter of days, the total collapse of law and order in this country.

The last Government also introduced the flawed end of custody supervised licence scheme. When this new legislation takes effect, it will be my pleasure to end ECSL. With next to no implementation period, ECSL released offenders with only a few days of warning, and sometimes none at all. That gave the Probation Service no time to assess the risk of offenders, and next to no time to plan how they would be managed safely in the community. This new legislation, with its longer, eight-week implementation period, gives the Probation Service the time that it needs to prepare. The last Government’s early release scheme did not have the same exclusions that this new legislation has. Most notably, it provided no exclusions for offences linked to domestic abuse. That meant no exclusions for stalking, for strangulation, for controlling or coercive behaviour, or for breaches of restraining orders, non-molestation orders and domestic abuse orders, all of which are excluded in the legislation presented to the House today.

Perhaps worst of all, this quick fix was carried out under a veil of secrecy. A number of extensions were made to the scheme, which first released offenders up to 18 days early, then 35 to 60 days early, and finally up to 70 days early. That last extension was implemented without any announcement at all. Throughout, no data was ever published by the previous Government on the numbers released; it fell to this Administration to reveal the true scale of the ECSL scheme. Only now do we know that more than 10,000 offenders were rushed out under that veil of secrecy by the previous Administration.

Our approach will be different. Unlike under the previous Government, those sitting on the Opposition Benches will never have to chase me around this building to get hold of the numbers. The numbers will be put in the public domain for all to see and scrutinise, as they should have been all along. ECSL was one of a series of decisions that this Government believe must be examined more fully. That is why I have announced a review into how this capacity crisis was allowed to happen, which will look at why the necessary decisions were not taken at critical moments. We will shortly be appointing an independent chair for the review, which will conclude by the end of this year.

Let me be clear: the crisis in our prisons is not over. The prison population remains within a few hundred places of collapse. Last week, we temporarily closed HMP Dartmoor, taking around 200 places out of the prison estate. Although we were able to withstand that loss of capacity, any further changes—be they a further loss of supply or an unexpected increase in demand—could tip us into crisis. The measures that I have set out will take effect in September, giving probation officers the precious time they need to prepare. During that time, we will continue to monitor the prison population closely and we will be ready to introduce further emergency measures such as Operation Early Dawn or Operation Safeguard if required.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I have three prisons in my constituency. Will the Secretary of State explain how bad the situation will be if we do not act today?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. If we do not act today, we face a total collapse of law and order in this country. If we are forced to enact Operation Brinker, it will be a one-in, one-out system and we are then days away from the total collapse of the criminal justice system. It is a shocking state of affairs that the previous Government are entirely responsible for, and it has fallen to our Administration to start to put these matters right with the decisive action we are taking. This is the only option on the table. I remind the House again that we have no choice other than to pass this measure to deal with the crisis we have inherited.

Even once we have passed the measure, we will not yet be out of the woods. Our prisons are still in crisis. The last Government ran the prisons system on the basis of luck. They hung on by their fingernails until they could hang on no longer, and then they called an election. This Government will never run that risk. We will always take the necessary action.