Lord Beith
Main Page: Lord Beith (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Beith's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the Work programme. About 200,000 people who were long-term unemployed have started work through that programme. The Labour party has been utterly disingenuous in how it has argued around the figures. There are people with first-rate expertise out there, particularly in the voluntary sector. I will be seeing such people tomorrow to talk about how we can help offenders participate. Those people can bring real expertise to make sure that reoffending rates, which are much too high, come down.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
When are the Government going to produce a strategy on dealing with women offenders and reoffending by women?
Chris Grayling
Our aim is to do so early in the new year, but we do not want to rush it. I recognise that there is a need to differentiate the needs of women in prison from those of men in prison. The challenges are different and our responses should be different. One of my early steps in recognising that was to separate ministerial responsibility for men and women in prisons so that we could place a proper focus on the latter and their distinctive needs.