Prison Officers Association: Protest Action

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We are giving prison governors power over their education budgets, so that they can ensure that the offenders in their institutions are getting the skills they need to secure a job on release. We are enabling them to work with local employers and also to co-commission health services, so that there is closer work towards getting prisoners off drugs, which is a major cause of reoffending.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Parc prison in Bridgend has an enviable record of successful work in cutting intergenerational reoffending, reducing reoffending and of family intervention, which makes a difference. Does the Secretary of State understand the importance not just of staff numbers, but of appropriately skilled and trained officers, and, once we get them, of retaining them, because her record to date does not show that she does?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree that retaining staff is vital, which is why we have given these additional freedoms to governors. We are also recruiting more staff to the frontline so that staff feel safer, which is a very important part of the job. By having more staff on the frontline, we will enable more time to be spent turning offenders’ lives around, which is why the prison officers to whom I speak wanted to go into the service in the first place. What is important is getting offenders into jobs and off drugs.