Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I am happy to meet my right hon. Friend. I am not in a position to comment on that particular case, but I am of course willing to engage with him.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his post. Victims must be at the heart of our justice system, but we have seen failings in enabling victims to give their impact statements in the Worboys case. We have seen the police failing victims, and victims are asking why there were no further prosecutions. In fact, victims feel let down throughout the process. I ask the Secretary of State once again to support victims, and to help to restore their faith and that of the wider public in our justice system. Will he agree today to an independent end-to-end review of the whole handling of this case?

[Mr Gauke]

As I announced to the House on Friday, Dame Glenys Stacey has agreed to undertake a fact-finding review of what happened with regard to victims in the Worboys case. It is important that we get to the bottom of precisely what happened and whether processes were followed. I am aware of conflicting evidence on that point, so it is important that we pursue it. I quite understand why the hon. Gentleman suggests an end-to-end review, and indeed there are questions that need to be considered about what happened in 2008-09 and so on. As I have said before, at the moment I want to focus on the immediate questions in front of us in terms of support for victims and the Parole Board process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

It is certainly true that there are challenges with older buildings, as we see with this place, but it is possible to keep them going—Westminster Hall was built in 1080. Stafford prison, which was built in the late 18th century, is a clean and decent prison. We will look carefully at the fabric, and in some cases there is reason to build a new wing. But in Liverpool prison we can make a huge difference simply with £2.5 million for new windows and for refurbishing individual cells.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The inspectors described the conditions at HMP Liverpool as the worst they have seen, citing rat infestations and filthy conditions. Prison maintenance at Liverpool was outsourced to Amey. This shows that the problems with outsourcing go way beyond Carillion, which mismanaged maintenance at 50 different prisons. Will the Secretary of State commit to a review looking at bringing prison maintenance back in house, in Liverpool and at all prisons, as Labour has pledged to do?

[Rory Stewart]

We will look carefully at the maintenance issues in Liverpool, but sadly the problems are not only to do with Amey; they are also to do with relationships between management and the contractors and how prisoners were, or were not, used to clean the estate. We have made a huge amount of difference in just the past five weeks by changing not the Amey contract but the management approach and the focus on cleanliness.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the Minister for his answer on Amey and contractors, but it is hard to have faith that he will address the problems at Liverpool or, in fact, any prison, because it has recently come to light that his Government handed £40 million to Carillion in 2017, even after the then prisons Minister had expressed concerns in Parliament about Carillion’s performance in prisons. Will not poor maintenance in Liverpool continue to contribute to inhumane conditions while responsibility is left in the hands of private contractors who, in reality, put profit first?

[Rory Stewart]

We do not believe that this is fundamentally an ideological fight between the private and public sectors. Most of those people working for Carillion—70% of them—were public servants just three years ago, and most of those people working for Amey were public servants in the prison service. Most of the problems have been solved through basic management and leadership. There has been a deep clean, the yard units have been increased from five to 18, and the conditions have improved rapidly. In the end, a lot of this is about management, not a private/public debate.

Parole Board and Victim Support

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Secretary of State to his post, and I thank him for advance sight of the statement.

Our criminal justice system must always have the interests of the victims of crime at its heart. It is all too clear that victims of the vile crimes committed by John Worboys feel that this process has failed to do so, and such failings risk undermining public trust in our wider justice system. Many women—both the victims and others more widely—will be very anxious indeed about Mr Worboys being freed. The current legal restrictions on the Parole Board mean that we do not know why this decision was taken.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement today. With respect, however, we do not need to debate whether there is a case for greater transparency. The Worboys case has underlined once and for all that there is a need for greater transparency, and the chair of the Parole Board has already called for this. Will the new Secretary of State for Justice therefore guarantee that his review will be about how to achieve greater transparency, and not about whether this is needed?

The failures go much wider than the rules governing the Parole Board. In fact, this whole matter has been dogged by failures from the outset. In 2009, John Worboys was convicted of 19 offences against 12 women, but the police have also linked Worboys to about 100 other cases. The public are asking questions about the failings in the police’s handling of the case, about why there were no further prosecutions and about failures of the victim contact scheme to notify victims of the parole hearing properly. The Worboys case raises so many serious questions that anything less than an independent end-to-end review into the handling of the case—from first reporting to the police of an attack right through to the Parole Board hearing—would let down the victims and the wider public.

The previous Secretary of State did not take up my request to undertake such an inquiry, but the new Secretary of State can bring a fresh perspective to all of this. He has the opportunity to reassure the victims and the wider public by going further than his predecessor and agreeing to an independent end-to-end review. That would be the right thing to do, and if he does so, I will congratulate him. I therefore ask the Secretary of State: will he agree to this proposal today?

There are also questions about whether wider problems in the justice system, a sector now subjected to the greatest cuts of any Department, have had an impact on this specific case. The failure to allow women victims the opportunity to participate in the parole hearing through written and oral statements, or to notify them of the hearings properly, was a real breach of their rights. The National Probation Service manages the victim contact scheme, and I would say that the House is all too familiar with the deep problems caused to probation by the chaotic reforms undertaken by the Secretary of State’s Government.

Does the Secretary of State believe that the changes to probation services have left the victim contact scheme more effective or less effective? Will he spell out today what his Department is doing to ensure that the scheme is functioning as it should and that we do not see a repeat of the failings witnessed last week? At the very least, will he consider amending the scheme so that victims opt out, rather than opt in to the system? Likewise, what is the Government’s assessment of the effectiveness of the current sex offender treatment programmes in prison? Last year, the Ministry of Justice found that its core programme actually increased reoffending among sex offenders. Does he know whether John Worboys was on one of the core programmes that were subsequently withdrawn? Will the Secretary of State take the opportunity to clarify what the current procedure is for prioritising which imprisonment for public protection cases are dealt with most pressingly? Are those on the shortest tariffs dealt with first?

Finally, I am pleased that the Government are now focusing on victims’ rights. However, in 2014, the High Court found that the Metropolitan police had breached the rights of victims of Worboys under the Human Rights Act 1998 by failing properly to investigate many of the crimes Worboys was linked to. That decision was later upheld by the Court of Appeal. I think that many will be surprised and disappointed that the Government—through the current Home Secretary and her predecessor, who is now the Prime Minister—backed taking Worboys’ victims to the Supreme Court last year. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to express regret for treating the victims in that way?

[Mr Gauke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. He makes the case for transparency, as did Nick Hardwick, and I completely see and, indeed, sympathise with the argument being made. This case does demonstrate the need for us to look at the issue of transparency again, and it is important that we do so in some detail. I say to the House that I start off on the basis that more transparency is needed, as this case has demonstrated.



The hon. Gentleman asked me about an end-to-end review. It is right that we focus on how we can make this system more transparent to provide reassurance to the public that it is working in the way that it should. That should be a priority, as should victim support. The hon. Gentleman asked whether the basis of the system should be not opting in but opting out. That is something that the review will be able to consider.

We must be sensitive to the fact that, whereas some victims of crime will be keen to be fully informed at every stage, others simply may not want to hear the name of that criminal again. Different people will have different views about how they want to be treated, and we need to find a system that accommodates both approaches.

I was also asked about prioritising cases. Clearly, there is a need to look at cases in which the tariff has been completed. They will be higher priority than cases in which the tariff still has some years to run. That is what happens in practice.

The hon. Gentleman raised the Supreme Court case. The matter is sub judice and I cannot comment further on it, but I reassure him and the House that we need a system that has the confidence of victims. That is what we all want to ensure.

Prison Reform and Safety

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I would like to begin by congratulating the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and the other members of the Committee on all their work and on securing today’s debate. I previously served on the Committee, and it was a most valuable experience.

The Committee has repeatedly shone a spotlight on the ongoing crisis affecting much of our justice system, and its work will become even more important over the coming months, given that the Ministry of Justice budget is set to be cut by another £800 million—by 40% over the decade to 2020—making the MOJ the most cut of any Department.

Turning to today’s topic, our prisons have received vast media coverage over the past year—nearly always for the wrong reasons. The word “crisis” has been used time after time as a descriptor, but it is no longer sufficient. We have warned of crisis for five years—unfortunately, crisis is the new norm. The staff holding the service together are expected to do crisis management. The truth is that our prisons are now moving beyond crisis and are approaching emergency.

Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons, with whom I had the pleasure of undertaking a prison visit, described the situation in his scathing annual report:

“Last year I reported that too many of our prisons had become unacceptably violent and dangerous places. The situation has not improved—in fact, it has become worse.”

He went on to warn that not one young offender institute was deemed safe, describing the “speed of decline” as “staggering”. He described a Dickensian prison system with people

“locked up for as much as 23 hours a day”,

which is

“compounded by staffing levels…that are…too low to keep order”

or to

“run a decent regime that allows prisoners to be let out of their cells to get to training and education”.

I would argue that it is the Government’s policy of slashing hundreds of millions from the Prison Service budget that has driven us into the emergency room.

Perhaps the starkest example of the prisons emergency is what the Justice Committee, in its sixth report of the 2015-16 Session, described as

“the ongoing and rapid deterioration in prison safety”.

It was right to do so. It is a stain on our nation that self-harm and suicides are at record levels and that assaults are up by almost 80% on 2010. Every day, 74 people are attacked in our prisons—one every 20 minutes, morning, noon and night, every single day of the year. The consequences of this violence are dire. With prisoners locked near permanently in their cells to maintain safety, it is almost irrelevant whether education, training or mental health services are improved. Locked in their cells for that amount of time, they remain inaccessible, at a great cost to wider society. This violence is closely connected to another theme addressed by the Select Committee—empowering governors and prison reforms. The Government talk of a reform agenda delivering a modern prison estate fit for the 21st century and of governors self-managing their education budgets to help prisoners, but none of that will bear fruit until the epidemic of violence is tackled.

The central cause of the prisons emergency has been the loss of staff. Conservative Justice Secretaries have cut the number of frontline prison officers by almost 7,000 since 2010. New psychoactive substances, drones and phones are all serious problems in our prisons. As the POA says, staffing shortages drive the wave of violence. I welcome the fact that the Government now acknowledge the damage done by thousands of prison officer cuts and have begun to try to reverse their own cuts, but the staffing picture is not, I am afraid, as rosy as the Government seek to portray it. Despite 1,200 extra officers recruited over the past year, one in four of our prisons has still had a fall in officer numbers in the past 12 months. That includes staffing cuts at 25% of the prisons labelled as being of concern. In high-security prisons, it is even worse: half those prisons have fewer officers than they had a year ago. For all the talk of empowering governors, the number of governor-grade staff has been cut by over one third and continues to fall.

Staffing cannot be permanently resolved separately from pay. The insulting 1.7% recent pay offer was yet another real-terms pay cut—a cut of £980 per year for the average prison officer. Falling pay is one of the reasons there is an exodus of experienced officers, who are now leaving at three times the rate back in 2010. The Government’s policies are creating a dangerous cocktail of experienced prisoners and inexperienced prison staff.

The motion addresses the wider restructuring of the prisons system. The Government have destabilised the prisons system through an erratic reform policy that veered first this way and then that way, while prisons were being stripped of valuable resources, both human and financial. This has not been helped by the constant chopping and changing of those at the top. I have been shadow Justice Secretary for just over 18 months, and I have already dealt with three Justice Secretaries, each with their own specific vision. One of the current Secretary of State’s first tasks was to toss aside the Prisons and Courts Bill and the creation of a statutory purpose for prisons. That was especially regrettable as it had the support of virtually the whole House. Although the Government have scrapped the Bill, one thing remains the same: their answer to the deep problems in the prison service is yet more reform. I am a bit sceptical.

Concerns about how reform is being undertaken were especially well expressed by the president of the Prison Governors Association, Andrea Albutt, who decried the fact that governors have seen nothing tangible coming out of the MOJ to ease the burden to date. The PGA complains of the MOJ’s prison reform programme draining resources, with expensive policy teams in Whitehall, operational experts taken out of prisons and put into the MOJ, and competing structures that sometimes undermine accountability. In short, if real powers rest in new Whitehall teams, budgets are cut and central contracts restrict freedom of decision, governors are not in charge in the way that they should be.

Despite talk of greater autonomy, prison governors are still suffering the lack of control that arose from outsourcing key prison services to the private sector. The hiving off of facilities management and repairs has undermined basic decency in prisons. When prisoners are remarking that it is easier to get drugs than clean clothing, or when prisoners go for long periods without properly functioning showers or with a broken cell window, this does nothing to build the necessary institutional trust. It also makes reforming lives much harder. Labour has not only ruled out any more private prisons but committed to a review, working with prison governors, to identify the private maintenance and repair contracts that can be brought back in house over time, saving the state money and improving prison conditions. I heard the Chair of the Justice Committee call for an urgent review of these same contracts in Justice questions on Tuesday. Labour Members fully support his call.

The motion rightly points to our historically high prison population. Prison must act as a deterrent and, yes, as a punishment. Often prison is a fitting sanction, especially while a convicted person is a danger to the public, and a significant minority of people may never be safe to release. However, most people will one day leave prison, so it must also rehabilitate, but too often it is failing to do so. We now have 10,000 more prisoners in jails than we have proper places for. Rehabilitation cannot take place in overcrowded prisons. Armley Prison, in my home city of Leeds, holds nearly twice the number of prisoners that it was built to accommodate, and that is not an exception: the latest figures show that almost seven in 10 of our prisons are overcrowded.

As we have heard, such warehousing of people without any support or access to rehabilitation means that when they leave prison they are likely to be in the same position as when they entered—or perhaps even worse: drug-dependent, homeless and without the skills to get secure work. Their stay in prison will be too short to tackle their problems. In fact, they may come out of prison more likely to commit crime. I have been struck by the fact that nearly every time I meet a prison governor, they tell me that we are jailing too many people. They ask me why we are using vast resources to send someone to prison for a few weeks. They are frustrated at seeing the same people over and again. When people at the frontline raise such matters, we must all take them very seriously.

The evidence underlines the fact that, for far too many, prison is not working. Six in 10 adults released from prison after a sentence of less than 12 months, which over half of all prisoners receive, commit another offence within a year. The cost of reoffending has now hit £15 billion. As a society, we need to be asking if we should have jailed 8,000 women last year when the overwhelming majority committed a non-violent offence, with half in prison for theft. If prison is about rehabilitation as well as punishment, what is the point of seven in 10 women serving 12 weeks or less in jail? With a woman’s prison place costing £47,000 a year, alternatives could free up valuable resources to invest in women’s centres and community solutions, and to make prison work for those who really should be there.

We need to tackle the discrimination that means there is a greater disproportionality in the number of black people in our prisons than in the prisons of the United States of America. It wastes lives as well as valuable public funds. Too many prisoners, as we have heard, are suffering from mental health issues and need intensive medical treatment, not incarceration. Perhaps most immediately, we need to tackle the cases of the imprisonment for public protection prisoners. We need to debate all three issues separately in this Chamber on another occasion.

In conclusion, we have a huge amount to do to turn our prisons around and make them places where lives are transformed, so that—this is our main objective—our communities become safer places to live. After nearly a decade of failed policies that have cut our prison service to the bone, that cannot and will not be done overnight, but the ongoing scrutiny of the Justice Committee will play a valuable role in helping to make our prisons work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point in his usual punchy way, but I have already detailed the support for early legal help and set out some of the support for litigants in person. The fact is that we provide £1.6 billion in legal aid. If we look at Council of Europe comparisons—I know that we cannot compare like with like exactly—we see that we are providing more legal aid per capita than any other Council of Europe country.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

We have heard from the Law Society and the president of the Supreme Court on early legal help, which Labour’s manifesto also backs. My hon. Friends have asked questions about this and the Minister has said that the evidence is not there. I want to help the Minister, so will he show today that he is not driven purely by ideology and agree to a simple thing: to commission independent research into the savings that can come from early legal help to inform the Government’s legal aid review before it reports back next summer? Will he do it?

[Dominic Raab]

We have got the review in place. We will take a wide range of advice and set up expert panels to ensure that we get the proper and best advice. The hon. Gentleman should feel free to contribute. However, his proposals would add £400 million to the cost, and he needs to explain where the money would come from because it does not just grow on trees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lidington]

Prison officers certainly are working under very challenging conditions, not least because of how organised crime is promoting traffic in new psychoactive substances across prison walls, but we believe that not just the increase in numbers but the shift, in forthcoming months, to the new offender management model, under which each officer will take responsibility for about half a dozen named offenders, will contribute to increased morale.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

One in four prisons have seen a reduction in the number of prison officers over the past year, including a quarter of prisons the Government label as being of concern, so given their so-called recruitment drive, will the Secretary of State guarantee today that no prison, apart from those planned for closure, will have fewer staff at the end of the year than they did at the beginning?

[Mr Lidington]

As I said in response to the last question, the new offender management model, which we are implementing throughout the system, will reduce the pressure on individual prison officers. Where a particular prison has greater than average difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, we will continue to put in extra resource and support to help them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Dominic Raab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a range of robust community sentence options, which can include the whole range from unpaid work and curfews to rehab programmes and treatment for mental health and substances misuse problems. We are working with the judges and magistrates, and with the national probation service, to make sure community sentences are as operationally strong as they can be and can command public confidence.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I have repeatedly asked the Secretary of State how many staff have been axed since probation was privatised, and I have repeatedly been refused an answer. It is now being reported in the press that there was a 20% cut in the number of probation staff in the privatised community rehabilitation companies between 2015 and 2016. Can he confirm that CRC staff have been cut by a fifth?

[Mr Lidington]

It is for individual community rehabilitation companies to take decisions about the staffing and what kind of staff they need to deliver on their contractual obligations to the Government. The Government’s responsibility is for staff in the national probation service, and we are recruiting additional staff to it.

Sentencing

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter today and I thank the Justice Secretary for sharing his statement with me in the past hour.

This matter has been given greater prominence over the past decade due to rulings that found the UK to be in breach of its international human rights obligations. As the House is aware, prisoners serving a custodial sentence do not have any right to vote in any elections. As the Secretary of State said, this blanket ban is set out in the Representation of the People Act 1983. Since 2005, however, the blanket ban has been ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights in the Hirst case.

Subsequent rulings since the 2005 decision have offered further clarity on what is required by law. I note especially the October 2015 ruling of the European Court of Justice that depriving certain prisoners convicted for very serious crimes, such as murder, of the right to vote was not an unlawful breach of the right of EU citizens. Likewise, in 2013, the UK Supreme Court dismissed appeals that prisoners serving life sentences for murder should be able to vote. I think most of the House would feel that that is sensible.

The question remains, however, of how we meet our obligations in relation to the ruling against a blanket ban. This House has been grappling with this issue since 2005. Following the Hirst judgment in 2005, the Labour Government began a consultation on the question of prisoner voting. The Ministry of Justice published a consultation paper in 2009 indicating that some limited enfranchisement of prisoners ought to occur, but made it clear that a final decision on the scope of the franchise must be made by Parliament.

Shortly after the 2010 general election, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government announced that offenders sentenced to less than four years in custody would have the right to vote in UK Westminster Parliament and European Parliament elections, except when the judge considered it inappropriate when making the sentence. Soon after, in 2011, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee published a report stating that while the current ban on prisoner voting may be “morally justifiable”, it was a breach of international law.

As a nation, we pride ourselves on our adherence to the rule of law. I believe we also take pride in being a nation that abides by its commitments. Our respect for the rule of law is something that has led to our legal system being so well regarded around the world that our legal services are exported internationally and contribute vastly to the UK economy. Today is an opportunity to discuss exactly how we will meet our commitments following the 2005 ruling.

I hope the slowness the Government have shown in responding to this issue does not set a precedent for taking over a decade to address our international obligations to uphold human rights. I think we should be clear that if we are signed up to the European convention on human rights, we are bound by its judgment and by those human rights laws. What this debate should be about is not whether we should meet our duties under international human rights law—that is non-negotiable and it is disappointing that some Members have suggested that we should ignore such law—but how we meet our duties and requirements.

Specifically, today’s discussion is about whether the Government’s proposals meet that threshold and satisfy our international obligations to uphold human rights. I hear Government Members saying, “Of course they do,” but we need reassurance, because the Secretary of State said that prisoners sentenced to less than one year in jail who are let out on day release will be allowed to return home to vote. We need to know what discussions with lawyers and assurances he has had to make sure that his proposal brings us into line with human rights law. The last thing this House wants is the right hon. Gentleman having to return to the House at some point to explain that, unfortunately, these measures have not satisfied the test and do not fulfil our international obligations and commitments. I am sure the Government do not want that, and nor do we.

As hon. Members have pointed out, including at this week’s Justice questions, this measure is about rehabilitation. I am therefore disappointed that the statutory duty on prisons to rehabilitate offenders and thereby reduce the number of victims and make society safer was dropped when the Prisons and Courts Bill fell. I hope that will be considered again in due course.

[Mr Lidington]

I think I gathered amid that response that the Opposition spokesman offers no specific criticisms of the proposals I have outlined today. I can give him a clear assurance that we have taken the best advice possible. We believe that this set of proposals complies with our international legal obligations following the Hirst judgment. Obviously, it will have to be considered by the Committee of Ministers at the forthcoming meeting.

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that it is a bit rich for him to chide me about the pace at which this matter has been addressed. He acknowledged in his response that it took the Labour Government, under whose watch the Hirst case was heard and decided, four years even to get round to publishing the answers to their own consultation paper. In my years of service in this place, I have not seen Labour Home Secretaries or Justice Secretaries rushing to the Dispatch Box to announce that they had the answer and the Government would now publish proposals.

I hope that there will be broad agreement among the parties to support the general approach that I have outlined. Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that the European Court of Human Rights has on more than one occasion made it clear that, regardless of the specific circumstances of the Hirst judgment, there is no requirement to enfranchise all prisoners; I hope that that message has by now been conveyed to the Leader of the Opposition. Indeed, many members of the Council of Europe—established, mature democracies like ours—maintain a strict bar against serious offenders voting.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

It is true that short-term sentences appear to have the least effect in reduced reoffending, but the comparison with them is with alternative community sentences, which are available for that similar type of crime. Those community sentences work best when they link up with services such as drug and alcohol treatment programmes sometimes provided by other authorities in the community.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I think the whole House will agree that community sentences function only when magistrates have trust in the people supervising them. Last year, thousands of community sentences were served in London alone. Will the Secretary of State therefore commit today to an urgent independent review of the performance of the London company responsible for supervising many of these community sentences in London, following the revelations in last week’s “Panorama” investigation that the London CRC—community rehabilitation company—had failed to act on 15,000 missed appointments over 16 months?

[Mr Lidington]

Of course, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the company responsible has denied some of the claims that were made in the “Panorama” programme. None the less, it is quite clear that missed appointments are a serious matter. We expect the London CRC, like other CRCs, to take appropriate action. I believe that in the independent inspectorate of probation we have precisely the kind of independent body that he has called for. It is currently looking again at London and we look forward to its next report.

[Richard Burgon]

I hear the Secretary of State’s reassurances about the delivery of community sentences by the so-called CRCs, but for us to be absolutely sure about this, I argue that we need to know the advice that the Minister has had about the failure of the CRCs. The “Panorama” documentary revealed an in-house MOJ paper warning of the risks of handing much of the supervision of community sentences to the private sector through the privatisation of probation. Will the Secretary of State make that memo public, so that we and the House can ensure that those flaws are being tackled?

[Mr Lidington]

I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to a document that was produced some years ago. It is important now that in addressing the underperformance of some areas of the probation service, we act on the recommendations from the independent probation inspectorate and seek, through the contractual mechanism, to drive up standards to where the public would expect them to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Governors cite the outsourcing of facilities management, maintenance and repairs as something that undermines their ability to manage important elements within their prisons. Labour has announced a review, working with prison governors, to identify private service contracts that can be brought back in-house to save the taxpayer money and, at the same time, improve prison conditions. Will the Government also commit to review those contracts?

[Mr Lidington]

As I said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), as existing contracts expire, we shall seek new opportunities to devolve powers to governors and to clusters of prisons. Along with Prison Service headquarters, they will then have to strike the appropriate balance between the local provisioning of services and the need to secure the best value for taxpayers’ money.

Prisons Policy/HMP Long Lartin

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on prisons policy and the recent disturbance in Her Majesty’s Prison Long Lartin.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I can confirm that there was an incident at HMP Long Lartin last night and that it has now been resolved without injury to staff or prisoners. The incident is of course of concern, and we will need to investigate properly what drove the actions of a relatively small number of individuals. It will take a number of weeks to ensure that all the intelligence is properly examined and that we learn lessons and apply them to prevent any reoccurrence.

We cannot speculate on the cause of this incident, but we know that the prison was running a full regime and that this was not linked to any shortfalls in prison officer staffing levels. Its last inspection report found the prison to be “calm and controlled” and that, although there were improvements to be made, it was “both competent and effective.”

The incident remained contained on a single wing of the prison, and it involved 81 prisoners. I want to commend the actions of the staff, who acted swiftly in response to the incident. They locked down the wing, ensured the rest of prison remained settled and prevented any public protection issues or escalation. Our specialist staff were deployed to the prison from across the country. They swiftly resolved the incident in just over an hour, securing all prisoners without injury. Once again, they demonstrated their bravery and professionalism, for which we should all be very grateful.

We do not tolerate violence in our prisons, and we are clear that those responsible will be referred to the police and could spend longer behind bars.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the Minister for his remarks. It is unfortunate that the Secretary of State has more pressing problems than prison disturbances and the axing of Conservative manifesto prisons policy, which I shall come on to shortly.

Last night’s disturbance at HMP Long Lartin marks another low point in the prisons policy of this Government. The House will no doubt recall the frightening scenes on our televisions from HMP Birmingham last year. That was no one-off, with many other disturbances in recent months, but when it involves a high-security prison housing some of our most dangerous prisoners, it is especially concerning. Does the Minister believe that forcing through hundreds of millions of pounds of budget cuts to our prisons in recent years has left our prisons more safe or less safe?

Seven in 10 of our prisons are now overcrowded, and the situation is getting worse. The former director general of the Prison Service has warned that the recent surge in numbers is adding to the pressures on a prison system that he says is

“already woefully short of space”.

Does the Minister believe that prisoners spending more and more time locked in their cells is making our prisons more safe or less safe?

Government cuts have seen over 6,000 frontline prison officers cut. Despite recent Government boasting about new recruits, one in three of our prisons has lost frontline staff this year alone. Does the Minister believe that fewer and fewer staff dealing with more and more dangerous prisoners leaves prisons more safe or less safe?

Yesterday, the head of the Prison Service ruled out shutting down and selling off dilapidated Victorian jails across England and Wales. This amounts to shelving a 2017 Conservative general election manifesto promise. Does the Minister believe that housing more and more people in Victorian conditions will leave our prisons more safe or less safe? Finally, will the Government apologise to the country for yet another broken manifesto promise?

[Mr Gyimah]

Let us be clear about what happened yesterday and remind ourselves that we are dealing with category A prisoners in Long Lartin, which contains some of the most challenging and difficult prisoners within the estate. Prison staff work incredibly hard to deal with these prisoners—many of them are extremely difficult individuals—and to manage them successfully on a day-to-day basis.

Last night’s disturbance was an incredibly rare occurrence, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Inevitably, the nature of our business is such that the situation can become volatile. This situation was isolated—isolated to one wing—and, as I have said, the prison was running a full regime. When situations become volatile, staff in prisons sometimes need extra support, and in this situation our specialist trained prison staff were needed to support the staff in the prison to resolve the incident. They did that very quickly, without harm to staff or prisoners.

In response to the questions about staffing, the shadow spokesperson will be aware that we are investing in our staff in prisons. We are investing £100 million to add 2,500 prison officers by the end of next year. We are on track to deliver that commitment. This year alone we have added a net 868 new prison officers.

The hon. Gentleman is very aware, from his conversations with the chief inspector of prisons and a number of prison governors, that the long-standing challenges facing our prisons are not just about staffing, but new psychoactive substances that the prison ombudsman himself has described as a game-changer for the security and stability of our prisons. We know that staffing would make a huge difference, which is why we are making huge efforts to increase not just the number of staff but the ratio of staff to prisoners, so that one prison officer has a caseload of six prisoners to help with rehabilitation.

The hon. Gentleman asked about our commitment to close old Victorian prisons and add new prison places within the course of this Parliament. Our first priority is to ensure public protection and provide accommodation for all those sentenced by the courts, but that commitment very much remains.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point and that is certainly something we can look at. Equally, it is fair to say we got the balance wrong on the specific issue of fees. One of the strong elements we are looking to reinforce is the role of ACAS. We have seen that conciliation and the number of cases referred to conciliation have had a strong impact on reducing the number of cases that need to go to court or a tribunal.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I wrote to the Secretary of State back in July to call on him to issue a full and unequivocal apology to working people for deliberately and unlawfully blocking their access to justice through employment tribunal fees. Last week, I received a wholly inadequate reply, which I have here. Will the Minister apologise today for the suffering that this policy has caused hundreds of thousands of working people?

[Dominic Raab]

We have conceded that we got the balance wrong. I am happy to say that I am very sorry for any frustration or deleterious impact that this has caused anyone who has been affected. That is why we are acting so quickly to end the charges and to make sure there are practical arrangements for the reimbursement of anyone affected by these fees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I will certainly write to my hon. Friend. The staffing arrangements at Wellingborough have not been decided yet, but we are very proud, and very keen to be progressive in opening the prison.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The Minister is boasting about the number of prison officers who have been recruited this year, but the Ministry’s own figures show that 35 prisons—a third of the total—have suffered a fall in frontline officer numbers since January this year. Is this another example of what the former director-general of the Prison Service now describes as Ministers

“doing nothing except issue cheery press releases...which suggest all is going precisely to plan”?

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[Mr Speaker]

I hope the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) will shortly reissue his textbook for colleagues on succinct questions.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

This summer I was proud to sign up to the campaign launched by Gina Martin to change the law so that the disgraceful practice of so-called upskirting is made a specific sexual offence. So will the Minister finally join with us today in backing this call for a change in the law?

[Mr Lidington]

I have taken very seriously the representations made not only by Gina Martin, but by some of the police and crime commissioners around the country. I have asked for detailed advice on this, but I hope the hon. Gentleman will understand that, before proceeding to a commitment to legislation, I want to be absolutely certain that this would be the right course to take.

Prison and Youth Custody Centre Safety

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his reappointment as Chair of the Justice Committee. We are committed to transparency on this. We recognise that there is a series of challenges and problems within the system, and I would be more than happy to come before his Committee to discuss this further. In regard to legislation, we have not ruled out future legislation on prisons, but I would argue that there is quite a lot we can be getting on with that does not require legislation. We are eager, keen and determined to reform our prison system.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Yesterday’s scathing report by the chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales represents a watershed moment in the national debate on our prisons. Prisons should be places not only of punishment but of rehabilitation. They should be making us all safer in the short run and in the longer term. I believe that the whole House will be alarmed by the chief inspector’s view that

“too many of our prisons had become unacceptably violent and dangerous places.”

Members on both sides of the House are all too well aware that there is a crisis in our prisons, and yesterday’s report revealed that, despite the Government’s warm words, the situation is not under control, and it is getting worse.

In the light of that, I believe that the Minister has some serious questions to answer. Does he agree with the remarks by his former colleague, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and former next Prime Minister, that prisons are approaching an “emergency”? What role does he think the substantial cuts to the prisons budget since 2010 have played in this, and what measures will he undertake to address the situation? The chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales has warned that this crisis

“has all been compounded by staffing levels in many jails that are simply too low”.

Does the Minister agree that prison officers deserve a pay rise, and that that will be necessary if we are going to increase numbers and improve retention?

The chief inspector has also said that he is

“appalled by the conditions in which we hold many prisoners”.

What measures is the Minister taking to address this and to reform our prisons so that prisoners leave prison as less, rather than more, of a danger to society? Most shockingly, the number of self-inflicted deaths has more than doubled since 2013. What strategy will he adopt, and what specific resources will he allocate, to reduce that number? The chief inspector said that he had

“reached the conclusion that there was not a single establishment that we inspected in England and Wales in which it was safe to hold children and young people.”

He added that the speed of decline had been staggering, given that in 2013-14, nine out of 12 institutions were graded as good or reasonably good for safety. What explanation does this Minister have for this? Everyone knows that the Government have created a crisis in our prisons. What yesterday’s report shows is that they are failing to take action to solve it.

[Dr Lee]

I do not accept that the Department has lost control of the prison system. That is nonsense. We have a full grip on the issues that we need to face. I would like to talk about the £1.3 billion that we have invested to transform the estate. By transforming it, we are going to improve the quality of the accommodation for prisoners, which will have a direct impact on the problems that we are encountering among the small volume of people who have mental health and suicide issues. We recognise that parts of our estate are antiquated, and that is why we are investing the money.

As I have already said, we know that there are many difficulties in the youth justice system, where the violence rate is 10 times higher than in the adult prison estate. I give my full support to the staff who continue to work in the youth estate because I have seen it with my own eyes: I have visited the majority of the youth estate and it is extremely difficult. I would argue that the genesis of the problem goes back many years. As I alluded to earlier, the admirable intention to reduce the number of people being locked up in the youth estate has brought us to a point at which we have a very challenging population that is particularly violent and difficult to manage. That is why we have the problems we have.

We are bringing forward plans on secure schools—there are two in the pipeline—and we intend to make them a completely different regime with a completely different curriculum balance, including getting people outside more because I am particularly passionate about the use of sport, so that we can deal with the issues we are confronting. I am under no illusions about how difficult this issue is, but we have a plan and we are going to implement it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

The hon. Lady has represented a beautiful part of the country, in which I have some family roots. I am sure that the Prime Minister, as a former candidate in that constituency, would agree with me about that. This case is clearly emotive, judging by the responses on the Opposition Benches. As I have said, I will look at the situation once again if I am returned to this position after the election. I will not make any commitments this side of an election, but I fully recognise the sensitivity of the case, its emotive nature and the individual people involved.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

GMB union research points towards state interference in the Cammell Laird industrial dispute, yet the picture remains incomplete because of withheld documents, as we have heard. That era of Conservative government is becoming defined by suspicion of institutional interference and state wrongdoing. We know the names: Hillsborough, Orgreave and Cammell Laird. If that interference is extended to the prosecution of those trade unionists, do they not have the right to know?

[Dr Lee]

I do not share such a jaundiced view of the Conservative Government of the 1980s. As I have said repeatedly, I will look at this case again once we are outside of purdah and once we are returned. I hope and expect a Conservative Government to be returned in a few weeks’ time, and I promise to look at this case again in detail then.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

If the Conservatives are returned to government we will, of course, look to see through these vital reforms.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition confirmed that a Labour Government would launch inquiries into blacklisting and Orgreave; the current Government have blocked all such efforts. Successive Conservative Justice Secretaries have also refused to release papers concerning the Shrewsbury 24. As her final act, will the Justice Secretary do the decent thing, review that decision, and release the papers to give those men and their families a chance of justice?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that we are currently in purdah, so we are not able to make announcements at this point.

[Richard Burgon]

According to the legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg, this is the Secretary of State’s very last Justice questions, so I will give her one last chance. In March, the Lord Chief Justice said that the Secretary of State was “completely and utterly wrong” to say that she could not speak up for the judiciary in the face of personal abuse. Will she finally admit that rather than doing her duty, she kowtowed to her friends in the press?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am a great believer in a strong, independent judiciary, but another bulwark of our democracy is a free press, and I do not think that Ministers should be saying what it is and is not acceptable for the press to print.