Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. The ultimate arbiters of our laws will be our own courts here in the UK. That is incompatible with being in the single market.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

5. What assessment she has made of the effect of increasing the number of prison staff on the (a) safety of prison officers and (b) capacity of prison staff to spend more time directly engaging with and supervising prisoners.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

12. What assessment she has made of the effect of increasing the number of prison staff on the (a) safety of prison officers and (b) capacity of prison staff to spend more time directly engaging with and supervising prisoners.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Elizabeth Truss)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns), whose 30 years in the House have been a joy to behold—although I have been here for only seven of them. We recently visited Chelmsford prison together, and I saw at first hand his commitment not only to his constituents but to the cause of improving prisons in this country. Chelmsford prison is one of the 10 prisons we selected for the early recruitment of prison officers. We said that 400 prison officers would be recruited by the end of March. I can confirm that they are now in training or in post in those prisons, including Chelmsford.

[Sir Simon Burns]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the extremely kind and generous comments at the beginning of her answer. I welcome the fact that, following the recognition that more staff are needed at Chelmsford prison, new staff are now being trained up. Does she know when those staff are likely to come on stream, to ensure that we have proper staffing levels and the proper protection for prison officers?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The training period for a prison officer is 10 weeks, so we will see them come on stream very shortly. Since November, 43 job offers have been made to new prison officers at Chelmsford. Following our visit to Chelmsford prison, we announced a rise in starting salaries for prison officers there, so they will now be paid a minimum of £26,500.