Prison Officers Association: Withdrawal from Voluntary Tasks

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

As I have said, our prison officers do an incredibly difficult job. I visit prisons almost every week and I know how hard the officers work. The POA has decided to make a stand on pay, as we have seen in today’s bulletin. I urge it to withdraw its bulletin because it will not do anything to improve safety in our prisons.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

What steps has the Minister taken in the past few months to improve the career prospects of prison officers?

[Mr Gyimah]

In addition to the workforce strategy that we will publish later this year, which will focus on the professionalisation of the workforce, last week we announced a progressive promotion opportunity that will allow band 3 officers to do roles relating to safer custody, mentoring and hostage negotiation, and to get a pay rise. That is a huge step not just in professionalising the workforce and allowing people to operate in more senior roles, but in improving the pay packets of our hard-working prison officers.

Prisons

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

A future Labour Government will not treat our hard-working, hard-pressed prison officers as the enemy—[Interruption.] I hear the roars of disapproval from those on the Government Benches. Anybody would think they were presiding over a successful Prison Service and there was not a prison crisis. If they would listen rather than roar at me, I would be grateful.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

rose—

[Richard Burgon]

I really do need to make progress, I am afraid.

The ambition set out in the White Paper to increase staffing levels is welcome, but 2,500 officers represent less than half the number of prison officers cut by Conservative Justice Secretaries since 2010, and in order to get 2,500 extra officers, 8,000 will have to be recruited in just two years. I wonder whether the Justice Secretary has confidence that that will happen, because I do not come across many in the justice sector who think it any more than a pipe dream under her management. In the year to September 2016, she had about 400 fewer officers. There is a crisis in staff retention; they are leaving more quickly than she can recruit them. The Prison Officers Association membership has very recently rejected a pay deal offered by the Government. What plans has she made to improve the offer and begin to make those jobs more attractive to the public? She currently faces a recruitment drive that is in danger of failing before it has begun.

Announcements that ex-service personnel will be recruited to the Prison Service might grab quick headlines, but in truth this is nothing new. There have always been former members of our armed forces taking jobs in our Prison Service. The role of soldier and prison officer are not exactly the same, by the way, as prison officers who have been in the Army have told me. The Secretary of State must explain how she can compensate for the fact that, as we have heard, so many experienced officers have left, and are leaving, our Prison Service.

Overseeing a transformation to a prison estate populated by more experienced prisoners and more inexperienced prison officers presents a clear and present danger. Inadequate staffing levels have a range of consequences. Prisons are less safe because staff are far outnumbered. Prisoners are spending more time in their cells because they cannot be managed outside, and prisoner frustration is heightened by the lack of time out of their cells.

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[Richard Burgon]

I am certainly not aware of any such policy announcement being made. [Interruption.] Conservative Members are making some strange gesticulations. It is not Labour policy to release half the prisoners. Why on earth would that be the case?

We need a lasting way to manage the prison population. In November 2016, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, appeared before the Justice Committee. Not surprisingly, he was questioned on the prisons crisis, and he offered a view on what could be done:

“The prison population is very, very high at the moment. Whether it will continue to rise is always difficult to tell, but there are worries that it will. I am not sure that at the end of the day we can’t dispose of more by really tough—and I do mean tough—community penalties.”

Prison has always been seen as a punishment. A person breaks the social contract that governs much of our relations with one another, and they may be imprisoned. Members from across the House rightly see prison as a fitting sanction, and it must be right that when a convicted person is a danger to the public, they are kept away from the public until such time as they no longer pose a threat. A significant minority may never be safe to release. But we must ask whether prison is the right place for some of those who offend. We should always reflect on that, because if we do not, we find ourselves in the position that the Government are in now.

[Victoria Prentis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

I have already said that I will not give way any further.

The warehousing of thousands of people without any support or access to rehabilitation means that when they leave prison, as they inevitably will, they will be in exactly the same position as when they entered. They might still be drug-dependent. They might still be homeless. They might still be in poverty. It is right—in fact, it is our duty—not to be complacent, but to reflect and ask ourselves whether the way in which we deal with at least some of those who break the law is working. With many offenders, it is not. Their stay in prison is too short to teach them new skills, or for them to obtain a qualification or stabilise a drug addiction.

In recent weeks I have met stakeholders who question whether it is worth sending people to prison for a few weeks or a few months, and I have met prison officers who lament that they see the same people over and over again. When stakeholders, people at the frontline and experts raise such matters, we must take them seriously. We must punish and we must deliver smart sentences as well as strict sentences, always asking ourselves what the best way is to protect the public. I firmly believe that MPs must have that urgent discussion.

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[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones). One of the most exciting parts of the speech made by the Secretary of State concerned the pilots on blocking mobile phones in prisons. Mobile phones increase the amount of organised crime that can be carried out on a daily basis in prisons, so it is critical that we deal with that. It is also a pleasure to follow a number of distinguished exes who have offered fantastic ideas. Aren’t we lucky that we do not have to recall them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) would like us to believe, to benefit from the brilliance of their ideas to improve the serious problem of prison safety?

The Justice Committee published its report in May 2016, when we urged the Government, as the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said, to act quickly on prison safety. It is clear from everything that has been said, not least by the Secretary of State, that the MOJ is bursting with ideas. The Justice Committee welcomes the White Paper. In due course, we will scrutinise, and probably welcome a great deal of, the police and crime Bill—we have been given some nuggets this afternoon. However, to do our job of holding the Department to account, we need adequate information.

On 29 November, when the prisons Minister kindly appeared before us, he said that he would give us monthly reports on safety indicators. We have not had them, despite our chasing, so I urge him again to produce them as quickly as possible because we need that information. We also welcome the extra money that has been given to our prisons. About a fifth will be spent on staff, which we support, but we need more information about where the rest of it will go. Substantially higher funding will be given to Bristol, Hewell and Rochester so that they can improve safety. We will want to know if that works, so we need the data to assess that.

I understand the Department’s frustration with Members who say that reducing prison numbers is an easy solution to its problems. My ideas about who to release—they are not, I stress, the Committee’s ideas, many of which have been mentioned—include IPP prisoners; foreign national prisoners, although we know that is not easy; and women prisoners and veterans, who have low reoffending rates. However, that is tinkering at the edges of the large prison population. If we cannot recruit—I accept that the Department is trying desperately hard to do so—will the Minister make a commitment at least to consider whether there should be a shift in the sentencing framework, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) suggested, towards community-based alternatives? I would also ask the Minister to consider the fact that we desperately need more secure mental health beds so that we can screen prisoners immediately on reception and divert them to the best place. No one on the Justice Committee thinks that the prisons Minister has an easy job, and we welcome many of the reforms that the Government have recently set out, but we need the data so that we can do our job of holding him to account.

Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

Such issues will be resolved in due course, and there will be a statement later today from my right hon. Friend the Brexit Secretary.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

What can my right hon. Friend do to reassure the legal profession that contracts where the choice of law is English or Welsh law will continue to be enforceable across Europe, even after we have left the EU?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a vital issue for our fantastic legal services profession—four of the top 10 international law firms are headed in the UK. I said this week at a joint meeting with the Lord Chief Justice and members of the legal profession that mutual enforcement of judgments will be a key part of our Brexit negotiations.

Restorative Justice

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I am in an even worse position than my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) in following superb speeches from all those who have spoken in the debate. They leave me with very little to say, but it is worth summing up by saying that we all know that restorative justice saves money by breaking the cycle of reoffending, and we all know that it plays an important part in victim recovery. What we have to do now is ensure that all those who need to benefit from it can benefit from it. I will try to find a few crumbs that have not yet been touched on.

It is always a great pleasure to speak in Justice Committee debates and to take part in the Justice Committee. Our report was particularly positive, as was the Government’s response, and that has not always been the case with our reports. We welcome that as a Committee, particularly given the importance of the issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke about the prisoner perspective, and I would like to touch on the issue of victims. I draw the attention of those present to an excellent website organised by Why me?, representatives of which are present here today. It is a fantastic website. If people have 10 minutes later today or in the near future, it is worth a look. I will not read out any of the case studies, because Why me? specifically asks that that is not done, but it has excellent studies from victims’ ambassadors on the website. I encourage anyone who is not yet convinced or knowledgeable about restorative justice to look them up. The case studies make it clear that restorative justice helps a wide range of people, all of whom have had their own very different experiences of the criminal justice system. Some lost loved ones, but found that meeting the perpetrator helped them to come to terms with that loss. Other victims have seen their confidence restored from an open dialogue with the offender. That is a plug that I would make again and again; the website is worth while.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said, the Victims’ Commissioner is with us today. She is a brave lady and an example of the many people in this field who have made something really positive out of their own tragedy. She brought out a report on victims’ perspectives in November. One statistic that I highlight—I do not think it has been mentioned—is that only 4.2% of all victims of crime are offered restorative justice. That is a very small percentage, and I know that everyone in this room is working hard to increase it. It is clear that much more needs to be done to raise awareness of the benefits of restorative justice. Only with raised awareness will the uptake increase.

Another concern expressed by the Victims’ Commissioner that I do not think has been touched on is that restorative justice is often offered far too late. Nearly half of the victims in her review said that they were informed about restorative justice only after the offender had been sentenced, and that brings me to one of the major barriers to the provision of restorative justice, which sadly is the considerable pressures facing our prison service at this time. It is clear that used properly, early and often, restorative justice can help us to reduce the prison population by helping to reduce reoffending. At the moment, with the considerable difficulties experienced with prisons, prison officers have limited time for supervision and building up the relationships that we know aid rehabilitation.

It is even difficult at the moment to find sufficient staff to move prisoners to the rooms they need to go to for restorative justice sessions. The NOMS capacity-building programme that was launched in January 2012 included training delivered by Restorative Solutions. It had limited success because of the organisational changes and difficulties in the Prison Service. It may be unrealistic to expect major advances in restorative justice in prisons until the bigger issues of staff shortages and safety are tackled. Nevertheless, governors should be instructed to facilitate meetings wherever possible and to view that as part of the wider picture in reducing reoffending and the number of people in our prisons.

We are currently half way through the pilot on restorative approaches to conflict resolution in prisons. Would today be a good moment for the Minister to comment on the data that have come in to date? Otherwise, we will not hear for probably another year; I believe that the pilot is ending in the autumn and then responses will have to be collated. If possible, it would be helpful if he could comment on the material that has come in and the response of the Ministry of Justice to it.

There is a widespread lack of understanding of the benefits of restorative justice. We need to ensure that other parts of the criminal justice system, including the police, the probation service and other charitable organisations, play an increasing role in delivering restorative justice. We need to provide consistent solutions across the country, as the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said.

At the moment, we find pockets of real success. I am glad to say that in my own area, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley mentioned, the Thames Valley restorative justice service has been a leading light in the field. It recently celebrated its 15th anniversary and has worked closely with the Ministry of Justice throughout that time. It was one of the first organisations in the UK to be awarded the Restorative Justice Council’s restorative service quality mark and has, at its centre, a belief in a sense of fairness and inclusion. In its written evidence to our inquiry, which I found particularly helpful, it made it clear that a proportion of the service’s time is now rightly spent assisting other areas with restorative justice programmes, pointing out that,

“provision of RJ services is patchy and inconsistent across the country and different areas may be resourced to deal with different types and seriousness of crime. For example, some areas will work with sexual offences and some won’t, some prisons will support facilitation in such cases and some will not. Some areas appear not to be resourced to provide any RJ service provision whatsoever.”

Sharing best practice is essential. I welcome the Government’s commitment to work with police and crime commissioners, who will undoubtedly play a part in that, but I am not sure they can or should remedy the inequalities of provision all on their own. It has been helpful to have information on the spend of individual PCCs for the preparation of the report. I am glad that the Government are considering publishing those figures as we go forward, as well as, more generally, a progress report on the nationwide state of restorative justice. I would be grateful for anything the Minister can tell us about the frequency and detail of such publications.

Data sharing is a persistent problem, and I draw attention to the sections of the report that deal with that in some detail. We welcome the Government’s work in preparing a national data-sharing toolkit. That work cannot be done soon enough.

This is a positive report, with a positive response from the Government, but these are still very early days for restorative justice. I look forward to it becoming a fully integrated and properly used part of the criminal justice system.

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

I see that I am starting four minutes late; with the snow gathering over the Ribble Valley and the west coast main line heading towards Dumfries and Galloway, you will no doubt be pleased, Mr Evans, that I will not be taking my allocated 10 minutes. There is no need for me to reiterate the comments that have been made, the extensive conclusions of the report or the positive response from the Government, but I will sum up, make some comments on the points that have been raised today and add a few brief points of my own.

I add my support to the praise from the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) for the Chair of the Justice Committee and my good friend, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). He steers the Committee very ably and I have been impressed with his work during my time in this place. He started the debate succinctly, describing this as an important issue, and he was right to say that this should always be victim-based, but that victims should never be forced to go through the process. He was also right to say—this was corroborated by other hon. Members—that awareness is absolutely crucial. I would add to his call for the Minister to explain how we can better improve the measure of the effectiveness of restorative justice.

The right hon. Member for Delyn, who brings a wealth of experience, made the point clearly that there is common ground and consensus. It is not often that the Justice Committee produces a report that has that consensus, and I think that the Government’s response corroborates that position. He also made the crucial point about awareness. He gave a very vivid description of somebody going about their life, having never been involved in the criminal justice system, who becomes a victim of crime. The prospect of that person being asked to meet the offender of the crime, without knowing anything about restorative justice or understanding what it is that they are going to be doing, could be counterproductive and might set things back rather than moving them forward—moving forward is the principle we are all striving towards.

The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) talked vividly about the effects and reiterated some of the vivid evidence that we heard in Committee, particularly the phrase used by one victim that they felt they could go and “knock out Mike Tyson.” Although that was clearly a liberating experience for the victim and had a tangible confidence-building effect, perhaps that course of action might be counterproductive to what we are trying to achieve, although I think we all understood what she was trying to say. The hon. Gentleman made a point about consistency of approach and the fact that it is more widely used in the youth justice system, which I suppose is for obvious and good reasons.

The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who is not a member of the Justice Committee, put us all to shame by explaining extensively all the constituency work she was doing on Christmas day. I did send a couple of messages but clearly did not work as hard as she did. I was very taken by the letter she received from her constituent who had been incarcerated, and I was struck by her point that the first step to rehabilitation is when an offender starts to understand the consequences of their crime, departs from the position of, “Well, they left their window open so they deserved it” and starts to understand how the victims feel. That is the first step in rehabilitation. It was a powerful point well made—but I urge the hon. Member to take some time off over the next festive season.

The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) said that, rather peculiarly, she was stuck for words, but clearly she never is. She was right to point out that the Government response was positive, and to criticise the fact that only 14% of victims are offered restorative justice.

[Victoria Prentis]

It is 4.2%.

[Richard Arkless]

Only 4.2%, which is a rather shocking figure, when Opposition parties, Government parties, Ministers, stakeholders and interested parties all agree that restorative justice has a crucial role to play. If we do not strive to increase that figure, we surely ought to feel a wee bit ashamed.

I am a progressive social democrat; I believe in rehabilitation and community justice, and I do not believe in short prison sentences. I believe that victims, wherever possible, should have the option of restorative justice across the criminal justice system, although it should never be compulsory. It can provide closure and can be the first step in the rehabilitation of offenders.

In Scotland, we use restorative justice across the criminal justice system. The procurator fiscal can even use it as an alternative to prosecution. It can be used from the point of arrest to the point of release from incarceration. Of course, it is not perfect and we still have much more to do, particularly on the point of raising awareness, and I think that point is the most powerful one to come out of today’s debate. It is all very well having a system of restorative justice, but if victims and offenders do not understand the principles and the process and embrace them with open arms and an open mind, it will fail to work. We have to increase the numbers, but we also have to dramatically increase awareness.

HMP Birmingham

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am very happy to have a discussion with the hon. Lady about HMP Birmingham specifically. Staff retention and issues with psychoactive substances are issues across the prisons estate. The prisons Minister has a daily meeting to look at stability and make sure that we are providing every governor, regardless of whether they are in the public or private sector, with the support they need.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

Mobile telephones are used in prisons for the furtherance of crime and violence, and indeed for recording violence when it takes place. The Secretary of State hinted that there might have been some progress in stopping their use in prisons. Will she enlarge on that, please?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that alongside the rise in the use of psychoactive substances we have seen a rise in the use of mobile phones in prisons. We have been working with the mobile phone companies on a technical solution, which is rolling out; we are starting to test it fully in three prisons. That will give us the means of preventing those crimes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

Release on temporary licence has a huge role to play in helping prisoners to gain employment in the wider world. I have been speaking with Timpson’s, for example, which employs a lot of ex-offenders, and that is how they are trialled before release. We are looking at that to ensure that the guidance that governors receive allows them to do more with release on temporary licence, specifically in relation to employment opportunities.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

5. What plans the Government have to increase the autonomy of prison governors to enable them to make reforms.

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

We will turn around offenders’ lives only if governors have the levers they need over education, work and health in prison. That is why our reforms devolve power over budgets and services to governors.

[Victoria Prentis]

Procurement is a complicated business. What guidance and training are governors being given to ensure that they can complete the procurement process properly, be that for the provision of mental health services or even the recruitment of the dogs that bark at drones?

[Elizabeth Truss]

It sounds like my hon. Friend is asking for some of those patrol dogs at her local prison, HMP Bullingdon, which I am delighted to say will be one of the 30 prisons that will be recruiting locally to build up a local cadre of staff, starting next January. The answer is that we will be setting up a What Works network to help governors gain the expertise they need to take those decisions and make those things happen locally.

Prison Officers Association: Protest Action

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I respectfully say to the right hon. Gentleman that I have had a number of meetings with the POA and discussed issues of safety, on which I share its concerns. I am absolutely not attacking the hard-working prison officers on our frontline, but it is a mistake for the POA to call for unlawful industrial action in the middle of talks. I urge it instead to come back to the negotiating table, because that is how we will get a safer environment for our prison officers to work in; we will not get that through unlawful industrial action.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

When I was a very junior civil servant under a Labour Government, one of my first tasks was to get an injunction to stop the POA going on strike—we did that many years ago. Will the Secretary of State tell us the effects of the current unlawful industrial action, both on those who work in our prisons and on those detained in them?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We have implemented our contingency plans across the prison estate, at local, regional and national levels, but clearly we will not be able to run full regimes and that puts people at more risk. We are managing as safely as we can, but I strongly urge the POA to come back to the table to start negotiations again, so that we can reach a solution that helps make our prisons safer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

1. What steps her Department is taking to improve safety in prisons.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

12. What steps her Department is taking to improve safety in prisons.

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[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before we take the question, I am very pleased to announce that today we are joined by Lobsang Sangay, the Sikyong or Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government in exile. It is a pleasure and a privilege, Sir, to welcome you to the House of Commons.

[Victoria Prentis]

What an honour that is, Mr Speaker.

We welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to prison reform, but those sitting on the Justice Select Committee are very concerned about the recent statistics that she mentioned, not just in relation to the safety of prison workers, but in respect of vulnerable prisoners. What steps is she going to take to improve assessment and screening, so that those people can be identified at the beginning of their sentence?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am extremely concerned about the level of self-harm, which is particularly high in the women’s estate. We know that the first 24 hours are absolutely vital, and we are already taking steps to provide vulnerable prisoners with immediate mental health support. Next year, we will bring out a strategy on women offenders.

Prison Safety

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I apologise that—with your permission, Mr Stringer—I have to leave before the end of the debate so I will not be here to hear the closing speeches. Members of the Justice Committee, and indeed anybody who has met me for longer than 10 minutes, will know that very few things could drag me away from a debate on prison safety, but I am afraid a meeting about the Boundary Commission and boundaries is one of them. I thank hon. Members for their indulgence on that score.

Serving on the Justice Committee is an enormous privilege and most of the time it is a pleasure. However, as is clear from the passion of Members’ contributions today, it is not always a pleasure, because we have heard some very disturbing facts and figures about safety in our prisons. I am not a stranger to the Prison Service, having conducted litigation on its behalf for many years—it is nice to see some former clients in the Box today. I know that the Prison Service is staffed by many dedicated individuals, who work hard to ensure that people in their custody are safe, and to rehabilitate them. I also know that the spotlight has never shone so brightly on what is happening inside our prisons.

Although our predecessor Committee felt that the Government and the National Offender Management Service had underplayed the seriousness of the situation, our Committee does not now feel that is the case. This year, the former Prime Minister and former Member of Parliament for Witney gave strong leadership in his speech on prisons. Both the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), and the former prisons Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), were aware of and open about the appalling state of prison safety.

The reform programme is bold and motivated by all the right reasons. In our report we praise the considerable efforts made by the Ministry of Justice and NOMS to alleviate the situation, but political will is very far from being enough. The previous Secretary of State’s response to our review was characteristically robust; he acknowledged the extent of the problem and found an extra £10 million to deal with aspects of it.

It has to be said that, in its short time in post, the new prisons team has made it clear that it is fully live to the issues. In its response to our report, it says that prison safety is the Department’s top priority. The new Secretary of State told us last week that the position was unacceptable, and the Department has confirmed that legislation will be put in place to continue the reforms set out by her predecessor.

So with all this light, why is the situation getting worse? In my view, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) was right: the ratio of staff to prisoners is critical. I also agree with the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter)—despite the boundary changes, I will not call him the hon. Member for Wormwood Scrubs.

This is not a time for a debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) about whether the size of the custodial population matters, but it is clear that unless we are going to pour new resources into our Prison Service, we have to reduce numbers if rehabilitation is to be effective. I do not say that through a wish to be soft on criminals; rather the opposite. It is in all our interests for those in prison to be changed to stop them offending again. If the upshot of that is that tough diversionary sentences have to be used as an alternative to prison, effort should be put into piloting them. Restorative justice, as the Committee said in a previous report, may well have an important part to play.

[Alex Chalk]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of our problems as a society is that we have not quite solved the problem of how to generate a community penalty that is sufficiently robust that gives members of the public genuine confidence that it is a proper punishment? As soon as they feel that community penalties are a proper punishment, there will not be such an imperative to send so many people to prison.

[Victoria Prentis]

My hon. Friend is right. He will remember that, on our excellent Justice Committee trip to some restorative justice schemes in the United States, we saw some really good new alternatives to prison that we are extremely keen to see taken up and piloted here. They may well be part of the solution, but public opinion will have to be brought along with us. If results can be shown to be good, I am confident that public opinion will come along too—even in Shipley.

I do not see how it is possible to run safe prisons, let alone rehabilitative prisons, with insufficient staff. Prison officers have only limited time to give to supervision and to building up the relationships that we know help people to change. It is often difficult to find sufficient staff to move prisoners to the classrooms for desperately needed education. We have heard examples of wings where only one officer is now on duty when there were previously two. A body-worn camera, while welcome, is not the same as two sets of eyes. There is concern that lack of patrolling perimeter fencing is making it too easy to smuggle contraband.

We applaud the Department’s efforts to recruit more staff, but experienced officers take years of training and greater efforts must be made to retain them. The former prisons Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), has covered that issue fully; I emphasise his point that it is the net gain in numbers that should always be considered when looking at staffing levels.

The second reason, in my view, for the continued decline in safety is the exponential increase in the use of new psychoactive substances. The prisons and probation ombudsman says that 61% of prisoners use them regularly and that they have overtaken tobacco as the currency of choice inside.

During an excellent session at Reform earlier this summer, a prison officer told us about an inmate who had been found unconscious in his cell. Four officers went inside to assist him and all four of them needed hospital treatment for secondary inhalation. These drugs are not cannabis as some Members of the House may have known it; they are cannabinoids and they are very dangerous mind-altering substances, which are doing extraordinary damage to our prisoners.

The Government have criminalised possession of these substances, but a great deal of resource needs to be put into testing these drugs and searching for them if we are ever to hold back the tide of them. Blocking mobile phone signals, which we now have the ability and the powers to do, is surely a good step to consider, while we fight the organised providers of these drugs. I hope that the body scanner being trialled in Wandsworth works and that this device can be rolled out very speedily to other establishments. The Committee looks forward to hearing further details about it.

As others have already said, it is now for the new team of Ministers to put the flesh on the bones of the reform programme. I am grateful for the taster that we have had of that programme in the Government’s response to our report. In my view, prison reform is not a place for dogma, and there is considerable consensus across the House and on our Committee about what needs to be done. Forgive me for saying so, but we have a captive audience and it should be possible to pilot the best schemes, and to assess quickly the extent to which new ideas work. Historically, a shameful lack of data have been produced by the Ministry of Justice, but slowly that issue is being addressed. Nevertheless, the new ministerial team needs to be very vigilant about it.

To add to the list of those reforms currently under way, which are set out in the Government’s response, I would also suggest focusing on improvements to assessment on entry to prison, and asking new prisoners about previous head injuries and traumatic experiences surrounding bereavement, all of which are proven, as we know, to indicate a greater propensity to self-harm. Those prisoners who are recalled should be properly assessed, however many times they have been inside prison before, as we know that they are particularly vulnerable.

Busy prisoners are safer prisoners, and real resource must go into both education and employment. Almost half of prisoners lose touch with their families, yet it has been shown that those prisoners who maintain family relationships through visits demonstrate a 39% reduction in reoffending. Better visits, Skype and in-cell telephones should be seen not as “nice to have” luxuries for lily-livered liberals or prisoners but as a useful tool in the fight against future crime.

Of course, all these ideas need testing and evaluation, and the Daily Mail and Shipley will not like them all. I accept that it is difficult to push through major reforms at the same time as managing a dangerous and—quite frankly—unstable situation, but unfortunately the Department does not have time on its side.

Courts and Tribunals Fees

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak and to follow such experienced and learned speakers from across the House. I will concentrate on courts and tribunal fees. I am grateful for the opportunity to have served on the Select Committee that produced this report, and I wholeheartedly endorse the report and its recommendations.

I want to focus not on the more newsworthy aspects of the report such as employment tribunals, but on the structure and remission of fees. It is critical that fees do not impede access to justice. Fees are useful, and indeed necessary, for two reasons. First, they help to pay for the justice system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) reminded us. Secondly, fees can be used effectively to deter frivolous and vexatious claimants. As ever, as has been said across the House this afternoon, getting the balance right is key. The introduction of fees before employment tribunals has clearly had an enormous impact on the number of cases issued, and it was right that we focused on that.

I know from speaking to many of my fellow barristers that fee increases have had a significant impact in other areas, particularly that of professional negligence. It is not the welfare of my fellow barristers that concerns me; it is the welfare of individuals such as those injured when medical treatment goes wrong and who cannot issue claims. That should be a matter of concern for us today.

The Justice Committee looked closely at fee structure and fee remission during our inquiry and received evidence from senior members of the judiciary, the Bar Council and the Law Society, among others. One suggestion to alleviate the deterrent effect of the increases was to allow fees to be met in a series of staged payments throughout the course of a claim. At first glance, staged fees seemed to be a good idea, but the suggestion was not universally supported by the evidence given to us by senior members of the judiciary. Both Lord Dyson and Sir James Munby were hesitant when questioned by the Committee about the concept of staging fees. Lord Dyson said specifically that it was not a proposal that he had previously thought about. He agreed that it was an interesting idea but voiced serious concerns about how fee staging might be used by respondents to put pressure on claimants at various stages of the litigation.

One solution, suggested by Sir Ernest Ryder, could be to adopt the Scottish civil justice model of requiring a respondent’s fee to be paid alongside sequential fees for claimants. This, he said, would level the playing field and place the risk more fairly on both parties. As the evidence did not point us clearly in one direction or another, the Committee’s proposal in this area is a tentative one. A graduated or sequential schedule of fee payments could be a positive step, but we feel that a pilot scheme should be carried out in the first instance to evaluate the best way to operate such a system.

I turn now to fee remission, and I shall again take employment tribunals as an example. To be successful in an application for remission, a claimant must first pass the disposable capital test and then the gross monthly income test. The claimant has to fill out a separate fee remission application for each court or tribunal fee. While taking evidence, we were given statistics about how many pages claimants had to fill in. The forms are clearly not simple. Thompsons Solicitors pointed out that the guidance booklet itself was 31 pages long. Major changes have been made with the introduction of a new, supposedly user-friendly way to deal with fee remission, which has now been rebranded as “help with fees”. There has clearly been some improvement but complexities remain. This is possibly symptomatic of the much wider problem of litigants in person not having a great deal of understanding of the system in which they have to operate. The situation clearly needs to be kept under review.

The Law Society has spent a considerable amount of time looking at fee remission in general and has called for the Ministry of Justice to introduce a system for regular re-rating of the remission thresholds to take account of inflation. It has also suggested that a further review of the affordability of civil court fees and the remission system should take place and that simplification in all areas should be considered. The Committee endorsed those proposals. Personally, I think that there is a lot of merit in the suggestion of enabling automatic remission for all basic rate taxpayers. That would simplify the system enormously. Fee structure and remission may not seem at first glance to be an obvious cause célèbre for reforming lawyers, but without structural change our justice system becomes less accessible and less affordable for those who need it.