Education in Prisons

Viscount Hailsham Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

Cross Bench!

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I completely agree. Stability is really important. That is one of the things that I am trying to get into the system. The Sentencing Bill that will come to your Lordships’ House has a real focus on stability. The noble Baroness will know from her fantastic work in prisons that you want to be able to work with an individual for a long period of time to help them turn their life around. When I went to Eastwood Park, a women’s prison just north of Bristol, the average number of days a woman is there is 46. That is just not long enough to support them with their often significantly complex needs.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I acknowledge the Minister’s personal commitment to purposeful training within prisons and the contribution that he has made to providing work to prisoners who have been released, but there are 10 serious concerns identified in this report. Could the Minister say to the House what concrete and specific measures the Government are proposing to take in, say, the next six months to address the more serious of these 10 concerns?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I was clear when I started in this role that it is going to take time to fix what is a complex and troublesome system. Therefore, I cannot say exactly what I can achieve in the next six months. However, I am very clear that we need stability, and staff who are trained to deliver a safe and secure environment. From a position of education, it is important that staff have enough prisoners in their classrooms to teach. All too often, due to regime issues, security issues and so on, we have too many examples—as I saw on my prison visit to Hindley on Thursday—where people are locked up 22 hours a day. That is part of our inheritance but something I am having to deal with. I am addressing it in exactly the same way I addressed how I ran my business: focus, delivery and making sure I get accountability from the teams that are passionately engaged in what we are trying to do.