Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-17
Topic: Law and Crime
David Wolfson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the amendment from my noble friend Lord Attlee would seek to introduce a new sentence of detention for training at Her Majesty’s pleasure. It is aimed at offenders who are at least 18 and under 27. The key principle is that release would be gradual and dependent on the offender reaching the required performance levels in conduct, education and training. It would be served in training sites in remote rural areas I thank my noble friend sincerely for presenting his genuinely interesting idea—I was going to say "novel", but we have all watched "Yes Minister". He has done what he said others have not by thinking positively and constructively about what we can do in the future, rather than just criticising what we do now. I think that we all share his desire to reduce the reoffending rate for young adults. Training and education can enable people to turn their lives around and stop reoffending. I reassure my noble friend and the Committee that the Government are already taking action that addresses those issues My noble friend is right to be concerned that offenders leave prison illiterate and innumerate and is right to say that that significantly increases the prospects that they will reoffend. We all share those concerns. I can reassure the Committee that many offenders already achieve accredited qualifications in the fundamental basic subjects of English and maths while in prison. We recently published data that shows that, between April 2019 and March 2020, over 30,000 prisoners started English and maths courses and over half of this number completed the courses and received accreditations. Over and above that, many more will also have undertaken vocational training. However, we are not sitting on our laurels. We recognise that there is more to do. We welcome external scrutiny by the Education Select Committee, which has launched an inquiry into prison education, and Ofsted, which recently announced that it will be conducting a review of reading in prisons On employment, we want to make sure that the prison education and skills offer for prisoners is aligned with what employers want and need. We know that there is a correlation between getting a job when you come out of prison and not reoffending. We want to prepare prisoners for employment and the Deputy Prime Minister has made that a clear priority. We want to have partnerships with more businesses and build on the work that we already do with companies such as Halfords, Timpson and Willmott Dixon. We are also making sure that the Civil Service plays its part. In the beating crime plan, we have committed to recruiting 1,000 prison leavers into the Civil Service by 2023 Over and above that, we want to make sure that we have effective community supervision. Not only will that keep the public safer by providing early intervention, it will deflect offenders away from future offending as well. We set out in our sentencing White Paper an agenda of reform for not only punishing but, importantly, rehabilitating low-level offenders. We have set out a number of measures in this Bill as well: problem-solving courts, suspended sentence orders and extending the use of electronic monitoring. I believe that those measures will support offenders to change their lifestyles for good. In that, of course, I share the aims set out by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton.