argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for drawing that to my attention. The Windrush taskforce has been working proactively with local authorities, housing providers and the third sector so that those in hardship are put in touch with the correct agencies to make sure that they are receiving the benefits to which they are entitled. If she gives me individual information after this urgent question, I shall be very happy to take it away.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Labor
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): When we first became aware of the scale of the Windrush problem, I chaired a ministerial meeting across Government, and the Minister from the Department for Work and Pensions was one of the most proactive Ministers there and determined to make sure that the DWP regarded somebody as eligible if they had an appointment with the Windrush taskforce. That important work continues at an official level. The hon. Lady has raised an individual case. She will have heard me say earlier that the consultation on the compensation scheme closes on 11 October, and we will bring forward a scheme as soon as possible after that, but we are also working with third sector organisations to make sure that advice and support is available for people.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): As the hon. Lady will have heard me say, the Home Secretary has already reached out to individuals impacted and the families of those who have passed away to offer his personal apology. They will of course be entitled to apply to the compensation scheme when that is open.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): That is an important aspect: individuals should be able to contribute to the lessons learned review, and in many cases it is the personal stories that are most compelling. The Alex Allan review was, of course, an internal review commissioned by the permanent secretary at the Home Office. An executive summary was shared with the House, but the Home Secretary is currently considering whether a redacted version of the report can be published.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James MacGillivray Neill (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister and the Secretary of State are to be commended on their prompt action. The Minister should be commended on his swift involvement, and I thank him for contacting me, as the Chair of the Justice Committee, so quickly. Does he agree that no pattern emerges in the evidence to show that there is any distinction between the problems that arise in our prisons that relates to the public or private nature of their ownership and management? Two patterns do emerge, however. One is a consistent history of failure in our old Victorian local prisons, be they run by the public or private sector, and the second is a persistent failure by the Prison Service, whether acting directly or through contract, to act upon the recommendations of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons—a litany that has been picked up by the chief inspector. What are the Government going to do to address those two clear patterns of failure?
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I will take those two matters separately. As for responding to the inspector’s recommendations, we have changed—the Secretary of State for Justice has driven this through—how our management systems work to put the inspector’s recommendations and reports at the heart of the way we set objectives for the Prison Service. We had our own independent assessment under the previous system, but we expect the House to see that how we manage prisons much more closely reflects inspection reports in the future On the question of old Victorian buildings, there clearly is a pattern, but it is not an absolute pattern. There are old buildings, such as Stafford, that are well run, good prisons, and there are new prisons, such as Nottingham, that have managed to get themselves into trouble despite the new buildings. However, generally speaking, running an old Victorian prison adds to the problems, and we should ensure that our investment in 10,000 new places endeavours to remove the worst-affected prisons from our system.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I genuinely pay tribute to some of the things that are happening in Scotland in relation to prisons, and I was privileged to visit HMP Perth, which is a good example of a busy, challenged local prison that is being run well. Prison officers in Scotland would also say that there have been significant cuts to their numbers since the early 2000s, and they, too, have had to make serious efficiency savings, which they have done well, and they are running good prisons We are watching closely what is happening on short sentences in Scotland. Like the Scottish Government, our priority is to protect the public, but the evidence on what could be done to reduce reoffending by not overusing short prison sentences inappropriately is a good lesson from Scotland, from which we wish to learn.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is about staff. We now have 3,000 more prison officers than we had when we made the announcement, and having more staff will make a difference. The next stage is getting the training right, particularly the training for the band 5 and band 4 uniformed staff who are out there on the landings day in, day out. It is about getting the staff college right for governors, and it is also about making sure that, in places like our Newbold Revel training college, we have the right support for our prison officers. It is an amazing profession, but it needs support and training.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Edward Vaizey (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with the Minister that this is not a debate about privatised versus publicly run prisons; obviously it is about how we work to ensure that we do not have such trouble again. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Justice, said about the need to carry on the vision of reinvigorating the prison estate I also echo the Minister’s comments about education. The great opportunity in our prisons is to work with prisoners and to use, for example, culture and sport to give them opportunities. Prisons are often dealing with people who have mental health issues and, sometimes, a lack of education, and it has been shown that the arts and sport can do a great deal to help rehabilitate prisoners, as opposed to, say, penal servitude.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Education
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend encourages me to reflect on our sport strategy, which is coming through. Broadly speaking, there is also the key point about how education changes lives. By changing lives and helping people to get employment when they leave prison, education reduces reoffending and protects the public. Stabilising our prisons and delivering high-quality education in prisons is good not just for prisoners but for the rest of society.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a very shocking, very immediate illustration of just how horrifying what was happening at Birmingham was. The right hon. Gentleman is right that, when something like that happens, not only should we take back control from G4S but we should think very seriously before returning the prison to it. That is why, for exactly the reasons he raises, we are giving the House the assurance that we will be taking over for a minimum of six months—that is a minimum of six months —and we will be very tough and clear in the decisions we reach at the end of those six months on whether we believe the prison is stable enough to be handed back to G4S.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Mary Boswell Prentis (Conservative, Centre-right): Following on from the previous question, does my hon. Friend agree that this debate is not about public or private management of prisons but is, in fact, about when it is appropriate for the Government to step in when prisons are failing? If I may say so, this debate is also about when it is appropriate for a Minister to take responsibility for the Prison Service, as I was pleased to read over the summer that he is willing to do.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): The rebuke is taken; of course it is true that, as with any institution, it is easier to run this with more staff and fewer people. But the answer in practice is that we take this remedy to stabilise a prison that has reached a situation that Birmingham has reached. Once the prison is stabilised and functioning well, it is possible to run it with the full population. We can see that being done at Altcourse and Thameside, and at a busy, challenged local prison such as HMP Hull at the moment. But it is necessary to take these steps at Birmingham, and the right hon. Gentleman is right to say that it does not take a massive brain to work out that this is the first thing we need to do.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Government Operations
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): Again, this is a good challenge. It comes down to reasserting, in every way, both here in the House and through the management chain, that the governor is in charge, that we will give them the resources to get behind them and that we will support them in what they are doing. It is absolutely right to say that only with a properly empowered governor are we going to achieve that change.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): The inspector has clarified that so far this year the prisons that have triggered urgent notification have been Exeter and Nottingham, and that he would have triggered a UN on Liverpool. Birmingham is the fourth, so the answer is: three out of the four since the beginning of this year have been from the public sector.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): The situation at Nottingham Prison has been very concerning, with deaths at the prison of particular concern. We now have a new governor; a very highly respected, professional governor has come in. Tom Wheatley, the previous governor, is moving on to another role. We would expect to see the beginning of a turnaround there within the next six months, with the things to look at in particular being the statistics on drugs and violence.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Gordon Leonard Henderson (Conservative, Centre-right): Paul Newton is an excellent governor. He was transferred from Swaleside prison, in my constituency—a prison that has its own problems. What assurances can the Minister give me that the transfer of Mr Newton will not be detrimental to my local prison?
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): We have to be cognisant of that, but the Prison Service is a large system. We have more than 20,000 prison officers, so although moving 32 staff will challenge some of the prisons from which they are removed, this should be accommodated within our prisons system. We have a lot of other talented governors, and we remain confident that the need in Birmingham is greater than that at Swaleside. We will make sure that Paul Newton is replaced with a highly effective governor.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): The fundamental factor that triggered the change at Birmingham was that in December 2016 one of the prison officers managed to lose their keys, which led to nearly 200 prisoners being unlocked and a riot in the prison. G4S had been improving the prison over the previous three years, but that event really knocked the bottom out of it. It had a devastating effect on morale, and as the hon. Lady implied, it led to a lot of experienced staff leaving the prison. Looking back over that period, we can see that, although the chief inspector of prisons and the Government had hoped that things were beginning to improve during 2017, that turned out in the end to be a false promise, and we are still recovering from the blow of that December 2016 event.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (Conservative, Centre-right): I have huge confidence in my hon. Friend the Minister, but I do not have confidence that the prison officers that the Government employ will stay on. The facts speak for themselves. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); many of my local prison officers, along with, I am sure, many across the prison estate, are concerned that the proper discipline, protection and all the other things are not in place to look after them. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that he will look into the matter and make sure that if, for example, a prison officer is assaulted, the assaulter is jailed for a much longer period?
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): That is absolutely the right challenge. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has introduced a private Member’s Bill that will double the maximum sentence available for assaulting prison officers. But it is not enough just to double the maximum sentence. We need to make sure that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service work together to bring prosecutions forward. There are still today too many incidents of prison officers being assaulted. They are hard-working, serious and professional public servants with a very challenging working life. We owe them a duty of care, and we must prosecute people who assault them.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work on this issue. In fact, I would like to offer to sit down with him immediately to discuss the findings he mentioned and how we can apply them to Birmingham Prison.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): Like Birmingham Prison, the prison in Chelmsford has some ancient Victorian wings and the staff numbers had become very low, but those numbers have now increased. Does my hon. Friend agree that new staff need support in the form of training, ongoing mentoring and tutoring? Will he ensure that they get that support?
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has made seven visits to Chelmsford Prison and has worked closely with the acting governor there on the steps that are being taken to turn it around. [Interruption.] I hasten to add that she made those visits as a visitor. The key point that she raises is the one on mentoring, particularly the role that more experienced prison officers at band 4 can play in providing the day-to-day model for and partnership with the staff on the ground, to teach them the jail craft that is essential for everybody’s safety, and ultimately for turning around lives.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): There have been historical challenges with the use of body scanners. We have now gone through the legal advice very carefully, and I am clear that they can be and ought to be used much more frequently, so we have invested almost £6 million in additional scanning. That will allow us to detect, as we already do at Belmarsh, drugs carried by people inside their body, as well as drugs carried on their person. That will go along with the new scanners that we are bringing in to detect mail infused with Spice and all the work that we are doing to combat drones and other ways of getting drugs into prison. Protective security measures must work alongside demand reduction and therapy, but without protective security we cannot get on top of the drugs epidemic.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): Violent offences are committed in prison. If drugs are peddled in prison, appropriate punishment needs to be meted out to those who are responsible and the ringleaders removed. If the Minister will not bring back hard labour, will he at least look at the punishment regime so that prison officers and inmates who obey the rules can regard prison as a safe place to be, because at the moment it sounds to me as though the Government are losing control?
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): This is a very good challenge. There are two fundamental issues. One is the nature of the punishment that we impose. Somebody who is dealing drugs in prison is committing a criminal offence, so we would expect that person to proceed to court and receive extra days, or extra years, of sentence for importing drugs into a prison—that should be a consecutive, not concurrent, sentence. The second and most important issue is consistency. We need to ensure that any punishments that are inflicted are predictable and consistent, and we need not only to do that with drugs, but to challenge low-level disruptive behaviour consistently if we are to turn around the culture in our most troubled prisons.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a very good point. If the prison is stabilised as a result of this action, we need to make sure that the plan that takes it forward respects those ratios and that, if those ratios are reduced, it is done on an evidence base. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to point to the danger of doing that suddenly after the takeover.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael James Tomlinson-Mynors (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister has reduced the number of prisoners at HMP Birmingham. Will he look seriously at reducing the number of prisoners right across the prison estate and relentlessly focus on rehabilitation? For victims and for those serving sentences of under 12 months, prison is not working.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend very much for his question. It is of course true that we have evidence that shows clearly that there is a higher incidence of reoffending by people on short prison sentences than by people who serve community sentences. That is why the example from the Government of Scotland is very relevant. The best way to protect the public is by reducing reoffending. Putting people unnecessarily into prison in a way that damages them, does not change their lives and leads to reoffending when they leave is not in the prisoners’ interests, is not in the public purse’s interest and, ultimately, is not in the interests of public safety.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Rebecca Faye Clark (Pow) (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that tackling the problems in prison is important, but that it is very important to reduce the number of those ending up in prison? Recent data shows that two thirds of all young offenders have speech, language and communication disorders. Surely, if we can focus more on that in the early years, we can reduce the number of young people ever finding their way to prison.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): That is absolutely right. A lot of people who are offending and ending up in prison come from very difficult backgrounds. We have a situation at the moment in our prisons where nearly half our prisoners have been excluded from school at some time compared with only 2% of the general population. We have a situation where almost 40% of the people in prison currently have a reading age of under 11 and a very significant number have a reading age of under six. Addressing those problems in early years is vital if we are to reduce offending.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I say very respectfully that the chief inspector of prisons argues that the steepest increase in violence has taken place at Exeter Prison, which, sadly, is a public sector prison. Yes, it is true that we have very significant problems in Birmingham, which is a private prison, but we also have significant problems in Exeter, which is a public prison. The driver of this issue is not public against private; it is drugs, violence and, ultimately, the management leadership culture and the support for the staff on the ground. These problems can happen whatever the particular model.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Edmund Francis Hughes (Conservative, Centre-right): I understand that Altcourse Prison, to which the Minister referred, was inspected in November 2017. In the report published in March this year, the chief inspector of prisons described an excellent staff culture and said that almost all interactions between staff and inmates were positive. Does this show that the private sector does have a role to play in running prisons?
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): Altcourse Prison is a G4S prison; it is run by the same company that is being criticised in Birmingham. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, that prison—as I saw directly—has incredibly good education facilities and workshops, and it had a good inspection report. It is showing how to run a safe, clean and orderly regime that is genuinely changing lives, and how to do so through the private sector.
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Law and Crime
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): May I pay tribute to the way in which my hon. Friend is handling this very difficult and sensitive matter? The tendering process is critical wherever the private sector is involved in the provision of public services. Will he ensure that anyone bidding in any future tenders for prisons, including this one, will have to show that they have the capacity to avoid losing control of the prisons in their charge?
HMP Birmingham — House of Commons, 2018-09-04
Topic: Government Operations
Roderick James Nugent Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): This is a fundamental challenge, and of course it is central to anything that happens when the Government work with the private sector. We must make sure that the tender process ensures that the people bidding for any of these contracts have the credibility, legitimacy and capacity to run the contracts effectively.