Prisons — House of Commons, 2017-01-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Yasmin Qureshi (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to be able to close this debate, in which Members have spoken very eloquently and knowledgeably about the issues facing our prison system. Before I go into what they have said, I want to thank our prison officers, prison governors, and all those who work in the Prison Service. They face very great challenges every day of their lives, and we owe them a lot for the work that they do for us My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who has three prisons in her constituency, talked about the work that she achieved as a former Minister in trying to reduce the amount of violence in prisons. She comprehensively set out some of the failures of this Government. I am sorry if that disappoints Conservative Members but, as I will explain, there has been a failure to tackle some of the big issues facing our prisons My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who also has three prisons in her constituency, said that the prisons budget had been cut by a quarter, with £900 million being taken away. That will obviously have an impact on how prisons are run and on their staff. She raised three issues that the Minister should be looking at. First, there are far too many women in prison, especially women with children, and there does not seem to be any clear strategy within the prison system to assist them or to deal with situations such as how children can visit their parents. That is reflected in the Ministry of Justice’s figures on suicides that have occurred in prison, which show that a much higher percentage of women have committed suicide and self-harm. My hon. Friend also talked about reoffending, and the education and training that would prevent it, as well as mental health issues and personality disorders. Funding for those services has been cut, and those things need to be addressed My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) talked about the fact that many experienced staff have left the Prison Service and been replaced by inexperienced staff. It is well accepted that prison officers do far more than simply locking and unlocking the gates and taking prisoners in and out. They are often the only people prisoners will speak to. Prison officers act as mentors, advisers and family members, and they provide a sympathetic listening ear. It is not good enough to have inexperienced people taking over that work. I agree wholeheartedly with what the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) said about the tremendous work that prison officers do. As he said, their terms and conditions should be looked at properly and put on the same footing as those of people who do other difficult and sensitive jobs, such as police officers. Prison officers should be remunerated properly. Since the Government came into power in 2010, they have made massive cuts to the number of prison officers, and that is a big reason for some of the current prison issues. It is all very well for the Government to say that they are trying to do things; that is good, but they should never have cut the number of prison officers in the first place. If they had not made that false economy, we would not be in half the mess we are in now. I try not to be party political about this, but it was the wrong decision and it would be good if the Government accepted that. There is no harm in owning up to the fact that an error was made One suggestion for dealing with some of the prison problems was made by the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Although I more or less agreed with him on international issues when I was a member of the Committee, I have to tell him that privatisation in prisons is not the answer. It has not been the answer for probation. The probation service used to have a four-star gold rating but it has gone downhill since the privatisation, and that has had some impact on the Prison Service.