Sir Jeremy Wright
MP for Kenilworth and Southam · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I applaud my right hon. Friend’s passion and clarity on this issue. On the subject of democratic accountability, he knows that if, as the hon.”
“I welcome the intent that the Secretary of State has set out this afternoon, and the urgency with which she will require the relevant companies to act.”
“The Electoral Commission has made no formal assessment of this. It would be a matter for Parliament to introduce such legal protections. It is prescribed in law that poll cards and ballot papers must be provided in English or Welsh, but there are no other prescribed language requirements relating to election materials.”
“We can all cynically speculate about the reasons why this sudden about-turn has taken place this week, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who spoke from the Front Bench, said earlier, it is our job to scrutinise this legislation and to ensure that whatever we put in place does justice to the determination o…”
“In today’s version of the amendment paper, for the first time, that amendment has disappeared and been replaced not with the detailed compromise that Intelligence and Security Committee members, who have been engaged with this process, have been working towards, along with many others, but with Government amendment 157.”
“As the House would expect, we engaged with that process as diligently as we could, with no partisan politics, in an effort to make good law in the pursuit of greater state transparency while preserving our national security equities. As the hon.”
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“However, we recognise that there is a need to carry on looking at how our estate is most effectively utilised, and we will want to keep in mind the points that were raised on that. Spending money to keep underused and unsuitable courts and tribunals open is not a good use of taxpayers’ money, so we continue to keep the use of our estate under review to ensure that it meets operational requirements. The Select Committee is also right to emphasise how important co-operation across the criminal justice is for improving outcomes. In July last year, we set out important reforms now under way across the criminal justice system in the “Swift and Sure Justice” White Paper. We are building on those reforms to ensure that victims have a louder voice and that the criminal justice system commands public confidence.”
“The costs of youth custody are very high, yet 73% of young people leaving custody go on to reoffend within a year. It is not acceptable to spend so much yet get such poor outcomes. That is why we launched our vision for secure colleges that refocus a young person’s time in custody so that it is education with detention, rather than detention with education as an afterthought. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford and the Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the court estate, reform of which is key to a transformed justice system. In identifying ways in which it could operate more efficiently, the Ministry has closed 132 courts—84 magistrates courts and 46 county courts.”
“Lady that once we have had the chance to have a look at the sites that we might want to pursue for a larger prison and at the economics of doing it, we will give her all the detail she could possibly want, but we are not going to rush into it because, perhaps unlike our predecessors, we do not believe in spending money hand over fist until we get it right. We will make sure that we have got it right first; then we will bring forward our proposals. Let me move on briefly to youth justice, which was mentioned by the Chairman of the Select Committee. As he said, in February we published our plans for the future of youth custody. Young people who commit serious and persistent offences need to be properly punished and it is right that they are sentenced to custody, but custody is not delivering good enough results.”
“The hon. Lady is entitled to her doubts but she needs to be fair. We have said that we will look at the feasibility of providing just that sort of prison, although I would not use the language that she used. We are looking for a system of imprisoning offenders that is most efficient for the taxpayer, but not just in financial terms. Also—this is what I was going on to say—newer estate is much more susceptible to providing work in prisons, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) described, and the rehabilitative agenda that we all want to see outside as well as inside the prison gates. I can reassure the hon.”
“He is entirely right that work in prisons is a fundamental part of improving the services we offer in custody and beyond. He is right that working in a prison context allows offenders to develop not only the hard skills but the soft skills that might make them more employable. The idea of working a standard day or more hours in the week are hugely attractive from that point of view. I can tell the hon. Member for Darlington, who I know was concerned about this, that we are delivering more worked hours by prisoners in the prison estate than we were previously. Of course there is more work to be done, but we are heading in the right direction.”
“I know that the Select Committee has previously recommended that the different parts of the Department be further integrated. My right hon. Friend referred specifically to the European teams today, and I entirely understand his reasons for doing so. A range of different expertise is represented by different people in different departments, so although we will look closely at any opportunities for rationalisation, in this context, as it happens, the opportunities for rationalisation are not as great as they may at first appear. However, the question of greater integration more generally, as well as the delaying of grade and management structures that the JSC has also sought, is firmly within the scope of the review that we are carrying out. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford for his remarks.”
“Friend and the rest of the Select Committee know well, in 2010, the Department reviewed its operating model, which resulted in more streamlined structures and a reduced work force. However, further reform is required if we are to live within our means in future and operate in the most effective and efficient way possible. We have therefore commissioned a review of the business structures and functions across the Ministry of Justice. That includes our agencies and arm’s length bodies. The review will look closely and critically at the ways in which services are commissioned and provided. In doing so, we want the digital-by-default agenda to be put at the heart of the Ministry’s operations, and for creative ways to embody and implement the principles of civil service reform to be found.”
“We are determined to protect fundamental rights of access to justice, but we must tackle an over-reliance on the courts and legal system at taxpayers’ expense. That involves directing people towards less stressful and less adversarial means of resolving their disputes wherever possible. I was taken with my right hon. Friend’s point, with which I entirely agree, that if we necessitate the use of lawyers in some of these tribunals, and those tribunals are not operating as they should, that was not the intention and it should not be the way in which we proceed in the future. We are keen that in addition to transforming the services delivered by the Department, it transforms itself so that it has the right skills structures and agility to operate optimally. As my right hon.”
“We are, as he knows, often described as a downstream Department, and we need to work with other Departments, not just those that I have mentioned, to ensure that we all do the right things to bring down offending and reoffending. He will know that we will shortly publish a criminal justice strategy and action plan to set out how we will deliver further change. Legal aid is a fundamental part of our legal system but, as the Chair of the Select Committee rightly said, resources are not limitless and publicly funded legal support should be reserved for cases where there is genuine need. The Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 contains reforms that focus help on those cases where there is a genuine need of assistance from the state, and those proposals will be implemented in April.”
“I do not believe that it is the number of hours spent on the job that matters, but what one does in them. The effectiveness of this particular victims commissioner will become apparent. We think we have an excellent candidate for the job and that she will do a first-class job for victims. I am sure that the hon. Lady will support her in that work as she does it. We want to make optimum use of the available resources so that the criminal justice system is quicker, less bureaucratic and more efficient. Therefore we are working closely with the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General to ensure that we all look at the whole system to tackle its weaknesses. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed was right to say that the Ministry of Justice cannot solve all these problems on its own.”
“I have made it clear that we do not believe that we have done all we need to do on that front. I think that it is important to link a number of things. We need to ensure that the prison regime is conducive to work and that prisoners are incentivised to work, rather than to be idle. We are looking at both things, but the prison system needs to deliver more hours and a more regularised working day, for reasons the hon. Lady will entirely appreciate. We want to ensure that we get prisoners as close to the normality of the outside world as we can while they serve their sentence so that they have a better chance of being employed after they leave.”
“He rightly described why we want to ensure that people are rewarded for getting the outcomes we need them to get, and in this context that is a simple outcome to describe, although perhaps not quite so simple to design in the system: a reduction in reoffending. That means fewer victims, less misery for communities and less cost to taxpayers, which are eminently desirable outcomes. My hon. Friend was right to focus on the challenges we face in designing the system. We need to avoid cherry-picking and “creaming and parking”, which effectively means looking after only those whom it is easiest to turn away from offending. We are conscious of the need to design our system to avoid those perverse incentives and will do so. He is right that payment by results is the way to deliver those better outcomes.”
“I was going to move on a little later to the damage that we are trying to undo, but my hon. Friend is right that we have not inherited a beneficial legacy. I am afraid that there is considerable work to be done with the prison estate, as in so many areas of Government, because of the mess left behind. I will return to that in a moment, because the hon. Member for Darlington made a few comments that I think need to be addressed. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford was right to describe the potential of payment by results, which is at the heart of our proposals. We believe that payment by results has a place in the reforms we are making because we think that it is important to pay for outcomes, not simply for processes.”
“We inherited a note on a Treasury letterhead saying, “I’m sorry there’s no more money”, and a pile of debt. We are doing our very best to deal with the mess that her party left.”
“If we expected to have to pilot every single one of those new ideas, we could pilot for ever and never make progress. We do not accept that that is the right way to deal with reoffending rates that are far too high. Let me return to the point raised by the hon. Member for Darlington and my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis). When we listen to the hon. Lady and her colleagues say that there are difficult budgetary pressures, that the Department is having to cut costs, and how regrettable all that is, we should not allow her to forget the reasons we are having to make these difficult decisions. One would think that we had inherited a benign economic legacy involving piles of cash that we stubbornly refuse to spend, but that is simply not the case.”
“It is a myth that no learning is available about payment by results, even from pilots. It is not always necessary to complete a pilot in order to get something from it. A good deal of learning is available to us from the pilots that have been in operation and, indeed, from the operation of payment by results elsewhere in government. We will take that learning with us in designing the scheme that we are attempting to put in place. The truth is that we could pilot for ever. Piloting in this context is an excuse to do nothing, and we do not intend to adopt that approach because we want to take action to drive down high rates of reoffending. We want to see innovation; we want people to come forward with new ideas within this system.”
“I hope that the many Members who take an interest in the Ministry of Justice’s activities—they have not all participated in this debate—recognise the improvements that have been made to how the Department organises itself and delivers its services. I know that the Department remains committed to building on these improvements and working with Ministers to deliver our vision for a transformed justice system. Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).”
“As my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford rightly said, if they are not achieved, the full contract value will not be paid. That is at the heart of payment by results, and that is why we believe that it is a productive way to go forward. The Ministry of Justice has made great strides in delivering a justice system that is more effective, less costly, and more responsive to the public. The ministerial team has a clear vision for continuing to transform the justice system over the remainder of this Parliament and beyond. I believe that we can deliver better rehabilitation of offenders, a smarter system of detaining and educating teenage offenders, a cheaper and better prison system, and a legal aid and criminal justice system that commands public confidence—and that, at the same time, we can bring costs down.”
“I am sure that there will be arguments about whether we have drawn the map in the right way, and we will consider all those in deciding whether we have reached the right conclusions. We will need contract package areas that are large enough to enable payment by results to operate effectively while not losing the local partnerships and connections that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed mentioned. Proving what works is clearly crucial in the context of payment by results, and the hon. Lady is right to raise that. She will have seen in our proposals that we are interested in the idea of a justice data lab that will enable those providing rehabilitative services to understand exactly the effects and benefits of what they are doing. In the end, the test of what works will be whether the desired outcomes are achieved.”
“I am extremely grateful for the hon. Lady’s help, but she is missing the point. The problems that we face with the finances of this Department and the Government more broadly have nothing to do with the previous Conservative Secretary of State for Justice; they are to do with the behaviour of the previous Labour Government. That is why we are in the mess we are in, and we are doing our best to get ourselves and the country out of it. The hon. Lady mentioned the size of the contract package areas and asked about the proposal for 16 of them. We asked respondents to the consultation that has recently concluded whether they believe that that is the appropriate number, and we will consider what they said. It is a starting point, and we will see whether people believe that it is a sensible one.”
“We are reviewing what is called the incentives and earned privileges scheme to ensure the public can be confident that any privileges earned in prison are gained through hard work and good behaviour. We want this to be a comprehensive review and its findings will be available in due course. I can tell my hon. Friend that, for example, the situation whereby some prisoners have access to Sky subscription TV channels, which many of our constituents cannot afford, will not be allowed to continue.”
“I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and his constituent. He will be pleased to learn that the system we have in mind for dealing with the rehabilitation of offenders will reward those who have good ideas—ideas that work—in driving down the reoffending rate. He is right that we want to see more mentoring, as we believe it is very effective. Many other things will be affected, too, and we look forward to hearing about them.”
“The hon. Gentleman knows that what we announced was to investigate the feasibility of a large prison. We also announced that we will build 1,200 places or thereabouts at prisons that already exist. We will look carefully at all proposals made to us for suitable sites for a large new prison. As the hon. Gentleman knows, one possibility is a site in north Wales, which councillors in his area are extremely keen that we consider carefully.”
“My hon. Friend will know that we are very keen to look not just at direct contracts from Government work but at other work for ONE3ONE Solutions to pursue. We want to make sure, of course, that there is a balance to ensure that ONE3ONE Solutions is not closing out jobs that could be provided to British firms elsewhere. We will want to make sure that it has the maximum opportunities to pursue those jobs within prison that will help prisoners learn skills—both hard skills and soft skills—as this was an agenda that my hon. Friend was successful in pursuing as my predecessor.”
“The point that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was making—frankly, I would be surprised if the hon. Lady disagreed with it—was that it is clearly not appropriate for someone to live in that form of domestic arrangement while in custody. It is important that prisons are safe, secure and decent, but it is equally important that their regimes are properly austere and that the public have confidence in the way in which people act while they are in prison.”
“If she believes that the public take no interest in what happens to prisoners while they are there and in the privileges to which they have access, I think she is wrong, and if she believes we should leave the position as it is, she should say so.”
“I think the hon. Lady knows very well that we have replaced IPP sentences with extended determinate sentences. We have also introduced a mandatory life sentence for a second very serious violent or sexual offence. Those are entirely sensible sentencing approaches. The position with IPPs had become a disorganised and chaotic one, which we could not allow to stand. I am afraid that that is another classic example of the last Government’s introducing a measures that they had not thought through properly. I also think that the hon. Lady is entirely wrong to minimise the seriousness of the need to ensure that the regime in prison commands public confidence.”
“The proposals in our “Transforming justice” consultation paper are designed to deliver a criminal justice system that punishes offenders properly and helps them to get their lives back on track. We want providers of rehabilitation services to tackle the root causes of offending, and to ensure that they have the right package of support to help offenders to turn their lives around. We will announce further details of our proposals once we have considered the responses to the consultation.”
“The first point to make is that we do not think that what we propose will be more expensive than the current arrangements. Quite the reverse: we think that it will save the taxpayer money. The second point is that we intend to bring in good ideas from not just the private sector but the voluntary sector, so that we can start to drive down those all-important reoffending rates. The argument for opening up rehabilitation to other agencies, private and voluntary, was advanced by the last Labour Government during the passage of the Offender Management Act 2007: we are simply implementing their idea. However, I note that the hon. Gentleman was not persuaded on that occasion either.”
“There are many reasons why someone might be leading a chaotic lifestyle, and if we really want to get to the bottom of reoffending and to turn lives around, we need to address them. My hon. Friend is right to focus on addiction, and he is also right to focus on employment. We know that one of the most effective ways of rehabilitating people is to get them into work, and that is certainly the sort of thing that we expect providers to do under the new system.”
“The straight answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that a public sector probation officer will make the judgment on whether a breach should be subject to action. Those providing interventions will be obliged to supply information about what has happened, but the judgment will be made by the probation officer. The hon. Gentleman ought to recognise that, in a great many cases, a large number of the interventions provided for those who have been sentenced under community orders are made by the voluntary sector. It is not true that probation officers currently do everything themselves, and the flow of information between them and those who do is generally very good.”
“Our strategy for the prison estate is to replace accommodation that is old, inefficient or has limited long-term strategic value with cheaper modern capacity. We also have a rolling programme of maintenance that prioritises our investment across the prison estate.”
“I certainly agree that what people do is just as important as where they do it, and I congratulate those involved in the work that he described at Stafford prison. However, very often what people do is despite the environment in which they are working, rather than because of it, and my hon. Friend will accept readily, I am sure, that where we can provide newer accommodation, it will make it easier for people to do the good work on rehabilitation that he and I both support.”
“I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s support for a prison in north Wales. He might want to discuss the matter with his hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), who may not necessarily agree with him. It would be wise for everyone to consider very carefully the proposals that will come forward for suitable sites. We will do that. We have identified north Wales as one of the places where there is a strategic need, so we will consider carefully any proposals that are made.”
“We will always ensure there are sufficient prison places for offenders sentenced to custody by the courts, and we will seek to do so increasingly in cheaper, more modern accommodation. We intend there to be at least as many adult male prison places at the end of this Parliament as there were at its start.”
“We will consider all reasonable bids. My hon. Friend knows that we have looked, and are looking, into the feasibility of a new large prison. We have identified three parts of the country where we think there is a particularly strong case, but we will look carefully at any reasonable bids.”
“Do let us remember whose bad idea it was. We are not resurrecting it; we are talking about a prison that is economically viable and that will save the taxpayer money, but it may not and almost certainly will not be exactly what a Titan prison was. There are many ways of doing this. We could, for example, have a number of smaller institutions on one site and still achieve the same economies of scale. The hon. Gentleman should not believe that this Government will make the same mistakes as his made.”
“We are working hard across Government to remove foreign national offenders from this country. Last year we removed more FNOs under prisoner transfer agreements than the year before. We recently made our first transfer under the European Union PTA and signed a compulsory PTA with Albania, which is the first time we have done so with a high-volume FNO country.”
“They have. We signed the agreement with Albania earlier in January, which is very recently indeed. We hope that we will start making returns under that agreement very shortly. As I have said before, it is important that the agreements, wherever we can negotiate them, are compulsory prisoner transfer agreements so that prisoners do not have the choice about going back.”
“We recognise that prisoners have a variety of causes for their offending and my hon. Friend is right to highlight one of them. We want to ensure that prisoners have access to the necessary schemes and interventions—both in prison and through the gate to the outside—to deal with whatever their issues may be. I will certainly look carefully at what my hon. Friend says about gambling and at whether more can be done.”
“My hon. Friend knows how I hate to disagree with him, but he needs to recognise that we are replacing IPP sentences with measures that are just as tough and a lot more effective. The truth is that if someone is convicted of offences of a very serious nature, the judge has the option of passing the ultimate indeterminate sentence—a life sentence—if that is merited. We are therefore taking measures to protect the public. We are replacing an ineffective sentencing regime with a much more effective one.”
“Our expectation would be that people receive an extended determinate sentence for an offence of terrorism, under which release would not be automatic. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend.”
“The right hon. Gentleman knows that the arrangements made for offenders of that nature will be multi-agency public protection arrangements. We want to ensure that local authorities and all other agencies responsible for joining in under MAPPA have the support they need. We will look carefully at what he has said and ensure that that happens in each of those examples.”
“The hon. Lady puts her finger on one of the great difficulties we have with the youth justice estate. As numbers drop, it is inevitable that we will need to re-roll capacity, and that could mean young offenders and their families being further away from home. However, we will do everything we can for each reallocated young person to ensure that they are as close to home as we can make it. She will recognise that not everybody at that young offenders institution comes from the Bristol area, so it may be that some will be nearer to home.”
“I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is interested in clarity, because Government Members have been somewhat confused about what the Labour party in north Wales wants. Perhaps it would help if the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends were to meet their local councillors and decide what the Labour party in north Wales wants. We will then be happy to talk to them.”
“I am very grateful, Mr Speaker, because I want to ensure, in the interests of clarity, that the hon. Gentleman understands what I have just said: once he and his colleagues have worked out what it is they want, I am very happy to meet them.”
“As Minister with responsibility for probation, I have had the opportunity to see the hard work and dedication of many probation officers and I do not think the probation service always gets the credit it deserves for helping to keep the public safe. Probation officers will continue to have a key role. However, reoffending rates are still too high and we need to explore new ways of delivering rehabilitation and reducing reoffending.”
“The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to that report, which deals with the interests of children who have been in care. We will study it in detail and respond accordingly, but the report makes the point that this is not simply about money—it is also about attitudes. A great deal of work needs to be done to ensure that we meet our very important responsibility to those children who have been in care, who have particular requirements. We will consider the report and respond accordingly.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who knows of what he speaks. The important point is that we need to recognise the achievements and the contribution of probation officers, alongside making sure that we introduce new and good ideas into the process of rehabilitating offenders. I will consider carefully what he has said and we will look at what we can do along the lines that he suggests.”
“The right hon. Gentleman will have to wait and see exactly what we propose and exactly when we propose it, but what he has just described is not going to happen.”