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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“I certainly agree that we want to ensure that justice is swifter and that where possible the probation service produces reports as quickly as it can. My hon. Friend will know from his experience of practising in the courts that probation officers often produce reports in very short time frames, which I am sure is of great assistance to the courts and to be commended.”
“This is a good time of the year for patience and I urge the right hon. Gentleman to be patient. It will be important in what we do, first, to recognise the key role of the probation service, as he says, and secondly, to do better than we have done on reoffending. When, as now, 50% of those released from prison reoffend within 12 months and a third of those on community orders do the same, we must look at ways of doing better.”
“There is settled policy in England and Wales that some offences are so grave that they are deserving of imprisonment for the rest of the offender’s life for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. The Secretary of State and I take the view that whole-life tariffs should remain an option for sentences in appropriate cases.”
“My hon. Friend is right to be concerned, particularly about those types of offences; they give the public a good deal of concern, too. That is why this month we have implemented new sentences, which will allow for a mandatory life sentence for a second serious violent or sexual offence, and for extended determinate sentences for the first or the second offence which is a serious offence and merits it. Those are new sentencing proposals produced by this Government to reflect exactly what my hon. Friend has identified.”
“The good news for my hon. Friend is that on this issue at least we are in agreement with the European Court of Human Rights, because it has upheld our view that whole-life tariffs are an appropriate disposal in the right cases. Let me make it clear to him—I think that I also speak for the Secretary of State—that for as long as we are Ministers in the Department, its policy will remain that whole-life tariffs should be available.”
“Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. We are doing two important things in that regard: first, toughening up the sentencing regime so that the right people go to prison for the right length of time; and secondly, ensuring that there is more emphasis on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. That is the way to avoid the misery that communities incur as a result of reoffending, to avoid making more victims and to avoid extra cost to the taxpayer.”
“Extended determinate sentences, which we have brought in to replace IPPs, can include an extended period of supervision at the conclusion of a custodial period. We have done that to deal specifically with cases that cause great concern, such as sexual and violent offences. The hon. Lady is right to be worried, but she is wrong to suggest that no provision has been made to replace what IPPs did.”
“As my hon. Friend knows, prisoners are released in accordance with the legislation laid down by Parliament, and Parliament has consistently taken the view that most custodial sentences should be served part in custody and part under supervision in the community. Sentencers are fully aware of this when determining the appropriate length of sentence in each case. However, the good news for my hon. Friend is that on 3 December the Government implemented changes which will mean that some of the most dangerous offenders may serve their custodial terms in full.”
“The principle of some of a sentence being served in the community is, as we have discussed before, in my view a good one, because it enables us to have a hold over the individual when they come back out into the community. However, my hon. Friend will be pleased to learn that I am looking at ways in which early release in certain circumstances can be earned rather than automatically granted.”
“Severe maximum penalties are available for the most serious and violent offenders. Sentencing guidelines are a matter for the independent Sentencing Council. Guidelines provide non-exhaustive lists of common aggravating and mitigating factors, and courts retain discretion to treat the particular circumstances of individual cases.”
“I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are very keen to see that violent offenders serve appropriate sentences. The length of sentences is going up and not down. He is not right to suggest that prisons are over-full. There is still capacity within the prison system to take those who ought to be there. I remind him that the only Government in recent history who had to let offenders out of prison because they ran out of space were the previous Labour Government whom he supported.”
“I understand exactly what the hon. Lady has said and my sympathies go to her constituent’s family. It is right that we look again at the range of sentencing options available for offences involving knives. This is an endemic problem and one that we need to tackle, particularly among young people who persist in the wrong belief that they are safer carrying a knife than being without one. We have to look at this again and we will.”
“Getting more prisoners working longer hours is a key priority for the Government. Enforced idleness does nothing to help prisoners lead law-abiding lives on release. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that we are making good progress. Last year, public sector prisons delivered more than 11.4 million hours of work in production and service areas—an increase of 800,000 hours on the previous year’s figures.”
“Yes, I will certainly look at that. We are keen to see the expansion of exactly that kind of work, for the reasons the hon. Gentleman gives. It is good for prisoners because they learn the hard skills of a trade and the softer skills of going to work in the morning and working a proper day, and we all benefit if offenders have the skills they need to ensure that they do not reoffend on release. I will look at what he has described. If we can find a way of expanding it, we will.”
“I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. It is right, and it is what the public expect, that prisoners do something productive while they are in custody, rather than simply sitting around in their cells. That could involve a range of things such as work, education or drug treatment, but he is right that his constituents and mine would expect them to be doing something.”
“I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that we want more prisoners to have experiences, such as the one he mentions, in the right controlled conditions, and we want to make sure, as I said, that prisoners have experience of work as well as of work experience.”
“As I recall, almost all the council leaders who came to see me on that occasion were Labour council leaders, so I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has a communication problem with his own councillors. This is going to be part of a much wider consideration of the prison estate that we will undertake. As soon as we are in a position to make decisions we will attempt to keep informed all those who need to be informed.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that, and I certainly enjoyed my visit to Manchester, where I could see that a great deal of good work was being done. He can take reassurance from the fact that the system we will roll out will reward those things that work. If the intensive alternative to custody programme is as effective as it appears to be, it will work and it will be rewarded.”
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we must ensure that prisoners reintegrate. That work should start when prisoners are still in custody and continue through the gate into the community. We want to see more of that and will encourage it in any new system that we design.”
“I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. We want to encourage the good work that is already being done by a large number of voluntary and community sector organisations to provide the expertise that all hon. Members want incorporated into the rehabilitation revolution. Yes, we want to see more of that.”
“I fully support its work, and have met its staff for discussions, and I am sure I will do so again. We are committed to the use of peer mentors to support reading schemes such as its Toe by Toe project, and my officials are looking at how prison staff can better support its work. My hon. Friend is right to identify peer mentors as a significant step forward in dealing with prisoners who do not, as he said, want to admit their literacy problems.”
“Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) mentioned other learning difficulties, dyslexia among them, and was right to identify that as a significant issue among the prison population. We make every effort to identify that as early as possible, and learning providers in particular have a responsibility to do so. Other things are being done to target prisoners with literacy problems, and to incentivise them to address those issues. We are working with education providers to develop engaging and motivating courses to target resistant learners particularly. Those courses will be marketed by prison staff as part of the prison induction process. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham talked about the Shannon Trust, and he is right to recognise its significant contribution.”
“On literacy, my hon. Friend mentioned his experience as a barrister dealing in criminal law—an experience I share, so I ought to declare my interest as everyone else in the debate has, although the last time I received any legal aid fees was even longer ago than he did. From my experience, I am aware, as he is, of the difficulties that many prisoners have with basic reading and writing. Many prisoners also experience a range of other barriers to learning, whether they be mental illness, poor thinking skills, communication difficulties, sight and hearing problems or previous negative experiences. We are placing a strong focus on assessing prisoners’ learning needs and when a literacy need is identified, it will be addressed as a matter of priority. My hon.”
“In his book, my hon. Friend acknowledges—I agree with him—that using sentencing in that way is “admittedly difficult”. It is important to remember that drug treatment ordered by a court would be lawful, or effective, only if it happened with the offender’s consent. That is how drug rehabilitation requirements work at present. Equally, we need a release framework that operates fairly for all offenders, whether or not they are literate on arrival in prison. That said, I want to ensure that prisoners have incentives to engage in positive and constructive activity during their time in custody. For example, I am reviewing privileges in prison and the rules that currently apply to them. In this and other areas of policy, I want to ensure that we have a system that encourages offenders to engage with the support we offer, as my hon. Friend said.”
“Friend suggests, but let me respond in detail to some of the specific issues that he and others have raised in this debate and elsewhere. Let me start with his suggestion that the courts should mandate participation in literacy programmes and drug treatment. The courts already play an important role in framing the content of community orders and suspended sentences. Informed by pre-sentence reports and medical evidence, the courts can use treatment requirements to address drug addiction. They can also impose programme or activity requirements that might involve literacy courses. My hon. Friend suggests that offenders sentenced to custody should be compelled into education, that early release could provide an incentive for completing courses and that offenders entering custody with drug problems should be compelled to receive treatment.”
“It is a great pleasure to respond to the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) on securing it. The debate is not only important but timely, because the Government will soon be publishing our plans to make a radical change in how we support the rehabilitation of offenders. My hon. Friend is rightly concerned with that new focus on rehabilitation both in this debate and in his excellent book “Doing Time: Prisons in the 21st Century”—no doubt available in all good booksellers and an excellent stocking filler. I congratulate him. He has eloquently set out today the issues that face us in tackling offenders’ problems with literacy and substance misuse. Both are significant causes of offending and reoffending. I agree with much of what my hon.”
“That is why we are piloting intensive maths and English courses in prisons, similar to those used by the Army, particularly to address the needs of prisoners serving short sentences. We have also focused on vocational training and preparing prisoners for employment during their final year in prison. Those courses are closely linked to developing the skills needed by employers in the areas in which offenders will be released.”
“Yes, I agree. That is absolutely right, and it is very much what happens now, although we would like it to happen a lot more. The Toe by Toe project particularly is a good example, but there is considerable scope for more peer mentoring, and for more established prisoners helping those who are newly arrived—not only with reading and literacy, but across a whole range of other things. I have seen very good examples of that, and I want to see more. Prisoners often find that working with carefully selected and trained peer mentors—they must be that—can be much less threatening than the classroom environment. There is a problem, as my hon. Friend said, with shorter sentences, and the difficulty of addressing such problems over a short time frame.”
“The issue is practical rather than legal. My hon. Friend will recognise that to get an offender to engage properly, whether they have a drug addiction or literacy problems, they must do so voluntarily, because a compulsory arrangement will not deliver the results that we all want. That is very much the message that I have heard from the Shannon Trust, as he has. I recognise that there are always opportunities to impose restrictions on offenders, whether in the context of community sentences or licence conditions, but we must seek to incentivise prisoners to do what we know they need to do to minimise their risk of reoffending. That will be partly by persuasion, and partly by ensuring that they are prepared to engage with the provision so that they get out of it what they need. I understand my hon. Friend’s point.”
“That includes piloting 11 drug recovery wings focused on abstinence, and connecting offenders with community drug recovery services on release. My hon. Friend will recognise the importance of ensuring that whatever is done with drug treatment in prison, it is important to have continuity through the gate to what goes on in the community. That is also the case for prisoner education. We want to ensure that all our plans recognise that through-the-gate facility. I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution not only to today’s debate, but to the more general discussions of these issues. I look forward to engaging further with him and others, and I hope that he will be encouraged by the plans we are developing and will shortly introduce.”
“Those are fixed points, and I understand their significance, but he will recognise that we must make sure that prisoners do not use drugs at any time throughout their sentence, and mandatory, random drug testing is useful in that. As well as keeping drugs out of prison, we want to deliver a rehabilitation revolution that helps to transform the lives of offenders and ensures that they do not return to a life of crime after their sentence. Reshaping treatment services in prisons and the community is at the heart of the Government’s intention to get more people free of their dependence, ready for work, and with somewhere to live. Our objective is to move towards a fully integrated, recovery-orientated system that supports continuity of treatment within and between custody and community.”
“We are trialling drug detection technology and using technology to deny signals to illegal mobile phones in prisons, which are often associated with drug supply. We are also pursuing the roll-out of a networked prison intelligence system to help prisons to stay one step ahead of those seeking to breach prison security. As a result, fewer prisoners are testing positive for drugs than at any time since 1996. Around 7% of prisoners test positive for drug misuse when they are in custody, which is a considerable fall from the 64% who used drugs in the four weeks before custody. My hon. Friend talked about the opportunity to test when someone goes into custody and comes out.”
“That is why prisons are targeted by organised crime groups using sophisticated smuggling methods. Despite rigorous prison security measures, drugs can penetrate prison walls. I acknowledge that, as my hon. Friend said, some prisoners will try a drug in prison that they have not used before, but they may have been using other drugs in the community—perhaps they have been taking crack cocaine or heavily abusing alcohol—that they substitute with that new drug. I assure my hon. Friend that we are committed to improving the situation, and we are making progress. Particular initiatives have included an increase in drug-free prison wings where increased security measures prevent access to drugs. I am pleased that my hon. Friend, as he says in his book, supports these measures.”
“We must recognise that we need greater scope to broaden the learning offer, to alert prisoners to job vacancies in their release area, to make the process of learning much more akin to that experienced in the outside world, and to give prisoners the experience of using IT. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham referred to drugs, and I agree that there are two priorities for the Government and the National Offender Management Service. First, we must stop drugs from entering prisons and secondly we must get offenders off drugs and keep them off drugs. He is right to highlight the fact that the demand for drugs in prisons is far greater and more concentrated than anywhere else in society. The high demand and limited supply of drugs creates prices five to six times higher than in the community and represents a lucrative market.”
“My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I do not have the figures immediately to hand, but I am sure that we can get them to him. Inevitably with the regime for drug treatment, which I will come to in a moment, we need greater engagement and better results. We are working as hard as we can to achieve that. I have talked a little about education. We are doing other things, which I do not have much time to go through, but I draw attention to the virtual campuses in 101 prisons, which provide an opportunity for prisoners to learn with carefully controlled access to a suite of web-based education and employment materials.”
“I assure her that, although we believe that much good work is being done already, there is still a great deal more to do, and we are certainly open to new and good ideas, including those that I look forward to discussing with her and her constituent.”
“A budget for additional learning support of £7.1 million is available to the OLASS 4 providers, to enable the introduction of specific assessment processes to identify offenders with LDD needs and to provide those offenders with the expert teaching and support that they require. In addition, my hon. Friend may be aware of the work of the Shannon Trust’s “Toe by Toe” reading scheme, which is also available in prisons. Again, this scheme uses peer mentors, supported by volunteers, teaching staff and prison officers, and it is based on best practice developed through teachers’ experiences of enabling children with dyslexia to read. That is enormously beneficial to many offenders. In conclusion, I welcome today’s debate, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue.”
“OLASS 4 providers understand, and are able to deliver, the specific and systematic approaches to learning that are required by prisoners with such difficulties. Crucially, however, through OLASS 4 and the work that we are doing more widely with other Departments, we are more strongly linking skills to employment, and I believe that there is still more work to do in that regard. Arrangements are also in place to allow OLASS 4 providers to draw together funding to support prisoners with LDDs, through a specific adult learning support allocation that is designed to match the support that mainstream learners in colleges or training organisations receive.”
“For some, it meant learning to read and write, while for others it meant improving their basic literacy and numeracy so that they could operate with more confidence and competence. The revised Offender Learning and Skills Service, which is OLASS 4, was implemented as a result of the “Making prisons work” strategy, and it will make additional provision against assessed need. OLASS 4 requires education providers to identify the support needs of offenders with LDDs or special educational needs through a learning difficulty assessment, or LDA. Requirements identified through the assessment should be addressed through personalised, customised programmes delivered by specialist qualified staff. My hon. Friend will recognise the importance of that approach, because not all offenders have identical needs.”
“The strategy recognised that improving prisoners’ literacy skills was central to rehabilitation, as we have discussed today, and we are taking steps to ensure the implementation of the report’s recommendations. To give an idea of the scale of the problem that literacy and numeracy difficulties present in prisons, in the academic year 2010-11 almost 30% of prisoners had such low levels of reading and writing skills that, in order to bring them up to a basic functional level, individual learning aims for literacy and numeracy had to be set for them. Overall, 65% of prisoners enrolled on literacy and numeracy programmes were successful in achieving the literacy and numeracy functional skills goals that had been set as part of their individual learning plans.”
“It has been used by all the SFA’s custodial Offender Learning and Skills Service providers since August 2009. Our aim is that this tool will eventually be adopted and used by all OLASS providers, both in custody and in the community, and ultimately by all mainstream providers. We are also making radical changes to the way that learning and skills are delivered in prisons, which will encompass the support that we want to be made available to all prisoners with LDDs. As part of that radical programme of change, we have published a document that my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point may have seen—if she has not seen it, I commend it to her—called “Making prisons work: skills for rehabilitation”. That is the new offender learning strategy, which was published jointly with BIS.”
“Friend made about the crucial importance of our knowing how many people in prison have dyslexia and other learning disabilities, a learning disability screening questionnaire has been piloted on three sites, and NOMS is considering whether it should be used across the prison estate. The Youth Justice Board is using a similar tool—the comprehensive health assessment tool—with young offenders. That will go some way towards addressing the point that she raised and on which my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) focused: identifying the number of people we are dealing with. My hon. Friend and also mentioned the Skills Funding Agency and its hidden disabilities screening tool, which of course identifies issues wider than LDDs.”
“I welcome, as I am sure my hon. Friend does, the contribution made by the group, as these issues can be resolved only by partners across Government and the voluntary sector working together. The group is involved in the development of NOMS guidance for better outcomes for offenders with LDDs. It is also developing guidance on reasonable adjustments for prisoners with LDDs, to ensure that they are integrated into the prison community and that they have the best opportunity to participate in activities that support their rehabilitation. Further commitments for the current year include improving staff awareness, as well as prisoner and peer training. Returning to a point that my hon.”
“Dyslexia is only one condition in a range of learning difficulties and disabilities that prisoners may present with, and that require specialist and systematic approaches. We need to provide as much support as we can to prisoners with LDDs, to improve their chances in the workplace as well as their confidence, self-esteem and social skills. Without dedicated input, the impact of much learning support in reading and writing may be reduced or lost. The NOMS learning disabilities and difficulties working group exists to oversee the national implementation of an LDD screening process for prisoners, and to develop a broader LDD strategy across prisons. Apart from various officials from NOMS, membership of the group includes officials from the Department of Health, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Prison Reform Trust.”
“It can be very difficult to recognise and is often masked. Not all schools will have had the specialist provision to support children and young people who have this difficulty. Since reading and writing are “gateway” skills that enable children and young people to engage confidently with their wider educational experience, as well as in many basic social relationships, poor educational experiences can create reluctant learners. The experience of being excluded from positive experiences of learning to read, write and communicate more widely remains with many prisoners into adulthood. That presents an additional challenge in custody, where engaging with reluctant learners can be particularly difficult if memories of the classroom act as a barrier to taking the opportunities that education can provide.”
“Prisoners with dyslexia are, of course, disadvantaged in that respect, not only because dyslexia presents them with particular issues in terms of competence in reading and writing, but because dyslexia is recognised as impairing organisational skills. My hon. Friend obviously has a clear personal perspective on dyslexia and its effects, which has been extremely valuable in the debate. Of course, engaging with prisoners on learning and skills can be difficult, as my hon. Friend recognised. Some prisoners may have had negative experiences in their education and even been excluded, and consequently they see little value in education. Statistics that I have seen recently suggest that nearly half of prisoners identified themselves as having left education with no qualifications at all. Dyslexia magnifies that problem.”
“In particular, of course, the low levels of literacy and numeracy among prisoners as a group should concern us all, not only because of the impact on those individuals and their ability to function in a world where reading and writing are essential skills, but because a lack of sufficient literacy and numeracy skills excludes people from the vast majority of employment opportunities. I am sure, as are many others, that having a job can make a significant impact on reducing reoffending, and that skills such as organisation, communication, teamwork, writing, speaking and listening are necessary to perform effectively in most, if not all, work roles.”
“Friend the Secretary of State for Justice, that is also an area on which we wish to focus. It may be helpful if I set out some of the work that is already being done, at which we are having another look to ensure that it is being done in the best possible way. Since taking up this post, I have been very keen to ensure that the importance of learning and skills within the prison estate and beyond is high on the agenda. Indeed, my hon. Friend will have noted that the Prime Minister also mentioned learning and skills in his recent speech on offenders.”
“I have seen very good examples of peer mentoring in the prison system, with older, more established prisoners assisting younger and newer prisoners in a variety of ways. The work that my hon. Friend described is only one of those ways. As my hon. Friend also said, teaching and learning in a non-classroom environment are important. We must recognise that the classroom environment did not work for a great many of the prisoners we are talking about at school, and it probably will not work for them in custody either, so we have to find new and imaginative approaches that, as she said, involve the whole prison. It is also worth noting that, as I understand it, Ms Hewitt-Main’s programme involved some mentoring of people after they leave prison. As my hon. Friend will have picked up from the speech yesterday by my right hon.”
“As far as I know, this work has not yet been assessed or reviewed by an independent organisation and although its initial results are promising, further work will be necessary to ensure that they are as good as they appear to be. It seems sensible to explore with my hon. Friend the ways in which we can change things to improve what is on offer. It is also worth saying that the National Offender Management Service is considering a review of the evidence on effective working with offenders with learning difficulties and disabilities, and I will come back to what is already being done in a moment. The particular areas of Ms Hewitt-Main’s work that my hon. Friend highlighted, and that are particularly interesting in the context of what my hon. Friend said we are doing more generally in the Justice Department, include peer mentoring.”