Nicholas Dakin MP: speeches 2024

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Speeches

10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The hon. Member raises an important issue, which is always under review, but that is where we are at the moment.
10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I can assure the House and my hon. Friend that HMP Parc is receiving targeted support. She points to the recent visit by my hon. and noble Friends to the prison, and the Minister for Prisons in the other place is providing full evidence about this and other matters to the Welsh Affairs Committee tomorrow.
10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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As I said in answer to an earlier question from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), HMP Parc is receiving a lot of attention at the moment. The Minister for prisons in the other place, Lord Timpson, will be answering questions tomorrow in thorough detail and the hon. Member might wish to attend that meeting.
10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I do not think now is the time to consider that.
10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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One of the very first actions of the Government was to accept the Prison Service pay review body’s independent recommendations in full, delivering a pay increase of 5% for prison officers. In addition, we monitor exit interview data and use it to help design interventions to improve retention.
10 Dec 2024 · Prison Maintenance · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is right to ask this question. Under the previous Government, a process was already under way to put in place new contracts for prison maintenance. We need to make sure that those contracts deliver good value for the public purse.
10 Dec 2024 · Prison Maintenance · Hansard source
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Clearly, issues such as that need to be dealt with. Staff at His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service are doing their utmost to try to tackle those issues, but we will redouble our efforts after the hon. Gentleman’s encouragement.
10 Dec 2024 · Prison Maintenance · Hansard source
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The previous Government paused work on essential maintenance, which has added to the problems we are now dealing with. My hon. Friend is right to say that all options need to be looked at in order to ensure we get the best possible value for money for the public purse from any new contracts or arrangements.
10 Dec 2024 · Prisoner Rehabilitation · Hansard source
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We know that accommodation is key to reducing reoffending. That is why we are expanding our transitional accommodation service and working closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to develop a long-term strategy to put us back on track to ending homelessness and ensuring this issue is tackled correctly.
10 Dec 2024 · Prisoner Rehabilitation · Hansard source
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We are mandating careers advice in prisons and introducing a life skills curriculum. All released prisoners have access to an employment advisory board that can connect prisoners with work, and banking and ID administrators are preparing prisoners for life after prison.
10 Dec 2024 · Prisoner Rehabilitation · Hansard source
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I agree with my hon. Friend. We know that having a job and a home are the best ways to reduce reoffending. That is why we have employment hubs in all resettlement prisons, where prisoners can access job vacancies and support with their applications.
10 Dec 2024 · Prison Conditions · Hansard source
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The prison estate conditions survey programme is a live assessment of the condition of our estate, but there is still much to do. Approximately 4,000 cells were lost to dilapidation under the last Government. That is why we are investing £220 million in Prison and Probation Service maintenance in 2024-25, and up to £300 million in 2025-26.
10 Dec 2024 · Prison Conditions · Hansard source
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This Government are determined to ensure the best possible conditions in our prisons. We have inherited a crisis in our prisons, I am afraid, but if the hon. Member wishes to write to me about that particular issue, I will be happy to write back to him.
10 Dec 2024 · Prison Conditions · Hansard source
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These new prisons will be built with all the things my hon. Friend mentions taken fully into account. The Government are determined to put in place 14,000 more prison places.
10 Dec 2024 · Reducing Reoffending · Hansard source
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Absolutely; public safety is our No. 1 priority and new technology gives us every advantage to do things differently. That is one of the things that the independent sentencing review under David Gauke will be looking at.
10 Dec 2024 · Reducing Reoffending · Hansard source
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I very much welcome the work that Weston College does in prisons. We are also developing our training offer for employers in areas such as rail tracks and construction, and HMPPS’s Creating future opportunities programme is working to improve the employability of offenders in both prison and the community.
10 Dec 2024 · Reducing Reoffending · Hansard source
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We will expand our transitional accommodation service and launch employment councils to strengthen the relationship between employers and HM Prison and Probation Service.
10 Dec 2024 · Reducing Reoffending · Hansard source
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Several of the things that I have mentioned already are designed to do exactly that, and we recognise exactly what the hon. Gentleman says. On the SDS40 scheme, prison and probation officers have done an outstanding job in supporting prisoners through that journey.
4 Dec 2024 · Draft Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024 · Hansard source
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I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Eastbourne, for recognising at the start of his speech that the Government are taking this matter very seriously. I also say to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, that the official Opposition are absolutely right not to give the Government a free pass. “The public expect better”, he said, but he should bear in mind that our scheme excludes people convicted of sexual offences, while his Conservative Government did not put any exclusions in place at all. Their scheme was done hurriedly just before the election, while this is being done to take control of the prison population in response to a crisis, so that we can run the criminal justice system appropriately. If the previous Government had done their job properly, we would have inherited a situation on which we could build positively into the future, but that has sadly not been the case. I will deal with the issues raised by the Liberal Democrat spokesman first. We take victims and victims’ voices very seriously, and we will continue to do so. Anyone convicted of offences linked to domestic abuse, such as stalking and harassment, are presumed unsuitable for HDC. Exclusions under SDS40 have to be based on specific offences, and domestic abusers are prosecuted under many powers. Our exclusions send a clear message about how seriously the Government take domestic abuse and, unlike the end of custody supervised licence scheme, we have taken specific action, and we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that victims’ voices are well represented on these issues. Victims eligible for the victim notification scheme or victim contact scheme are properly informed during the process; that is taking place. The sentencing review will look at other things, and we have made sure that there is a victims’ voice on its panel. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, rightly asked whether the electronic monitoring system is doing its job effectively. Again, we inherited a contract from the previous Government that was not performing to the level we would have wished. It is improving, but it is still not where we want it to be. It is at a point at which we are confident that it can handle the coming additional workload, but we need to continue to work hard to make sure that the contractors deliver, as they should always have been delivering; we should not have inherited a situation where they were not performing to the level that they should have been. The shadow Minister asked when SDS40 will be reviewed. When he raised that in the Chamber, the Lord Chancellor assured him that it would be reviewed after 18 months and that it would come back to Parliament at that point. I do hope, having had this discussion, that the Committee will support—
4 Dec 2024 · Draft Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024 · Hansard source
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I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. The Government laid this draft order on 13 November. I hope that that has given hon. Members an opportunity to scrutinise the order and its accompanying explanatory documents. However, I welcome this further opportunity to be clear about what the order will do and the Government’s reasons for taking these measures. The draft order is a key part of our continuing efforts to resolve the capacity crisis in our prisons. We inherited from the previous Government a prison system on the verge of collapse, and on 12 July the Lord Chancellor was forced to announce a measure to address the immediate risk of running out of prison places: a change to modify the automatic release point for those serving standard determinate sentences from 50% to 40%. Specified offences were excluded from the modification. The draft order makes further important changes to the original measure by excluding a number of further offences from the modification. Also, as part of our continuing efforts to avoid running out of prison spaces, the order amends the provisions relating to home detention curfew, or HDC, by extending the maximum time that an offender can spend on HDC in the community. HDC enables eligible risk-assessed offenders to be released from prison six months early and to spend more time in the community. They are subject to an electronically monitored curfew. We propose to extend the maximum time that an offender can spend on HDC from six months to 12. To be clear, we seek to extend the maximum curfew period only. Eligibility and suitability criteria remain exactly the same; all the exclusions remain—for example, sex offenders are still excluded in statute, and those serving sentences linked to domestic abuse remain presumed unsuitable under the policy. It is right that the sentencing review is given time to do its work, but the capacity crisis in our prisons has not gone away. When we introduced emergency measures in July, we believed that they had bought us about a year, but after the summer of disorder the next crisis could be just nine months away, and for that reason we must implement further measures urgently to ensure that we do not face running out of places again. The change to HDC will help to ensure that the criminal justice system is able to function as it should, helping to prevent further acute capacity pressures and avoid us running out of prison places, which would cause criminal justice gridlock. The draft order relates to release measures in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The first part of the draft order deals with the HDC, which has been in operation since 1999. The scheme enables certain prisoners to be released from prison early, while remaining subject to significant restrictions on their liberty. Offenders who are released from custody on that basis are tagged and placed on a curfew. Curfews must be for at least nine hours per day by law, but are generally around 12 hours per day as a matter of policy. The curfew requirement must remain in force until the offender reaches what would have been the conditional or automatic release date. Those released on HDC are subject to probation supervision and other restrictions as necessary, which may include GPS location and alcohol monitoring, exclusion zones, non-contact conditions and travel restrictions. If offenders breach the terms of their conditions, they can be recalled to custody to serve the remainder of their custodial sentence. The rules on eligibility will not change as a result of the draft order. Offenders must complete half the custodial part of their sentence before they can be considered eligible for HDC. Release on HDC is also entirely discretionary. A number of offences are excluded from scope by statute—for example serious violent and all sexual offences. Other types of offending are presumed unsuitable as a matter of policy, including those often associated with domestic abuse, such as stalking, harassment and coercive control. Offenders serving sentences for any of the presumed unsuitable offences will not be considered for release unless the prison governor is satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances justifying this. Any offenders who meet that test will still be subject to a rigorous risk assessment process before release on HDC is approved. We are proposing to extend the maximum period that an eligible prisoner may spend on HDC to 12 months from the current maximum of six months. Those offenders eligible for HDC will continue to be risk-assessed, and will still be subject to strict licence conditions and an electronically monitored curfew. As the previous Prisons Minister said, the re-offending rate for prisoners released directly from custody was close to 50%, but for the types of offenders released on HDC it was 23%. The previous Administration committed to doing a review when HDC was extended from four and a half months to six months. That review did not take place, and the growing crisis in our prisons has meant that we need to take further action. HDC is closely monitored by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and by the Ministry of Justice. Data on releases and recalls is regularly published, and that will continue. I must be clear that this measure is urgently needed to reduce the pressure on the prison system. The challenges facing us across the prison estate are such that we must take urgent action to allow the sentencing review to take place. By extending HDC, we are using a long-standing mechanism that has robust safeguards built into it. The order will also amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024, which established the SDS40 early release measure by modifying the automatic release point for those serving standard determinate sentences from 50% to 40%. This statutory instrument seeks to exclude six further offences from the early release measure that were not identified at the time. SDS40 was delivered extremely effectively but there was a problem with 37 prisoners, who were released in error. The issue involved the use of an offence that had been repealed in 2020, thereby creating an anomaly. That ultimately meant that those prisoners were not identified as being ineligible for early release under SDS40. All those offenders released in error were returned to custody. Subsequently, a thorough search uncovered similar anomalies where legislation creating criminal offences had been repealed and replaced. We had already taken the decision to exclude such offending which relates to stalking, harassment, sexual harm and so-called revenge pornography from the scope of emergency early release. We are therefore acting quickly to exclude five further offences from SDS40. This will ensure that anyone convicted of any of those offences cannot be released early under SDS40, and that the spirit of the original exclusions is delivered in full. The draft order also excludes murder from SDS40. Ordinarily, there would be no need to exclude murder, as anyone convicted of murder under English law receives a mandatory life sentence. However, some jurisdictions do not have life sentences, so it is possible in a very small number of cases that a UK national convicted of murder in a foreign jurisdiction may be given a determinate sentence for murder by that foreign court, and may then be repatriated back to the UK to serve that sentence in a prison in England and Wales. We want to ensure that no offender in that position could be released early under SDS40. Shortly after coming to power, the Government took decisive action to stop our prisons collapsing. SDS40 was an emergency response to the crisis that we were faced with. We worked at pace to ensure that the scheme was as effective as possible while protecting the public by excluding the most serious offenders and providing specific protections for victims of certain domestic abuse offences. We have kept SDS40 under constant review and will continue to do so, and we are now acting quickly to address a small number of anomalies in the original legislation. The draft order extends to England and Wales only, and there should be no direct effect on the devolved Administrations.
4 Dec 2024 · Draft Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024 · Hansard source
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indicated dissent .
4 Dec 2024 · Draft Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024 · Hansard source
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indicated dissent .
4 Dec 2024 · Draft Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024 · Hansard source
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As he probably realises, all impact assessments have a 10-year focus. The impact assessment is nothing to do with intention; it is about the impact if things went on for that period of time. It is the normal process. The hon. Gentleman is confusing the impact assessment with the Government’s intention. The Government’s intention is not for this provision to continue for that period of time. Question put .
5 Nov 2024 · Supporting Prison Officers · Hansard source
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We are already on track to remove more foreign national offenders than the Conservative party ever did.
5 Nov 2024 · Supporting Prison Officers · Hansard source
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By immediately reducing prison overcrowding, we have made prisons safer to work in. We have also accepted the 5% pay award recommended for prison officers in full.

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