Nicholas Dakin MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Jun 2025 · Employment: Ex-offenders · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right that securing employment is known to reduce the risk of reoffending significantly. The Minister for prisons in the other place has led a business with a track record of getting offenders into employment, and I understand that National Highways is starting to build strong partnerships as chair of the employment councils in Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Employment: Ex-offenders · Hansard source

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  I am very happy to share good practice across Northern Ireland and other regions of the UK, so that we can all learn from one another, and officials meet in the five nations group, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. He is right to say that we need to ensure that people are supported as they move into the community. That is why we are investing in probation, as my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor said, onboarding more than 1,000 probation officers this year and another 1,300 next year.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Employment: Ex-offenders · Hansard source

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  This Government’s plan to support women is clear and ambitious. The aim is to reduce the number of women going to prison. Our Women’s Justice Board will support that. The independent sentencing review’s recommendations— [ Interruption. ] I am on the wrong question; apologies. [ Interruption. ] Well, you got a preview of the next answer, Mr Speaker. We are committed to ensuring that offenders leave prison with the jobs and skills needed to lead law-abiding lives. That is why we have launched regional employment councils, which for the first time bring businesses together with prisons, probation and the Department for Work and Pensions to support offenders in the community.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Imprisonment for Public Protection: Sentencing · Hansard source

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  We continue to support IPP offenders through our updated action plan, which contributed to a 9% decrease in IPP offenders in prison in the last year, but we will not put public protection at risk. The Prisons Minister in the other place and I continue to meet regularly with MPs, peers and other stakeholders to work together on supporting this cohort.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Imprisonment for Public Protection: Sentencing · Hansard source

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  It is right and proper that IPP sentences were abolished. Various organisations have considered resentencing. None of them has identified an approach that would not involve releasing offenders whom the Parole Board has determined pose too great a risk to the public. We do not wish to give false hope to those serving the sentence by establishing an expert panel, but we will continue to work robustly with this group and do everything in our power to address the problem that we recognise.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Reoffending: Young Offenders · Hansard source

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  I agree wholeheartedly. It is very important that substance abuse is properly tackled. Probation services and youth offending teams do a lot of work in that space.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Reoffending: Young Offenders · Hansard source

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  We are working across Government to tackle the root causes of youth offending. We are also creating the Young Futures programme, which will have prevention partnerships, so that we can intervene earlier. The child poverty taskforce will soon publish a cross-Government strategy for reducing child poverty.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Reoffending: Young Offenders · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady draws attention to an important issue. Inspections are significant in identifying where additional support and effort are needed. The Department will do everything it can to give proper support to Somerset Youth Justice Service.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Reoffending: Young Offenders · Hansard source

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  The Government are determined to reduce youth reoffending as part of our safer streets mission. Despite the fiscal challenges we inherited, we have increased our core funding to youth offending teams and extended our effective Turnaround programme.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Reoffending: Young Offenders · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the importance of essential organisations such as Young Gloucestershire and the Nelson Trust. I am grateful for the invitation, and ask him to please write to me about the organisations. We will see what my diary can do.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Female Offenders · Hansard source

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  Every week I get a report of the number of girls in our youth estate, so I am monitoring it. There are no girls in a YOI, and there have not been since the girl who was in a YOI moved out soon after we came into government.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Female Offenders · Hansard source

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  Yes, the Government will look further at those proposals. The Women’s Justice Board has been created to do exactly that sort of work, and we also have an excellent Victims Minister in my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones).

• 3 Jun 2025 · Female Offenders · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has had a preview of this answer! This Government’s plan to support women is clear and ambitious. The aim is to reduce the number of women going to prison. Our Women’s Justice Board will support that. The independent sentencing review’s recommendations on short, deferred and suspended sentences for women, which we have accepted in principle, will reduce the number of women in prison. We have also taken decisive action by immediately accepting Susannah Hancock’s recommendation no longer to place women in young offenders institutions.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Community Accommodation Service: Tier 3 · Hansard source

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  We inherited a system in which far too many people leave prison with no fixed address. Individuals in community accommodation service tier 3 are risk-assessed by probation and subject to ongoing monitoring. Suppliers work closely with probation to deal robustly with any behavioural concerns posed by residents.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Community Accommodation Service: Tier 3 · Hansard source

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  It is important that the Probation Service deals with any concerns promptly and effectively. The Department wrote to the hon. Lady on 20 April with further details in relation to her concerns, and Thanet House was withdrawn from the scheme on 20 May.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. We respect each other, and I respect very much that you are standing up for Parliament, which is exactly the right thing to do. I applaud that.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, I hear your words very clearly. I very much respect the role of Parliament and I am pleased to be here today to follow up the written ministerial statement that was laid yesterday by the Lord Chancellor.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am sorry for any misinformation that I have given in trying to respond.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  I will certainly apologise, Mr Speaker. I was not trying to take advantage. Clearly, it also took the action of the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), laying an urgent question. That is how Parliament works, and rightly so.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  The Lord Chancellor laid a written ministerial statement yesterday, the background to which are the changes around fixed-term recall in the light of the prison capacity challenges that the Government face. When we were elected almost a year ago, we inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse. Although we took immediate action to prevent the catastrophe, prisons continue to be perilously close to filling up entirely. Last December we published a long-term building strategy, setting out our aim to open up 14,000 prison places by 2031. That is the largest expansion of the prison estate since the Victorians. We have already committed £2.3 billion to prison expansion, and since taking office we have delivered 2,400 new places. We also commissioned the independent sentencing review, which will report shortly. The sentencing review will hopefully offer us a path to ending the capacity crisis in our prisons for good, but the impact of sentencing reforms will not be felt before next spring. On our current trajectory, we will hit zero capacity in our prisons in November—we cannot allow that to happen. That is why we have announced our intention to lay a fixed-term recall statutory instrument that will mean that those serving sentences of between one and four years can only be returned to prison for a fixed 28-day period. The measure builds on previous legislation, introduced by the last Government, that mandated 14-day recalls for those serving sentences of under a year. To be clear, higher-risk offenders have been exempted from that change. If further information relating to an offender’s risk is received after they have been recalled which means they are no longer considered suitable for fixed-term recall, they may be detained for longer on a standard recall if that is assessed as necessary.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  No, it is not. This is about people who have already served their sentence in prison; they are out in the community. If they breach a condition of their licence, they are returned to prison. The hon. Gentleman might as well ask why the Government he supported did not take any of the measures that he mentions. Our Government inherited the mess that his Government left us, and we are taking decisions to address the unconscionable threat of having a prison system that is not able to lock up dangerous people.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  I have made clear the exceptions that apply to this tight, fixed-term recall alteration. The management of people in the community will be risk-assessed, as always. If the view is that a different approach needs to be taken, it will be taken.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  Since taking office, we have deported over 1,800 foreign national offenders in custody, securing their early removal from our prisons—15% higher than in the previous 12 months. We have just announced 110,000 court sitting days, which is the highest level for a very long time. To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s specific questions, we will exclude anyone serving more than four years in prison; all those convicted of a terrorist or national security crime; and those who are subject to higher levels of risk management by multiple agencies where the police and the Prison and Probation Service work together, which includes certain sexual and violent offenders, including many domestic abusers. If there are ongoing concerns about the risk posed by an offender who is due to be released after the 28-day period, frontline workers can apply additional licence conditions to manage that. If further information related to an offender’s risk is received after they have been recalled, meaning that they are no longer considered suitable for fixed-term recall, they may be detained for longer on a standard recall, if that is assessed as necessary by the HMPPS public protection team. We know how important it is that victims are kept informed. All those eligible for the victim contact scheme will be notified about an offender’s release and will have the opportunity to make representations about victim-related licence conditions. Although there are certain exclusions for serious offenders, changing recalls for fixed-term offenders is necessary. It would be even worse to run out of space, which at this stage would mean the managed breakdown of the criminal justice system. The Lord Chancellor said rightly that that would be unconscionable. No Government should leave that challenge as a legacy to their successors, as the right hon. Gentleman’s Government did.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  We are committed to getting this right. The early release scheme that the previous Government put in place did not have the same exceptions as our early release scheme did for the sort of offenders that the hon. Gentleman draws attention to, but these matters are very difficult. The most important thing is ensuring that we have a criminal justice system that works. We need to be able to lock up dangerous people, and those who do really bad things. When we came into government, the situation was that we might not be able to maintain that ability. We have had to take actions that we would far rather not take in order to keep the system going.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  We are improving the prison estate and investing in probation, and there will also be actions coming forward from the independent sentencing review. I agree with everything my hon. Friend said.