Last week, the National Audit Office released a damning report on the previous Government’s record on prison building, showing that their promise of 20,000 prison places by the mid-2020s was hollow. Unwilling to face down opposition on their own Back Benches, the last Government dithered and delayed, ultimately building less than a third of the cells they promised. As a result, they left our prisons overcrowded and at the point of collapse. Later this week, I will set out in my 10-year capacity strategy a realistic plan for building the 14,000 prison places that we need, and I will ensure that our prisons are never left at the point of collapse again.
I thank the Justice Secretary for that answer. In common with many Members of the House, I have heard horrific stories of perpetrators breaching orders to which they are subject, giving them further opportunity to terrorise, injure, or in some cases kill women protected by those orders—may Harshita Brella and so many others rest in peace. What action is the Justice Secretary taking to assess and improve the effectiveness of civil orders in safeguarding survivors of domestic abuse?
My hon. Friend will know that this Government have launched a pilot of domestic abuse protection orders in a number of areas, which will bring together the strongest possible protections for victims in other existing protective orders into a single order. Breaching such orders will be a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison, and unlike other orders, there will be no maximum duration.
In London, there is a phone theft epidemic, and this time it is not the former Transport Secretary on the loose. Last year, more than 64,000 mobile phones were reported to the police as stolen in the capital alone. The small number of individuals responsible should be locked up for a long time, yet last month, a criminal who used a motorbike to steal 24 phones an hour was jailed for just two years. Enough is enough, so will the Justice Secretary commit to dramatically increasing sentences for career criminals, get them off our streets and slash crime?
Where was the shadow Secretary of State over the past 14 years when the theft epidemic began? Again, given the scale of his party’s general election defeat, some humility is usually required—perhaps even an apology to the British public—before he and others can earn the right to be heard again. He is right about the issues with mobile phone theft, and the Home Office and the Home Secretary in particular are meeting with tech companies to talk about how we can break the business model of those criminals.
Cousin marriage has absolutely no place in Britain. The medical evidence is overwhelming that it significantly increases the risk of birth defects, and the moral case is clear in that we see hundreds of exploitative marriages that ruin lives. Frankly, it should have been stamped out a long time ago. Will the Justice Secretary commit to ending this medieval practice, which is rearing its head once again in modern Britain?
The right hon. Member will know that there has been a recent Law Commission report on marriage law more generally. The Government are going to consult on broader reform of marriage law, and we will certainly consider the issues that he has raised before setting out a public position.
T2. Many of my constituents work at HMP Swinfen Hall in Staffordshire, although the boundary changes took it out of my constituency recently. Many of the prison officers I speak to there are concerned about retention at the start of their careers, getting into more experienced roles and ensuring that such experience is retained. Can the Minister reassure me about the steps being taken to encourage retention of experienced members of staff?
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.
T3. One in four people of working age in the UK has a criminal record, for a variety of reasons. Most of these people no longer pose a threat to society, but are still tied to their past by their criminal record and face a lifetime of barriers with employers. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the criminal record implications of a sentence do not impact on an individual disproportionately?
T4. What are the Government doing to ensure that offenders are managed effectively in the community, and how will the Secretary of State use offender monitoring technology to improve the efficiency of the Probation Service in keeping the public safe? I particularly welcome the steps taken with technology on exclusion zones and monitoring alcohol and drugs in the human body.
I thank my hon. Friend. Tagging technology can monitor offenders effectively in the community. We have tags that monitor curfews and exclusion zones, tags to impose home detention—in effect, the equivalent of house arrest—and sobriety tags with a 97% compliance rate. We are currently looking at expanding the use of technology to improve productivity in the Probation Service. We will also fund an additional 5,000 new tags to expand the use of tech outside prison.
T8. One in 50 Albanians in Britain is in jail, and foreign nationals such as Jamaicans, Iraqis and Somalis are also disproportionately likely to be criminals. We need better data to inform immigration, asylum and criminal justice policies. Will the Government publish the nationality, visa and asylum status of all offenders in prison—if yes, can we have a timeline, and if not, can we have a good reason why not?
We are currently using a data collection and publication approach inherited from the previous Conservative Government—probably from the hon. Member’s time as an adviser to the former Home Secretary and Prime Minister—but I will continue to monitor the data that we collect and publish. We are committed to ensuring that we deport foreign national offenders, and are on track to deport more this year than were deported in the previous year. We will make more progress in that respect.
T5. Like other hon. Members from south Wales, I regularly hear from constituents with relatives in Parc Prison of their concerns about safety, the state of the facilities and the difficulty of getting medication and mental health support. I know the Victims Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones)—and the Prisons Minister visited on Thursday, and I thank them for being proactive, because this has been going on a long time. Can the Minister report back on what the management are doing to improve things?