Nicholas Dakin MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Jun 2025 · Prisons: Rehabilitation · Hansard source

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  Third sector organisations like LandWorks deliver valuable rehabilitation, wellbeing support and advocacy services across England and Wales, and they partner effectively with HMPPS in many different ways. The work of key organisations like the one the hon. Member mentions is incredibly important and essential in reducing reoffending, and we continue to invest in it. I would be happy to meet her to discuss the matter further and see what more can be done.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Prisons: Rehabilitation · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right to highlight dyslexia, and neurodiversity is common among people in our prisons. That is why we have neurodiversity officers in each prison to ensure that we are doing our very best for these people so that they can be rehabilitated and become better citizens when they come out of prison.

• 3 Jun 2025 · HMP Lewes · Hansard source

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  Since the disappointing inspection in 2023, healthcare improvement funding has been put in place, as has mobile phone detection equipment to disrupt illicit activity. HMP Lewes’s most recent inspection in 2024 was encouraging and highlighted the strengths of the invigorated leadership team. His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service is continuing to closely monitor and support the prison.

• 3 Jun 2025 · HMP Lewes · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will be well aware that a lot of the information is commercially confidential, but we are investing up to £300 million in 2025-26 to keep our prisons are safe and secure, and we have a prison estate conditions survey programme in place to better understand our estate.

• 3 Jun 2025 · HMP Lewes · Hansard source

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  It is important that HMPPS continues to monitor the prison carefully, and the chief operating officer’s visit on 7 May found a number of further improvements. If the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me, I can send him a full update on the actions being taken in relation to that prison.

• 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.