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Rehabilitation of Prisoners

: Forgive me. The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) will recall why I accuse him of being the Member for Bullingdon. He spoke generously about what Bullingdon prison does; it has a good impact and let me reassure him that it is not alone. We have been able to sustain most of the qualities in that prison and the other prisons that he so generously praised. The hon. Gentleman also said, ““As well as being the soft guy, I want to be the tough guy, and I want you to be more effective in dealing with foreign national prisoners.”” We have done that, but I am not complacent about it. Last year, we introduced the early removal scheme, which provides that foreign nationals who meet appropriate criteria can be removed up to 135 days before their normal release date. They are released for removal. More than 1,500 prisoners have been removed under that scheme since July 2004, with a saving of some 300 prison places. We have prisoner transfer agreements with 90 countries and agreements with a further four have been reached but await ratification. We can also use repatriation. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that his sounding tough was as nothing compared with how the Home Secretary sounds on this subject. My right hon. Friend is determined to ensure that we reduce the number of foreign nationals in our prisons. However, that is not always to be done by deporting everybody. Some foreign nationals in prison have spent their whole lives in the UK and are not serving long sentences. It would be a breach of someone's human rights automatically to deport them if their family were British but they happened not to be. Rather than inventing a new system to deport people automatically without taking notice of the courts—judges would feel that that was treading substantially on their toes—we need to get on the case more efficiently and effectively where the courts have recommended deportation, or where there are mechanisms by which people can be removed appropriately. For example, they may not have further permission to stay in the UK if they were here as a visitor when they offended and had overrun their permission. That is a substantial priority. We also need to reduce the foreign national prisoner population. We have made some progress on that. The number of foreign national prisoners from Jamaica—which provides the largest number—has declined because of much more effective drug detection systems at Kingston. The most effective way to reduce the foreign national prison population, much of which is associated with drug trafficking, is to reduce drug trafficking. We need to speak to the Governments of countries where drug trafficking is endemic and is producing problems in our prison system and find out how they can collaborate with us to deal with these issues. The hon. Member for Banbury raised the question of the private and public challenge—should prisons be public? I absolutely agree with him that there should be transparency in respect of prisons. In some of his remarks, he prayed in aid Martin Narey. I was told by Martin Narey that one of the things that private sector prisons have done is challenge, in ways that are imaginative and progressive, how we do things in public prisons. That has led to the introduction of powerful innovations that have improved the way we organise our prisons. However, I share the hon. Gentleman's view that how we deal with the people we incarcerate should be as transparent as possible, and that it should be possible for Members of Parliament and members of the public to examine that. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) spoke movingly about women in prison. When I visited a prison in her constituency, I had the terrible experience of meeting a very vulnerable woman prisoner who later killed herself. That experience has made me even more determined to ensure that we stop sending women prisoners to places that are inappropriate for them—such as Durham prison. We must put a lot of energy into providing more appropriate places in our prison estate for women, and also into ensuring that sensible sentences are available that connect the community and imprisonment much more intelligently than at present, so that there are fewer women in prison—and fewer men. One of the custody-plus initiatives will lead to everyone having six months of supervision—and perhaps only a matter of weeks in prison in order to give them a jolt. That could make a real difference to many people.