I will try to get my speech flowing now that I have cut it so much. I wish to focus my remarks on justice and prison reform—a key aspect of keeping people safe in this country.
It is a pleasure to serve on the Justice Committee under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and along with the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who has had to leave the Chamber.
The current state of the prison and criminal justice system means that that system is seriously failing society as a whole. I reiterate the comments I made in the House on 27 January, when I warmly welcomed and supported the statement by the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, in which he expressed his desire to reform our prison system. The Ministry of Justice has sought to improve prison safety through a range of legislative, operational and staff recruitment measures. The Ministry hoped that prison safety would stabilise. In reality, it has deteriorated further and continues to do so. It is imperative that further attention is paid to bringing prisoners back under firmer control, reversing recent trends in the escalation of violence, self-harm and suicides. If we do not bring this under control soon, that will seriously undermine the wider reforms we are awaiting.
Ministers frequently assert that problems in different areas of the public services are not all about money. Of course, this is the case. Appropriate management, support and effective allocation of resources is essential, but in the prison and criminal justice system this is no longer a viable line of argument. We need sufficient resources and we need them now, or a crisis will become an absolute catastrophe. Our prison population continues to rise, with 7,000 fewer prison officers and 2,500 more prisoners. Psychoactive drugs are being dropped in by drones, and other drugs taken in.
There has been a serious recruitment and retention problem. Last year, 2,250 extra prison officers were recruited. That resulted in a net gain of 440, but many of them left. In fact, that figure has now gone up to 530 because we have recruited since 2015. How can officers be retained in an environment that is regularly on the verge of riots? That gives rise to questions about health and safety policy and the management arrangements for implementing the policies in prison. We need to get prison officers in, and we need them immediately. That requires money. It also requires an acknowledgement that warm words about efficiency and getting more for less are nonsense when it comes down to potentially bringing down the whole system.
I have to ask Members of the House who they think would do a prison officer’s job at the moment. A prison officer’s basic starting salary is £17,735 basic, or £9.22 per hour, exempting antisocial hours payments, and having had years of real-terms pay cuts. By 2020, with the full implementation of the Government’s national living wage, their basic pay will be very little over the legal minimum, disregarding the antisocial hours premium.
I warmly recognise and accept the letters dated 18 and 19 May that we received from the Secretary of State. However, we need to address the problems across the whole prison estate, not just in six prisons. It must be done, and done quickly.