Sally Jameson

I remind Members of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a member of the POA. I want to back up what the Minister said in retaliation to the shadow Justice Minister. Prison can indeed work, but words alone are not enough, and when a party is in office, it has to back them up with action and actually run the prison estate properly. I cannot convey in words just how dangerous the overcrowding got leading up to July 2024. I, for one, will never forget it, as I have said in this House many times. I think it is pretty brazen to come to this Chamber now and claim that all these places were a result of decisions taken in the Conservatives’ last year in office. [Interruption.] Those decisions should have been taken a decade before. Having rushed them in the last year and literally left prisons at the point of collapse, the Conservatives have no jurisdiction to talk on this matter in the House today. [Interruption.] I thank the Minister for his statement and ask whether he will meet me to discuss what more can be done to increase safety for staff in our prisons. I welcome the decision to introduce PAVA into the youth estate—another decision that was delayed by the Conservative party. I also ask him to look at the national care leavers strategy, because they are grossly overrepresented in our prison system. If we are to reduce the population, we need to look at that in the next 12 months.