Tag: Andrew Selous

Below is the text of the speech made by Andrew Selous, the Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire, in the House of Commons on 6 February 2020.

It is a pleasure, albeit a sad necessity for many of us, to speak on a debate on this issue yet again in this House. The analysis I have seen from Open Doors and others shows that in the past three years alone more than 10,000 Christians have been killed for their faith—that is a staggering number. We are right to hold this debate today, because, as others have mentioned, the evidence shows that Christians are the target of about 80% of all the acts of religious discrimination or persecution around the world.

However, as other Members have done, it is right that we focus briefly on the other 20% as well. It is a huge slight to this country that there are record levels of antisemitism here in the UK, but we are not alone, as this has increased by some 27% in France. We know that Muslims are persecuted around the world: there is internment in China, which we have heard about; 49 Muslims were killed in the mosque attack in New Zealand not so long ago; in June 2017 a 51-year-old man was killed coming out of a mosque in Islington, here in the UK; and in New York, in 2016, an imam and his associate were also killed. We also should not forget the issues that atheists face around the world. Thirteen Muslim countries punish atheism or apostasy with death, and in others legal status can be withdrawn. So although it is right that today’s debate focuses on the 80%, I, like many other Members, wish to put on record that we are concerned about all abuses of human rights in matters of faith. The diminution of those rights for people of any faith diminishes all of us, Christian or otherwise, in this House.

Sadly, we could discuss so many countries in this regard, but I am going to deal with North Korea, which has been at the top of Open Doors’ world watch list for a long time. I often feel that North Korea does not get the attention it should in these debates, probably because so little information comes out. However, some information does come out from time to time, and we need to recognise the indescribable brutality against Christians in that country and the fact that it is absolutely directed by its Government. I, for one, would like to see greater protest about that from young people and others, because it is absolutely unacceptable.

I learnt recently of a report from a defector from the North Korean national security agency, who was talking about being trained to look for things such as people who remained silent, with their eyes closed; people who were meditating; and habitual smokers or drinkers who quit smoking or drinking all of a sudden. Those people were to be watched closely, because those things were a sign that they might well be Christians. Severe recrimination, including torture, often leading to death, would follow as a result. There are brave people who have escaped from North Korea. Indeed, some have spoken in Speaker’s House about what goes on in that country, and it gives me pleasure to give amplification to their words, because we do not hear and say enough in this country about what goes on there. We also know that North Korean national security service spies are commissioned to set up fake secret prayer meetings to attract Christians, who, again, will then be imprisoned. Those are the lengths to which that deeply evil regime goes to stop any form of faith happening in that country.​

Later on this year, the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting will take place in Kigali, in Rwanda. Such a meeting happens every two years, and I am a big fan of the Commonwealth. It does great work around the world, and as we have left the European Union, we are going to need to invest in that important member organisation even more strongly, to boost our trade links and our links of friendship. But if Members look down the world watch list, they will see that on it are India, Nigeria, Brunei, Cameroon, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kenya and Malaysia. Those nine are all Commonwealth countries and they have things to answer for on how they are treating Christians. So one of my questions to my good friend the Minister, whom I know takes these issues extremely seriously, is whether Her Majesty’s Government will engage on the issue of freedom of religion and belief with our Commonwealth friends and partners at that CHOGM meeting. I hope she will be able to give us answer in the debate, but if she cannot, perhaps she would write to us.

Like many Members here, I am extremely proud of the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) instituted the Bishop of Truro’s review. He was right to do that, and it is even better news that the previous Government committed to it, as has our current Prime Minister. We have a fantastic envoy in this area, whom I spoke to in America early this morning. He might be in Washington but he is still on the case and he is very interested in what we are doing in this House today. He was running me through some of the recommendations, and I wish to focus on three in particular.

The first recommendation was for the UK to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution, and I know the Minister was asked about that earlier. I understand that the United Kingdom will assume the presidency of the Security Council shortly, and I hope that will be a time when we press forward with that important resolution to Governments in the middle east and north Africa to protect Christians and other persecuted minorities in those countries. That is absolutely necessary.

The second recommendation on which I wish to focus is the training that we provide to our excellent diplomats. We are extremely fortunate in this country to have world-class diplomatic representation. As one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys, I have the privilege of working with some of our diplomats and know that they do fantastic work for this country all around the world. I understand that the recommendation is that all Foreign Office staff, at home and abroad, should have mandatory training on religious literacy, and that in some British embassies, high commissions and relevant companies there should be tailored responses to any violations of freedom of religion or belief. If the Minister is able to update us on the ongoing procurement of further training for our diplomats, that would be helpful. This issue needs to get into the DNA and culture of the Foreign Office—it is the bread-and-butter business of the Foreign Office. Trade deals matter, but so does freedom of religion and belief.

The final recommendation that I wish to dwell on for a while is the consideration of the imposition of sanctions on perpetrators of serious human rights abuses against religious minorities, including Christians. Again, I know that the Government are working on this issue. It would be really helpful to the House if in her response the ​Minister could perhaps flesh out the situation and tell us whether the Foreign Office has any particular countries in mind. Indeed, it might be helpful to those countries to know that they are potentially in the frame. Perhaps they would raise their game and make improvements so that the sanctions were not imposed.

It would be useful for the House to know what the process is and what sort of things the Government are looking at. How will the sanctions apply? If the persecution comes from the whole Government, will the sanctions apply just to individuals or to the Government as a whole? How will the sanctions be worked into our trade negotiations? Obviously, we hope that the mere threat of sanctions would lead to improvements so that they would not need to be imposed. In a sense, to impose a sanction is always a failure. It is a tool that we want to have in the box but do not want to have to use, but sometimes we need to take the tools out of the box if there is no change or action. It would really help the House if the Minister could kindly flesh out a little more of the Government’s thinking in that policy area. If she is not able to do that today—I may have put her on the spot—perhaps she would be kind enough to write to us to set out the Government’s thinking.

Below is the text of the speech made by Andrew Selous, the Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire, in the House of Commons on 27 February 2019.

This Adjournment debate provides an opportunity to discuss a very important but often overlooked issue, which can have a major impact on the wellbeing of older people: their oral health. Many of us will have older relatives who have reached the stage where they need some extra support. It might be that they live in a residential care home, have a carer who visits them in their home a couple of times a week, or just require a bit of extra help from us personally to stay independent.

However, one issue that often slips under the radar when we think about an older relative’s needs is their oral health; it can often seem like a small issue, but in fact poor oral health can have much wider implications. Having a painful oral health problem can impact on someone’s ability to eat comfortably, to speak and to socialise with confidence, and on the ease with which they can take medication, something which may be a particular issue if an older person is living with other long-term health conditions. Maintaining good oral health can also become much more challenging for older people with reduced dexterity, who may for example have more difficulty with brushing their teeth. Furthermore, for the most vulnerable older people, such as those with dementia, who may have difficulty communicating where they are experiencing pain, an oral health problem can be especially distressing.

Ensuring that older people are supported to maintain good oral health, and have access to dental services when they need them, is therefore very important. However, while data on this issue is limited, the information that we do have suggests that these are areas in which we often fall short.

The Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons published a report on “Improving older people’s oral health” in 2017, which estimated that 1.8 million people aged 65 and over in England, Wales and Northern Ireland could have an urgent dental condition such as dental pain, oral sepsis or extensive untreated decay. Moreover, the Faculty of Dental Surgery also highlighted that this number could increase to 2.7 million by 2040 as a result of several demographic factors, thereby increasing pressure on dental services in the future. As well as the ageing nature of Britain’s population, increasing numbers of people are also retaining their natural teeth into old age; while this is good news, it also means that dental professionals are facing new challenges as they have to provide increasingly complex treatment to teeth that may already have been heavily restored.

Separately, in 2014 Public Health England published the findings of research looking at oral health services for dependent older people in north-west England, which found that access to domiciliary and emergency dental care can often be very challenging for those living in residential care homes or receiving “care in your home” support services. More recently, Public Health England last year published the results of a national oral health survey of dependent older people living in supported housing. This revealed that nearly 70% of respondents had visible plaque and 61% had visible tartar, indicators ​of poor oral hygiene, and that in some parts of the country, such as County Durham and Ealing, over a quarter of dependent older people would be unable to visit a dentist and so required domiciliary care in their home.

It is difficult to get a complete up-to-date picture of the oral health needs of older people across the country, partly because there has not been an adult dental health survey for 10 years, an issue I will return to later. However, these figures, as well as anecdotal reports from dental professionals working on the frontline, suggest there is a real issue here which potentially impacts on large numbers of often vulnerable older people.

Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this important issue to the House. As he said, 1.8 million elderly people across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have problems, which is shocking. The hon. Gentleman outlined some of the solutions such as extra attention on domiciliary care and in residential homes, and for those at home and dependent on carers. Does he agree that older people’s confidence can also be diminished by not having their teeth correctly done? My mother went this week to have her teeth done; she is 87 years of age and she depends very much on her dentist. She has attended over the years, but many have not, and we need to have that care at all those different levels.

Andrew Selous

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving us his personal family experience of this issue.

There have been some welcome developments over the last few months, including the recently published NHS long-term plan highlighting oral health as one of the priorities for NHS England as it rolls out a new “Enhanced health in care homes” programme across the country. However, I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to five particular areas in which more could usefully be done: training for health and social care professionals; access to dental services; data; regulation; and the social care Green Paper.

First, on training, health and social care professionals regularly do a brilliant job of caring for older people, but as I have mentioned, oral health is one issue that can easily fall between the cracks, particularly if someone is living with a range of other health conditions that also require care and attention. One example of this is oral care plans. Ideally, whenever someone is admitted as a resident to a care home, their oral health needs should be considered as part of their initial health assessment. Those needs should then be reflected in an oral care plan that all their carers are aware of and that will, for example, set out whether the resident needs extra help brushing their teeth.

There is some good guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, but this can often be overlooked. In Public Health England’s research in north-west England, 57% of residential care home managers said that they did not have an oral care policy, and one in 10 said that an oral health assessment was not undertaken at the start of care provision. Knowing how to provide good oral care is especially important when it comes to supporting those with more complex needs. For example, for those with dementia, electric toothbrushes can sometimes be quite intimidating, ​and it makes a big difference if a carer knows that they should use a manual toothbrush when helping with tooth brushing. More broadly, if someone who is living with dementia refuses oral care, this can become an obstacle to maintaining good oral health, so it is important that carers understand how to manage these situations, ideally with input from a dental care professional.

Equally, for those with dentures, it is important that training and procedures are in place to minimise the risk of a denture getting lost, even if this is a simple thing such as ensuring that they are kept in a jar by the bedside when not in use. A lost denture takes weeks to replace, and this can be a devastating experience for an older person who relies on them to eat and speak. This is particularly sensitive if someone is coming to the end of their life, when it may not be possible to manufacture a replacement in time as they spend their remaining days with loved ones. An understanding of good denture care is particularly important in these situations.

Improving awareness of oral health among health and care professionals should therefore be a priority, and was a key recommendation in the Faculty of Dental Surgery’s 2017 report. This highlighted schemes such as the Mouth Care Matters programme, in which mouth care leads are recruited to provide oral care training to staff in hospitals and care homes, and I would be interested to know from the Minister whether there were any plans to replicate such initiatives nationwide.

Secondly, ensuring that older people can access dental services when they need them is essential. It is not uncommon for people to think that if someone has no teeth, they cannot be experiencing pain or other oral problems. Sadly, this is not the case and they should still have an oral check-up once a year, not least because the majority of cases of oral cancer occur in people over 50. There are all too many tragic instances of an older person being diagnosed with oral cancer too late—the saddest two words in the English language—simply because they had not seen a dentist in a number of years. Attending a dental appointment can be a particular challenge for those with reduced mobility—for example, if they are unable to climb stairs to reach a dental practice on the first floor—in which case, domiciliary visits are vital. However, evidence suggests that access to domiciliary dental care can be challenging, particularly for those living in care homes or supported housing, and I would appreciate the Minister’s thoughts on how we can address this.

In 2015, Healthwatch Bolton reported that it was easier for a local care home resident to get access to a hairdresser than to a dentist. In 2016, Healthwatch Kent reported that care homes had told it about accessibility problems for wheelchair users within dental practices. In 2016, Healthwatch Lancashire reported that care home staff said:

“The residents don’t get regular checks; they are only seen when there is a problem.”

Healthwatch Derby was concerned about the lack of information for social care providers about how to access dental services for their residents. While the commitment in the NHS long-term plan to

“ensure that individuals are supported to have good oral health”

in care homes under the “Enhanced health in care homes” section is welcome, there is no mention of a similar commitment for older people who use domiciliary care agencies. Those people should not be forgotten, so ​what do the Government intend to do about that for domiciliary care agency users under the NHS long-term plan?

Thirdly, the intelligence around older people’s oral health is quite limited, making it difficult to build a full picture of the level of need or assess the barriers that older people face in accessing dental care. The most immediate action that could be taken to address that would be for the Government to commission a new adult dental health survey. It is one of the few resources to provide detailed, national-level data on standards of oral health among older people, and it is a key reference for many commissioners, policy makers and dental professionals. The survey has been conducted every 10 years since 1968, but the last edition was published in 2009, so a new one is due. However, the Government have yet to give any indication of when or if a new survey will be taking place, which is causing increasing concern within the dental profession, so an update on that would be most welcome.

There are other steps that would help to improve our understanding of such issues. For example, NHS Digital publishes a regular set of NHS dental statistics for England, which reports on the proportion of children aged zero to 17 who attended an NHS dentist in the preceding 12 months, as well as the proportion of adults aged 18 and over who attended an NHS dentist in the past two years. That data provides a useful measure of access, and expanding the figures to include attendance rates for older people would help us to develop a clearer picture of whether there are particular groups or areas where access to an NHS dentist is a problem.

Jim Shannon

Many elderly people are independent and proud, and one of the things that puts them off attending the dentist—I see this in my constituency—is that they think they have to pay for the treatment, but they do not. Perhaps we need to put out a reminder about that.

Andrew Selous

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting that on the record.

Fourthly, in addition to health services, care home providers and dental professionals, regulators can play an essential role by monitoring standards of oral care and driving improvements. The Care Quality Commission in England does not explicitly look at oral health during its inspections of hospitals and care homes, although I understand that it is doing a lot of work behind the scenes to try and push that on to the agenda for care providers, which is obviously welcome. Health and care regulators in other parts of the UK can also make a valuable contribution to ensuring that the importance of oral health is recognised by those that they inspect.

Lastly, I continue to look forward to the publication of the Government’s long-awaited social care Green Paper. Given the importance of oral health to our wider health and wellbeing, an all-encompassing model of care for older people must include dental services, so it will be important that the Green Paper clearly sets out how social care and dental services can work together in the future and what more can be done to ensure that older people have access to dental services when they need them. As I have mentioned, one of the most valuable things we can do to improve older people’s oral health is to ensure that it is not overlooked amid the ​many other issues that we are dealing with, and I hope that the Government will show leadership on that in the Green Paper.

Oral health can sometimes seem like a small issue, but it has a significant impact on quality of life. The Minister will be aware that we have spoken a lot in recent years about the need to improve children’s oral health, and quite rightly so, but it is also essential that we do not take our eye off the other groups who need support. For an older person who is in pain because of an oral health problem, finding it difficult to eat or speak, or who may be distressed at the loss of a denture that will take weeks to replace, such issues are very real. We can all contribute to addressing them, including Members who care for older relatives in our everyday lives. Indeed, the Faculty of Dental Surgery published some useful advice over Christmas about using visits to older relatives as an opportunity to check their oral health and for how to spot the signs that they might have an oral health problem. That is something that Members could do over Easter when visiting elderly relatives, and we could encourage our constituents to do the same. However, I hope that the Minister will recognise that Government also have an important role to play and will look carefully at what can be done to help improve oral care for our older people.

Below is the text of the speech made by the then Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions, Andrew Selous, on 7th October 2009.

I am proud to be serving in a party whose leader, David Cameron has said he wants the government he aspires to lead to be judged on how it tackles poverty in office.Those sentiments are nothing new for this party.

From Shaftesbury to Disraeli, from Stanley Baldwin to Rab Butler, we have always seen the relief of poverty and the improvement of the conditions of all the people as a core part of our purpose.

Labour have tried to make the eradication of child poverty their issue, but much of the most powerful thinking on combating poverty in our country today is coming from those on the centre right and within our own party. I want to pay tribute to the outstanding work of Iain Duncan Smith and the Centre for Social Justice in their Breakthrough Britain reports on ending the costs of social breakdown.  My colleague in the Lords, David Freud wrote the key Government report on reforming welfare before he joined this party to help put real reform of welfare into practice and the shadow Work and Pensions team published its welfare reform paper last year in order to make British poverty history.

I do not doubt Labour’s commitment in this area.  But Labour have failed to meet the targets they set themselves and are miles away from meeting the target to reduce child poverty by half by 2010.  Even before the recession took hold they were very unlikely to have done so.  400, 000 more children are living in poverty since 2004  which means there are still four million children in poverty in the UK.   Even Alan Milburn has said that “poverty has become more entrenched”1 under this Government.

Labour have concentrated almost entirely on tax credits to relieve poverty.  I do not believe that tweaking a benefit here or a tax credit there will ever get to the heart of the problems that trap so many of our nation’s families in poverty. Our approach must be focused on turning round the lives of people who live in poverty and in many cases who have lived in poverty for generations.

That will require dealing with the root causes of poverty in a far more rigorous way.  We know that educational failure, worklessness, benefit traps, addiction, serious personal debt and family breakdown are the pathways into poverty for all too many of our fellow citizens. All these causes need to be addressed to keep families out of poverty.

This government measures poverty by looking at households which have less than 60% of median income.  We have greater ambition than to raise a family’s income by a few percent. If you knocked on the door of a household whose income had gone from 58% to 61% of the median and asked “What does it feel like to be out of poverty? “, I suspect you would get  a pretty surprised reply.  So we are looking at a wider range of indicators to measure success in this area.

Our approach to tackling poverty will be based on sound Conservative principles.  We know that to eradicate poverty you have to create more wealth.  You can not defeat poverty through the welfare system and tax credit system on its own.  So the people who start and grow businesses will be in the frontline of Conservative plans to combat poverty and we will need to pay special attention to those areas of our country which are jobs deserts, where almost no one works.  Some local authorities like Kent are taking the lead in this area and we want to see that best practice spread across the whole country.

As Conservatives we also recognise that poor children don’t exist in a vacuum.  They are part of poor families and we will take a whole family approach to combating child poverty. And that means extended families, including grandparents.  We believe not just that every child matters, but that every family matters. It is no coincidence that the United Kingdom has both one of the highest rates of child poverty in Europe as well as one of the highest rates of family breakdown.  The courage and determination that David Cameron has shown to strengthen families has never been more necessary to reduce poverty in our country.

We also recognise that government and families can not, on their own, always find the solutions to getting out of poverty.  The helping hand of the voluntary sector is absolutely vital too.  It’s  role and that of so many social enterprises will be central to the next Conservative’s government’s approach to fighting poverty.  And one thing we will change straight away is the refusal of the Department for Work and Pensions to signpost the voluntary help available in their areas.  This summer I learnt  that the department had actually stopped a job centre from telling its customers about a local food bank.  And they did this even though health visitors, social services and probation officers all work in closely with the food bank.  You see Gordon Brown’s view is that if everybody can’t have something then no one should.  Well, we think that’s wrong and we will instruct every Jobcentre Plus district manager in the country to sit down with charities providing emergency food,  debt counselling services, homelessness charities, family support groups and so on, to work out how this support can be signposted locally so that people in desperate poverty can find it.

Ending family and child poverty is indeed everybody’s  business and I can give you this pledge today, that it will be very much at the heart of the work of the next Conservative government.

Below is the text of the speech made by Andrew Selous,  the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Prisons, Probation and Rehabilitation at the Ministry of Justice, made on 23 September 2015 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London.

Introduction

Let me start by thanking the organisers of this conference, GovNet, for inviting me to speak at the 15th annual Criminal Justice Management conference here today. I am delighted to follow in the footsteps of my colleague, Lord Faulks, who spoke here last year, and to be speaking today alongside others with whom I work closely – Natalie Ceeney, Lord McNally and Paul Wilson. These people work tirelessly every day to improve the Criminal Justice System, and I applaud them for the work they do.

Last year, Lord Faulks spoke to you about modernising the Criminal Justice Sector through the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. Today, Natalie Ceeney is going to talk to you about modernisation of the courts and tribunals through digital technology.

Under this government, reforms continue to be implemented throughout the Criminal Justice System. During the last government Tom McNally was a crucial part of the Ministerial team leading our reforms and he is therefore ideally qualified to be leading the transformation in Youth Justice. The Prime Minister spoke earlier this month on reviewing the Criminal Justice System, and in particular adapting a whole system approach to the delivery of Youth Justice. I am therefore delighted that Tom is coming here today to talk about this important work.

Later, Paul Wilson is going to give an independent view of progress on the reforms we have made to the Probation Service. Therefore I want to spend the time I have with you today looking at the broader landscape for rehabilitating offenders and reducing reoffending; and the challenges ahead. In order to do this, I will describe how the landscape has changed both in probation and prisons in the wake of Transforming Rehabilitation; set out other initiatives which will help offenders lead better lives, and touch on our vision for rehabilitation in the future.

Setting the context

We are already reducing adult reoffending – since 2002, the overall reoffending rate decreased by 2.3 percentage points to stand at 25.3% at the end of September 2013. However, the group of offenders with the highest reoffending rates remains the under 12 month custodial sentenced group, which is the one group which previously remained out of scope for statutory supervision and rehabilitation in the community.

During the last government, we came to office determined to change this, and, as a result, implemented the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, to focus the system better on reducing reoffending and public safety and to ensure greater value for the taxpayer.

Transforming rehabilitation

As part of this major programme of reform, we introduced the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014. This made a number of changes to the sentencing framework, most notably changing the law so that all offenders released from short prison sentences now receive 12 months of supervision in the community.

These provisions came into force on 1 February 2015, and apply to offences committed on or after that date. We are therefore building up a cohort of offenders who would previously have been released from prison with £46 in their pocket and little else. Now those offenders receive statutory supervision and assistance with their resettlement back in the community.

To enable the Ministry of Justice to extend statutory rehabilitation in the community to the 45,000 offenders sentenced to less than 12 months in custody, we needed to make significant structural changes both to the Probation Service and the Prison Service. Therefore, after consultation, the 35 Probation Trusts were re-organised into 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies, or CRCs, and a single National Probation Service, known as the NPS.

As you know, transition to the new probation structures took place on 1 June last year, from which date the NPS and 21 CRCs were live and supervising offenders. Offenders who pose a high risk of serious harm to the public, or are convicted of the most serious offences, are being managed by the public sector NPS, while medium and lower risk offenders are being managed by the CRCs. The NPS sits within the National Offender Management Service, while the 21 CRCs remained in public ownership until 1 February this year when 8 new providers took ownership of, and began running, the CRCs. The CRCs are being run by a diverse group of providers, including a range of voluntary sector providers, which have experience in rehabilitating offenders. These providers will be remunerated via a system which rewards them for reducing reoffending – payment by results.

Transforming Rehabilitation also brought about substantial reform to the prison system. To support improved rehabilitation outcomes, the prison estate was reorganised to facilitate a “Through the Gate” model where offenders are given help and support from within custody and in to the community to which they will return on release. In order to do this, the National Offender Management Service established a network of 89 Resettlement Prisons in what has involved a large scale re-organisation of prisoner allocation and re-configuration of roles for a substantial part of the prison estate. Short term prisoners and prisoners in the last 12 weeks of their sentence are being housed in those prisons where CRCs provide a Through the Gate resettlement service including support to offenders for accommodation needs, employment brokerage and retention, finance and debt advice and support for sex workers and victims of domestic violence.

It has now been 8 months since CRCs transitioned to their new owners. So how is the new probation system looking? It is encouraging, given the scale of change that the probation service has gone through, that, based on the wide range of information we published last November, and in July this year, performance is broadly consistent with pre-transition levels. Probation staff in both the NPS and the CRCs have worked very hard to implement these reforms and we of course continue to support them as the new ways of working become embedded.

In regard to the Community Rehabilitation Companies all the new providers have commenced the process of restructuring their CRCs in order to implement the business models which they set out in their bids during the competition to win the CRC contracts. As the 8 providers only took over the running of their CRCs on 1 February this year these changes are in the early stages. By opening up the market to these new providers the Transforming Rehabilitation programme aimed to ensure that new and innovative approaches would be used to reduce reoffending and bring in best practice from the public, private and third sectors. Initial innovation can already be observed as the eight providers establish new ways of working, ranging from streamlining back office functions and installing modern ICT to implementing new management styles.

One of the first priorities for the new owners of the 21 CRCs was to get their Through the Gate services up and running by 1 May. Resettlement services relating to employment and accommodation brokerage, and finance and debt advice are now in place. Work continues to drive up standards of this service in both custody and the community with a view to further reducing reoffending, and we are monitoring delivery closely to ensure that these resettlement services meets the high standards set out in our design.

Intensive contract management by my officials will ensure CRC providers continue to deliver as we go forward. Contract management teams, comprising regionally-based combined teams of operational and commercial staff, are managing CRC contracts, ensuring contractor compliance and consistent levels of performance and delivery of the contract, including all statutory functions.

The Transforming Rehabilitation reforms have made substantial changes to the way we manage offenders in England and Wales. And I am proud to be a part of the team that made that happen. There of course remains much work to be done as we embed these reforms, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank probation and prison staff for their continued hard work. They are doing a magnificent job and deserve widespread recognition.

Education and employment

We are also making a number of other changes to the Criminal Justice System and I will now move on to reflect on some of those changes.

Offenders have a variety of social problems such as a lack of, or low qualifications, lack of employment, accommodation needs and drugs and/or alcohol misuse.

These factors are associated with higher rates of reoffending on release from prison, and so we need to take them into account and tackle them when developing and delivering strategies for reducing reoffending.

Almost half (46%) of prisoners said they had no qualifications 13% said they had never had a job.

We know that tackling employment can reduce reoffending. A recent statistical publication made by the Ministry of Justice on the impact of employment on reoffending sets out some interesting findings, for example: offenders who got P45 employment at some point in the year after being released from custody were less likely to reoffend than similar offenders who did not get P45 employment. For custodial sentences of less than one year, the one year proven reoffending rate was 9.4 percentage points lower for those who found P45 employment after release than for the matched comparison group.

Education Review

Of course, you are more likely to find P45 employment if you have a decent standard of education. Increasing numbers of prisoners are engaged in learning but Ofsted Inspections confirm that one in five prisons has an inadequate standard of education provision and another two fifths require improvement. This is why the Secretary of State for Justice has asked Dame Sally Coates to chair a review of the quality of education in prisons. The review will report in March 2016.

The review will examine the scope and quality of current provision in adult prisons and in young offender institutions for 18-20 year olds; review domestic and international evidence of what works well in prison education to support the rehabilitation of different segments of prison learners; and identify options for future models of education services in prisons.

Stakeholders will be contacted and invited to provide evidence to the review.

We will, of course, take the findings of that review very seriously, but we cannot stand still. Work is already in progress to improve the quality of learning and skills in prisons. This includes: finding ways to improve class attendance and punctuality; collecting better management information; improving support for those with learning difficulties and disabilities and developing more creative and innovative teaching.

In August 2014 we introduced mandatory assessment of Maths and English for all newly received prisoners. Provisional data, for August 2014 to April 2015, shows that 57,000 prisoners have been assessed and that 32,000 have taken part in a Maths and English course.

We have also invested in the Virtual Campus which is a secure web based learning and job searching tool which is currently available in 105 prisons to support prisoners’ education.

Families

Another of my key priorities is to improve the support available to prisoners to build positive relationships with their families. Families are a stabilising influence and an important motivating factor in rehabilitation and the prevention of reoffending. Many prisoners need additional help to break cycles of crime and family breakdown and I have seen the good work that can be done, such as at HMP Parc where the Invisible Walls Project, using Lottery funding, has enabled the prison to establish a multi-agency partnership and a special unit focused on supporting relationships. Interventions offered to prisoners are integrated with advice and support for the whole family, and the prison hosts parent/teacher evenings where children, their teachers and parents review their school work, and advise fathers on how to support their children’s education. In the public sector, HMP Erlestoke is piloting a dedicated Family Interventions Unit within NOMS benchmarking costs.

As a part of this I am working with colleagues across government to ensure the needs of the children of prisoners are recognised. For example, as part of the expanded Troubled Families programme to turn around families with multiple disadvantages, which rolled out nationally in April this year, Local Authorities now work with families which include adult offenders and dependent children in the household.

Volunteers in prison

I have spoken at some length about the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, and how they have enabled us to bring the voluntary sector into areas of rehabilitation to a greater degree. We know that some of these organisations use ex-offenders to mentor and assist current offenders to get their lives in order, which, as we all know increases the likelihood that they will not reoffend and that they will make a positive contribution to society. I am keen to encourage more volunteers and volunteer organisations to work with our prisons, bringing a different perspective and valuable innovation to this key area, and making sure that we are using them effectively and to their full potential.

Prisons reform

On a final note, some of you might have had the opportunity to hear the Justice Secretary’s speech to the Prisoner Learning Alliance in July. If you did, you will know that we are renewing our focus on making prisons ‘places of rehabilitation’. We have many dedicated and hard-working governors, and the Justice Secretary wants to make those who run establishments more autonomous and accountable, but in turn to demand more of our prisons and of offenders.

For example, we need to be better at devolving power, like the government has done in education. Currently, Governors do not have enough have control over what is taught in prisons and who teaches it, and insufficient financial freedom to provide meaningful work for their prisoners. We want to give governors that control and we want to incentivise and reward them for delivering the right outcomes.

As a first step, we are currently considering the potential to close ageing and ineffective Victorian prisons and to build modern establishments which embody higher standards in every way they operate. We need to tackle overcrowding and deal with the problem of violence against prison staff. Psycho-active substances are also a major cause for concern and we must do more to prevent them getting into prisons.

The money we make by selling off old prisons should be reinvested by commissioning a modern, well-designed prison estate, which design out the faults in existing structures which make violent behaviour and drug-taking much harder to detect.

There is much to be done and we have already made an excellent start with the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms and Through the Gate support. We must continue this good work, as we redouble our efforts to rehabilitate prisoners; helping to turn their lives around, and ultimately make our society a safer and more decent place in which to live.