PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Parental Imprisonment - 22 November 2022 (Commons/Commons Chamber)
Debate Detail
Contributions from Kerry McCarthy, are highlighted with a yellow border.
Kerry McCarthy
Bristol East
12:00:00
Damian Hinds
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice
Yes, I certainly will. I agree about the effects that parental imprisonment has, and I certainly agree that it is important to understand the number of children this affects.
12:00:00
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for that response. I have previously had meetings with former Justice Ministers, Children’s Ministers and so on. We absolutely need this data because we think there could be hundreds of thousands of children affected over the years. Not only is it really traumatic for them, but it puts them at risk themselves. Once we have the data, we can look at support services, but may I urge him to do what he can to work with prisons, schools and local authorities to try to make sure there is a comprehensive database?
12:04:26
Damian Hinds
I agree. I have spoken to one of my predecessor Ministers—my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins)—about the conversation she had with the hon. Lady. I was also reading with interest the hon. Lady’s speech in Westminster Hall the other day, and about the work of the charity Children Heard and Seen. She is absolutely right that the first step and the basis has to be the data, and there is important work under way, including changes to the basic custody screening process, and then the big cross-Government project called “Better Outcomes through Linked Data”, and we will continue to work hard on that.
Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.