PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 12 March 2019 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

Yesterday, the Government were pleased to give their support and time to the Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill, sponsored in this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). The Bill, which seeks to make a small yet important change to the Children Act 1989, offers both a sensible simplification of the court process and a useful extension to the family courts’ powers to protect girls at risk of female genital mutilation. It will add to the measures that the Government have brought forward to tackle FGM issues.

We are very short of time. One-sentence questions will suffice.

Can my right hon. Friend provide an update on the Government’s consideration of giving children the right to have access to their grandparents in the event of family breakdown or divorce?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s activities in this area. I am reviewing the options for strengthening the involvement of grandparents in children’s lives to be explored in a future consultation. I will make an announcement on the Government’s plans in due course.

Too many young lives are being lost to violent crime on our streets. Whatever the Prime Minister may say, substantial reductions in police numbers leave our communities less safe—so does shutting hundreds of youth centres and so, too, does the Ministry of Justice’s halving of funds for youth offending teams since 2010. Tens of millions of pounds that once went to protecting children in their communities have needlessly been taken away, so when will the Government stop trying to do justice on the cheap and instead properly fund youth offending teams?

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s criticism. This Government have announced a £200 million youth endowment fund. We are taking measures to deal with the sources of problems with this, and we will continue to do that.

I absolutely confirm that. Britain has a very proud tradition in campaigning nationally and internationally against animal cruelty. The Government remain committed to increasing the maximum sentence for animal cruelty to five years.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, thresholds across the board, including in relation to criminal legal aid, are part of the legal aid review that we are now undertaking.

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that we need to speed up the hearing times for people’s welfare claims. There are two aspects to that: the first is that we need to work with the Department for Work and Pensions, which we are doing, and I am doing with my counterpart in the DWP, to get decisions right first time; and the second is to speed up those hearings.

As the hon. Gentleman says, that is a fantastic organisation. We are, of course, conducting a very detailed consultation on the future of probation, but to reassure him, the principles behind Durham’s CRC and, in particular, the involvement of local authorities and of the voluntary sector and the close co-ordination with the National Probation Service are fundamental to our reforms.

Where an offender is assessed as presenting a risk of serious harm, they will receive a standard recall and may only be released into the community if they can be safely managed there. If there is not that risk, a proportionate response is sensible. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation has found that probation services, in the vast majority of cases, are making the right decisions.

I have had a number of meetings with my counterpart in the DWP, and my officials discuss this issue with the DWP regularly. I and my counterpart in the DWP will undertake a joint meeting at an assessment centre to further consider these important issues and ensure that we get decisions right first time.

There are 9,090 foreign national offenders in our prisons, including 760 from Albania. Why are those people not serving their sentence in prison in their own countries?

That is a very good challenge. My hon. Friend specifically raised Albania, with which we have a prison transfer agreement in place. I met the Albanian Minister of Justice two weeks ago. We need to ensure that more returns take place, but we are well ahead of Italy and Greece on returns to Albania.

My Department will continue to argue the case for spending our money sensibly and getting the best deal for justice.

Will my hon. Friend the Minister outline what plans he has to increase support for rape crisis centres?

I pay tribute to Fern Champion, who has been incredibly courageous in speaking out recently about this hugely important issue. We provide funding for 89 rape support centres. From April, we will increase funding by 10% for them all, with a 30% increase in London, and move to a three-year funding settlement.[Official Report, 21 March 2019, Vol. 656, c. 12MC.]

It is absolutely true that we need to look not just at convicted prisoners but at people with suspended sentences. That is something we are looking at in reforming probation, and the pilots on homelessness will also seek to address it.

Law centres play an absolutely fundamental role. I recently visited Bromley by Bow Centre and Islington Law Centre. As part of our pilots, law centres will be able to bid for new ways to interact with their clients, and I hope they will take that opportunity.