Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 9 April 2001.
The prisons Minister appears to be saying that he has spent an awful lot of money for declining results. The flip side is discipline in prison. Is it true that television in cells is not just for the enhanced levels, but for standard levels; that it is no longer permanently losable as a result of disciplinary action; and that where there are two to a cell, it is not even temporarily losable as a result of disciplinary action? Will the right hon. Gentleman also confirm that prison governors are unable to punish juvenile offenders with loss of remission or extra days and that when they smash up their cells on the last day, which one governor told me is a regular occurrence, there is nothing that the prison authorities can do? Is it not true that the Government have presided over a revolving-door prisons policy that has led to another 1,000 victims of crimes committed by those who should be in jail? Finally, in light of the success of Thorn Cross, what possible justification was there for the early destruction of the high-intensity training unit at Colchester before the research results were known?