Oral Answers to Questions — Justice – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 13 November 2012.
Amber Rudd
Conservative, Hastings and Rye
11:30,
13 November 2012
What plans he has to introduce a payment by results scheme to reduce reoffending.
Chris Grayling
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
By 2015, I intend to apply payment by results to the Majority of rehabilitation work conducted with offenders in the community. Providers will be commissioned to rehabilitate offenders, and those who are successful at reducing reoffending will be rewarded. I will announce detailed proposals shortly.
Amber Rudd
Conservative, Hastings and Rye
Studies such as the recent report from the Prison Reform Trust show that women have higher rates of reoffending. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on plans to divert women from custody in the first place, particularly those with short sentences?
Chris Grayling
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
I do agree. One of the first prisons I visited was Holloway. I saw at first hand the very different challenge we face with women offenders. One of the earliest steps I took was to separate ministerial responsibility for men and women in our prisons, asking the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend Mrs Grant to take on the role of Minister with responsibility for women in prisons, and to look at whether we are getting the regime right and how we should adapt it to reflect the very different challenges we face with women in our prisons.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
