Part of Justice – in the House of Commons at on 20 February 2024.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that. As she knows, I have a huge amount of respect for her, and she raises a hugely important point. We have heard from the Lord Chancellor that reoffending rates have come down from 31% to 25% since 2010. So we are making progress, but we want to drive them down further. She also rightly highlights the importance of purposeful activity leading to the opportunity on release for employment, accommodation and so on. That is central to the opportunity for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves.
We have seen significant progress made in our youth estate. The hon. Lady talked about young prisoners and rightly said that we need to go further, but we believe the national regime model that we launched in January will go a long way to doing that. The additional staff we have recruited into His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service are central to doing that, as they enable that regime to be put in place. However, she is absolutely right to highlight this issue.