Suicide and Self-harm in Prison (England)

Part of PRAYERS - [Mr Christopher Chope in the Chair] – in Westminster Hall at 11:15 am on 1 March 2017.

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Photo of Sam Gyimah Sam Gyimah The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice 11:15, 1 March 2017

I would like to make some progress and develop these points. I will perhaps take an intervention later.

We are also making improvements to the assessment, care in custody and teamwork process—the case management process in place in our prisons to support and manage prisoners at risk—and identifying opportunities to make it more effective. That includes changes to relevant training and developing a new self-harm diagnostic tool for use by prison governors and staff, which brings together information for each prison about numbers and types of incident, and where and when in the prison they are happening.

We are also improving infrastructure and partnerships. To support governors and prison staff across the estate, we have put in place specialist roles—regional safer custody leads—in every region to provide advice to prisons and to spread good practice on identifying and supporting prisoners at risk. We are also committed to developing partnerships with others who can help us. In addition to the funding already provided to support the prisoner listener scheme, we will be providing extra funding for the Samaritans to provide targeted support for prison staff and to prisoners directly, including by piloting emotional resilience training for new prisoners, delivered by released ex-listeners.

In the immediate term, a national learning day will be held on 14 March for prison staff on suicide and self-harm. We also strive to continue to learn from others and from completed and ongoing reviews. It is critical that we respond to the independent advisory panel’s ongoing review of women’s self-inflicted deaths. We continue to benefit from individual reviews into deaths in custody by the prisons and probation ombudsman. As hon. Members will have seen, we have introduced the Prisons and Courts Bill, which contains measures to put the ombudsman on to a statutory footing, with powers of entry and requirements on the Secretary of State to publish responses to the ombudsman’s reports. It will give those reports real teeth and will introduce an imperative in the system to follow through the recommendations and ensure that they are implemented. The Bill gives effect to long-standing commitments by successive Governments to give the ombudsman permanent status. I hope that hon. Members will welcome and support the Bill as it progresses through the House.

We will also redouble our efforts to support protective and environmental factors, which evidence tells us reduce risk. We know that strengthening family ties and peer support can support prisoners’ wellbeing and make custody safer. Governors will be held to account for the family services in their prison, and from autumn 2017 the family service budgets will be devolved to governors so that they have flexibility over how they resource family services to best meet the needs of their prisoners. We are also supporting digital developments in prisons, including the roll-out of in-cell telephony, to enable prisoners to call their families more easily and at cheaper rates. We will learn from Lord Farmer’s review to investigate how helping prisoners to engage with their families can support their rehabilitation and provide encouragement.