Speeches by Mahmood.

“Obviously, I have made some changes already as you alluded to, Mr Juss, on Crime Lower and the £24 million uplift. The first thing to note is that the legal aid system, like every other bit, is of course under stress. The previous Administration faced legal action and had a bit of a history with the professions on lega…”

“You are right that the announcement on the consultation applies to immigration work and housing. In the very broad picture of the civil system and civil legal aid, those are the two areas of greatest stress. I am trying to maximise what I can achieve within the funding envelope that I have. I have tried to stabilise th…”

“I think there is already some grant funding for those who are not eligible for legal aid. I can write to the Committee with the details, but I think there is between 15% and 20% of that grant specifically for litigants in person at court. I accept, again, that if you look at what has happened over the last 14 years, wh…”

“We will be making some further announcements in due course which speak to trying to get the system to a position of sustainability. In the new year, Minister Sackman and I will set out a broader direction of travel on legal aid. Some of that will be spending review dependent. We obviously want to maximise our position,…”

“Thank you. On what happened in terms of the youth estate, it is one of the few areas where I can commend the progress made by the previous Administration. We have seen a huge reduction in the size of the youth estate. I think that is very welcome. We are incarcerating far fewer children than we used to. Across Governme…”

“I have the same desire, which is to try to further squeeze down the youth estate as much as possible and, longer term, look at, if they prove to be successful, secure school-type settings. Now that one is under way, the appropriate thing would be to look at what the evidence shows us in terms of outcomes for children. …”

“Yes. Without wanting to speak for Minister Dakin, I will take that away and write to you and give you a sense of what you can expect and when next year.”

“You raised this at oral questions, and you have written. Let me take that away, and we will come back to you with a response.”

“It is a question of what you could do to change that situation. Let me come back to you with what commitment we might be able to make.”

“That is not a conversation I have directly had with the Education Secretary, so I would not want to make a commitment here today. I can see why that case is made. What I reassure you and the Committee on is that the Ministers responsible—Minister Daby in the Department for Education and Minister Dakin from the MOJ—are …”

“The usual arrangements on the victim contact scheme or victim notification scheme will have been in place. I am not aware that any of those schemes did not work as they should in the case of the 60, but, as I say, I can write to you with further details on that.”

“You might have seen, Chair, from my speech at conference when I announced the women’s justice board, that going from first principles we imprison far too many women. Too many women in the women’s estate have been imprisoned for non-violent offences. Too many of them are mothers, and in too many cases when mum is in pri…”

“I guess the first answer to your question, given the position I have inherited, is that I do not have the luxury of interrogating from first principles what an ideal prison population might look like or what the picture of sentencing has led to. In a way, I have a crisis. We have to do supply, we have to build; and we …”

“They become drug-addicted in prison, yes.”

“The driver of the sentencing review is making sure that people who have to be locked up always have a prison place. If you run out, you are no longer able to make a choice between who needs to be locked up and who you can give a community sentence instead. You have just run out of places at that point, and you do not h…”

“I think when the Minister for Prisons was in front of you, he named some examples: Hatfield, I believe, Drake Hall and Rye Hill. They are the three that come to mind immediately. I think that is based on HMIP reports. I will write to you with a list of others that you can look to for good practice.”

“I assure you, Chair, that there are some good examples out there. It isn’t always a bleak picture.”

“The schemes have been designed by previous Administrations, and by previous Members of Parliament campaigning for more information and advice being available to different cohorts of victim. That would be true. Once the sentencing review has made its recommendations and given us some further proposals on how we look at …”

“We are in agreement about the principle. The question is what you implement and when, and what is the right moment to think about further changes. If you are already looking at the sentencing for a cohort of offenders, once we have those proposals is the appropriate moment to think about what other system changes you m…”

“Minister Dakin is directly looking at the educational offer in the youth estate and where we might make some changes for the medium and the long term. Again, for the funding that we have available, are we getting the best possible deal and achieving everything that we want from it?”