Speeches by Dixon.

“In the way that you have talked about workforce and skilling up, it is about making sure that the analysts who are embedded, but also the research community on the outside, are equipped to take on some of that advice. Thank you for flagging that. Coming to the outcomes, you talked there about the financial perspective.…”

“In terms of these pilot initiatives, it seems very much that Departments pick their issues and work on them. Clearly, there are some things, as we have already talked about, that are common across Government Departments and the public sector. We have heard about many of them through this Committee, such as identity ver…”

“My hon. Friend talks about the importance of water quality. Will she join me in commending campaigns such as the Ilkley Clean River Group and other citizen scientists across the country? In the absence of data collected under the Conservatives and the work of the Environment Agency, they had to do the work themselves t…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for bringing this really important debate to the House and for sharing so movingly the case involving the tragic death of her constituent Harvey. Road safety is a serious concern for my constitu…”

“Are we talking about spice?”

“What progress has been made on implementing the Carol Black recommendations from 2020 in regard to drug use in prisons?”

“In terms of policy, are the drug rehabilitation requirements in terms of the sentencing review being looked at as a cost-effective alternative to these short custodial sentences for people who are known to have drug use and be part of this cycling in and out?”

“I would like to come on just to the impact of this in terms of rehabilitation. Back in 2020, Dame Carol Black produced a report about drug use specifically. We have evidence from both His Majesty’s inspectorate and Camurus Ltd that set out the scale of drug use in the prison population. Random drug testing at the time …”

“At what level is it currently set?”

“Can I just ask a follow-up in terms of the projections and assumptions? What assumptions did they make about the 95%, 90% in terms of occupancy, and what assumptions did they make in terms of crowding and that 25%? When you did your projections about the point at which supply and demand do not meet, have they built int…”

“A quarter of prisoners at the moment are living in those conditions.”

“What would 90% allow you to do in terms of improved prisoner outcomes?”

“On the one hand, you are saying that you are highly efficient because you are running at 99% and you have only this small number of spare beds, but you are also admitting that trying to manage at that level with that tiny margin of cells and places means that, effectively, you have to do things that are very inefficien…”

“I will come back to staff and, indeed, as you raise, the public impacts of this capacity crisis. If I may turn to you, Ms Rees, you are running this hot and there is this level of overcrowding. It seems almost that this has become the norm for how you are having to operate. What are you doing to try to manage some of t…”

“What would you consider a safe level of crowding for your projections?”

“I would like to move us on to look at some of the effects of the prison capacity crisis. In particular, I would like to start by considering the impact on prisoners and prisoner outcomes. The Report lays bare—and we have also received quite a lot of evidence on this matter—that, in particular, overcrowding results in p…”

“That is acceptable.”

“How do you plug all that into your long-term workforce strategy, to be confident that you have that longer-term supply of workers?”

“I only say that because, before I came to this place, I did a lot of work on age-friendly employers and how we enable people to work for longer. Some of those suggestions would be very welcome, I am sure. Those were the main points I wanted to ask on workforce. The only thing is your assumptions about the workforce you…”

“Is there any chance of getting any returners, given these experienced people have left you?”