Speeches by Atkinson.

“I pay tribute to the families of victims, and to the campaigners who have fought for decades, following the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, for this legislation. They have fought to prevent state cover-ups such as the one that they experienced. In the years since Hillsborough, far too many other families have not only e…”

“My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. There are still so many families fighting for justice, and the persistence of families who have been fighting for justice has brought us to this moment. We all owe them our thanks and our action. I feel privileged to have so many colleagues who fought alongside them for so long. I…”

“Domestic abuse remains the deepest scar on our society, and it demands our collective action to eradicate it. Please can the Minister outline the measures in the Bill that will help tackle this invidious form of violence and enable improved support for victims during the process?”

“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his response on work in prison. I completely agree that it makes a huge difference in enabling prisoners to stop their reoffending behaviour. When 80% of offending is reoffending, costing over £18 billion a year, it is clear that we need to enable people to turn their lives around. D…”

“It is brilliant that new playgrounds are being built in Derby, including in Stockbrook Park and in Knightsbridge in Mackworth. Stockbrook Park is also home to an incredible local grassroots football club, the Stockbrook Colts, whose play has been stopped because the pitch they play on is unusable and in need of repair.…”

“Eighty per cent of offenders are reoffenders because of the 14 years of mess that this Government are having to clear up. The real travesty of justice is that there are no prison cells available for people who are convicted. The last Government failed to build the prison places that are needed; this Government will ens…”

“Victims must be at the heart of the grooming gangs inquiry. Does the Minister agree that getting the right chair is absolutely key to ensuring that that happens? Does she also agree that we have to avoid the scenes that we saw under the last Government, who appointed three chairs who then withdrew from the independent …”

“On that point, will the right hon. Lady give way?”

“T4. I was delighted to welcome the Education Secretary to St Mary’s Catholic primary school in Derby, the greenest school in the country, where every classroom looks out on to green spaces. We are also lucky to have the stunning River Derwent flowing through our city, which children can paddle, walk and row along. What…”

“The hon. Lady makes an important point. That is one of the reasons that the RFA has created its tracking system: to have tangible evidence of the efficacy of the work that we intuitively know must be successful in preventing reoffending. The businesses that I have met that are utilising release on temporary licence sch…”

“For years in Derby, we have been pushing for this kind of long-term investment—investment that the fantastic community of Chaddesden richly deserves. It will take time and hard work to recover from the 14 years of neglect that communities like Chaddesden experienced. I would like every Chadd resident with ideas of how …”

“I agree, and I want to see work in prison start as early as possible—not just at the end of a prisoner’s sentence but during it. I was proud to stand on a manifesto pledge to get offenders into work. That offenders should work is a conclusion that is intuitively obvious to me, having been a barrister, and that is also …”

“It is not a bona fide Adjournment debate unless the hon. Member has intervened, so I thank him for his intervention and his insight. I fully agree with him. As well as having seen countless examples of prison having not worked, I have met former offenders who have escaped the revolving door, often through work. Many ha…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution and for making that powerful point. That is why the Government are doing so much to reduce the backlog. Work in prison also comes with a host of second-order benefits, such as improving prisoner behaviour, filling skills gaps and boosting the economy. I do not underestimate t…”

“My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Investing in education and work is a key part of preventing reoffending. Frustratingly, without rehabilitation the alternative is a return to the easiest path—one of crime. We then see the revolving door of prison take another turn. Without intervention, one in two prison leavers …”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Having a range of options for people is really important, but she also makes it clear that shorter sentences can prevent rehabilitative work being done, which is why it is so important that we are trying to move to a presumption against shorter sentences. A range of things c…”

“That is another fantastic initiative. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Impressively, some of the partner agents and partner charities working with the RFA have achieved reoffending rates of under 5%. I was told at HMP Ranby that the most popular work with prisoners was for the rail industry, though sometime…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. There is some really fantastic work being done, which I will come on to, and it is essential that we find ways of enabling even more of that, because time stuck in prisons does not improve behaviour; it makes it worse. In the last year of the Conservative Government, we saw …”

“In my early years as a barrister, I sometimes came across defendants who knew the criminal justice system better than me. Their antecedents—their list of previous convictions—was pages long, showing multiple stints in prison. I used to do both prosecution and defence, and I remember some defendants even sharing with me…”

“Madam Deputy Speaker, put yourself in the place of a victim of crime. You want to go out for a walk with your family, out to the park or to the other side of town, but you are worried that the perpetrator might see you there. You want to go for a night out or to support your football team, but you are worried about wha…”