Speeches by Munt.

“Might I assume that all three of you would want the lifting of that six-year rule?”

“I want to reverse a little and go back to something you said about the assessment of special educational needs. If I am right, Victoria, you said that prisoners came in who had not been assessed but they told you what their experience was.”

“I am checking my understanding of what was said in a previous session, which was, as prisoners enter the system, they are assessed. What does that mean? Is that just somebody going, “Well, I think you’ve got this; and I think you’ve got that?”, or are they professionals?”

“Could you write to the Chair about that?”

“I want to really understand, because I have misunderstood. I thought that an assessment was done by somebody who—you are shaking your heads; that is very alarming.”

“I would be very grateful if the three of you would write to the Chair about your perception or experience of what actually happens because what I heard before sounded quite nice, and I am slightly alarmed now.”

“Is an assessment done by an ed psych?”

“How are they qualified?”

“Is this just some prisoner officer going, “Can you read? Can you write? Can you add up?”?”

“I thank the Secretary of State greatly for giving way. I recognise what clauses 45 to 54 say about the mandatory duty in England to report child sexual abuse, and I wonder if I might draw her attention to the fact that there are exceptions dating back to 1603, under canon law, for confessions relating to treason. There…”

“I want to ask a little bit about prison building and the increase in places that is going to be needed, from 95,000 to 105,000—that is over the next four years, isn’t it? That is what was anticipated. The 14,000 additional places that were going to be in the three G prisons—Grendon, Garth and Gartree—are going to happe…”

“I wondered whether there might have been a bit of intellectual curiosity when he is making a statement like that, because it appears to me to be quite critical of the system. If someone had said that about my department, I would be on the phone to him next morning asking, “What do you need? What do you not have? Why ha…”

“He is His Majesty’s inspector of prisons, isn’t he? He should have access to data.”

“Perhaps I might ask more about the generality. Could you explain to me what would not be available to His Majesty’s inspector? What would not be available to him?”

“He should have access to everything he needs to interrogate the veracity of the information he receives, and to be able to make a judgment, which can be utterly critical to the survival of some people’s careers—or not.”

“I will go back to his evidence; I might ask the Committee Clerks to help us. I can assure you that he was very clear last week that he could not access the data he required to make assessments on particular places. We were talking particularly about drugs and prisons, drones, weaponry and goodness knows what else.”

“I am Tessa Munt, the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills. I have made my declaration, which can be found on the website.”

“On that point, can I ask you to deconstruct your acronyms? I am not fully familiar. I know what FM means.”

“Thank you. Can I move now to the number of cells, effectively, that are out of action and how that has been dealt with? I know in particular we have Dartmoor, which has been shut, and is going to be shut for another two years. Do you have a date for when it is due to be back on? It has three years from last August, whi…”

“I felt there might be a bit of intellectual curiosity by one of you when he makes statements like that to the Committee, and you might have interrogated that statement and checked what he was referring to.”