Speeches by Munt.

“What do you think Charlie Taylor means when he says he cannot get the data? What conversations have you had with him? I am sure you would have picked up that comment last week. What do you imagine he means by not being able to get hold of the information he needs?”

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

“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.”

“You will be there, will you? You will get your 14,000.”

“That presents a problem, doesn’t it? I had HMP Shepton Mallet until 2013, and that was 400 years old—jolly cold, but very effective, in my view, with very few escapes, mainly because the walls are 40 feet high. Having been to Dartmoor as well, there are challenges with that particular building, aren’t there? I presume …”

“Please.”

“That will allow you to carry on with this programme rolling through into the future.”

“We have already talked about ISG and how they have come out of the process earlier. I presume that the Cabinet Office is now tendering new services.”

“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…”

“Chair, my sense is that for us to do our job properly we need to understand the situation. From what I heard last week, it was not clear.”

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”

“That average of 1,700 is fairly consistent across the estate across time, is it?”

“But we have already heard that they are being turned around in 24 to 48 hours.”

“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.”

“I understand that. I also understand facilities management. There are some other bits—”

“I thank the Prime Minister for everything he has done over the last few days—it has been admirable. Will he endeavour to ensure that we prioritise military spending on outcomes rather than, strictly, the amount of money that is spent? The rush to avoid criticism of underspending often means that cost-effectiveness can …”

“Can I just ask you to talk a little bit about netting? Certainly, we have done a prison visit where there has been stuff like tennis net. If you throw something burning into it, you get a whopping hole and in you go. On the boundary there is almost always metal-grid stuff. Why don’t we use something like that?”