2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 5 June 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:50, 5 June 2018

Yes, on that second one, I think we'd be very glad to bring forward a debate on the state of prisons as a result of that report. Those of us who have prisons in our constituencies, and I'm one of them, know very well from visiting what the conditions are like and what the problems are. It's long been our Government's ambition to have criminal justice devolved to Wales and one of the very real reasons for that is, actually, that the sentencing policies currently pursued by the UK Government are producing many of the issues that Leanne Wood draws attention to. It's not just what happens to people once they're in prison; it's why they're in prison in the first place and whether that's at all efficacious and what the purpose in a modern democracy of locking up quite so many young working-class men actually is.

And, to use very unparliamentary language, don't even get me started on the position of women in prisons, because that's a whole other debate as well. I think my Cabinet Secretary colleague and I have had many a discussion on this and would be more than happy to have that debate, because there are a range of issues contributing to the deleterious situation we find in our prisons, particularly the privatised Parc prison. So, I have a lot of sympathy with that and we have a lot to discuss here in the Welsh Government about the ragged edge of the devolution settlement and the difficulties that that's making in terms of what we can and can't do at the moment and why we need to have the devolution settlement sorted out in that regard.  

In terms of the constituent with the complex PIP problems, my heart goes out to her. I have a surgery full of people who have similar problems very frequently. There's no doubt at all that the austerity programme pursued by the current UK Government is causing untold misery for individuals right across Britain, including in Wales. I disagree with her about the devolution of welfare. I think one of the sole purposes of the UK is for the redistribution of wealth from the south-east and London. It's a shame that it's currently in the hands of a Tory Government who have no such purpose. I'm not sure that administering a system that's appalling with very little of the money and empathy in it would actually ameliorate it very much. The Welsh Government has done an enormous amount, such as we can, to assist people, and I have some sympathy with why it seems attractive to do that and I have a lot of sympathy with the people who are caught up in the system. But I do urge the UK Government to stop its austerity programme because I believe that that political choice is very much at the heart of the discrimination that people with disabilities find themselves in in the UK today.