1. Will the Minister make a statement on the provision of accommodation for people leaving Cardiff Prison in light of the latest report from the Independent Monitoring Board? 278

Yes, I recognise there are issues in terms of providing effective resettling services for people leaving Her Majesty's Prison Cardiff. Resources within the Community Rehabilitation Company have been a key issue. I want to see an improvement to the standards and capacity of the existing resettlement services, in particular the CRC. Responsibility for this, however, falls to the Ministry of Justice. I acknowledge that local authorities also have a role to play, and we are prioritising this area with additional resources from the homelessness prevention grant.  

I appreciate that this issue is not currently a devolved matter, but, nevertheless, we should all be concerned that of the 23 men being released on a particular cold day, only 13 of them had a definite place to sleep that night, and there was clear evidence from them that some of them intended to reoffend in order to get back into prison, and the warmth and food that that provides. Now, of course, we're all aware that the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 removed prisoners from the list of vulnerable people who automatically need to be rehoused. Nevertheless, the argument at the time in committee was that anybody without a home to go to must be seen to be a vulnerable person.

I know that the Prison Advice and Care Trust, which is a voluntary organisation that's running the cafe for families in the prison, is actively recruiting volunteers to meet people who are leaving prison, and take them to Dumballs Road, where the housing options team will receive them, as well as getting to the Department for Work and Pensions to sign on and to see their probation officer. But it's unclear to me—and I don't know whether the Minister's able to reassure us—whether things have now improved since this report was finished, because it only relates to the period up to the end of August, or whether we are still getting men released who the prison service have failed to pinpoint where they need to go in order to get the minimum sum of money, as well as a roof over their head for that night. 

Yes, the Member has correctly identified all the issues that we remain very concerned about. The MOJ has long acknowledged that the CRCs are under-resourced, and they have now recently increased resources to them, and that is subsequent to the time period for the report. I'm not sure that I'm in a position to say that that will have solved the issue, but we do know that more resources have gone in since the timescale that the report covered off. 

We've also increased the capacity of the Prison Link Cymru service, which increases the capacity in local authorities for prison resettlement officers, and very shortly we'll be jointly funding housing officers within each local delivery unit of the probation service itself. One has literally just happened and the other one is about to happen, so both of those are aimed at addressing many of the issues that Jenny Rathbone mentioned in her contribution. 

We know that people who come out of prison have an enormous number of complex things to achieve in a very short period of time, and if they are going into or back into a chaotic lifestyle, then that clearly is very problematic indeed. And so, these are measures that are aimed at making contact before somebody is released from prison, in order to smooth the path and to ensure that the local authority is expecting them, effectively.

We do have some work to do with the local authority—not just in Cardiff, and this report is about Cardiff, but this is an issue for prisoner release everywhere—for the local authority to be sure that they have the right processes in place to make sure that people don't immediately return to a chaotic lifestyle, because we know that that does lead to people thinking they'll be better off in prison, which is not something that anybody ever wants to find themselves in a position to think.  

The Member will also know that we have already committed to looking again at the priority need issue, and as I said recently in Plenary, we're about to commission it, and we're expecting that in April of next year.  

I think it is a matter for the UK Government and the Welsh Government working together, and a particular difficulty, I think, comes from short sentences, and we've seen an increase in the number of people subjected to short sentences, very often for offences that do not include violence against the person, for instance. Obviously, if we use community punishments, there is a much greater chance of ensuring that the housing situation of the person is not affected. And there is some evidence there's a bit of a cycle where some people are choosing to commit another offence and get back in prison because that's at least a secure roof for them. And this is an appalling dysfunction. It serves no-one any interest whatsoever, and we do need a much better, joined-up approach to this. But at least limiting to the very minimum the number of sentences under one year I think is a good start.

Yes, I completely agree with David Melding; there's a big issue with short prison sentences, which we've rehearsed many times in this Chamber. They aren't long enough to get any kind of programme of rehabilitation or retraining or anything else. They're designed, it seems sometimes, specifically to disrupt the person's family life, work prospects and housing. It's very hard to see what purpose they serve in any regard for anyone, to be honest. So, we do need to work very carefully with, in particular, the Magistrates' Association, actually, in terms of very short sentences, and I think there is a widespread view that that is something that needs to happen with some dispatch. Clearly, the options for community service or community payback schemes or whatever need to be thoroughly explored and made available. But also, of course, we need to prevent people from going into the criminal justice system in the first place, and so having some of the upstream measures I've just talked about in order to divert people away from the criminal justice system in the first place obviously would also be beneficial. 

There were a number of disturbing details contained within the report of the independent monitoring board at HMP Cardiff released last week. For example, I was concerned, as others have mentioned, to hear that going back to prison was more attractive for some inmates than staying at the Huggard centre. Now, it must be disappointing for you to read that the lack of accommodation available to inmates upon release was described as not only inhumane but as a major factor in reoffending. The report calls upon your Government directly to review housing policy as a matter of urgency, as well as to review health service provision towards primary mental health care in prisons. So, will you do that? Clearly, this Government has been failing prisoners more widely, and it's failing society actually, because reoffending is no-one's interests at all. Now, clearly, some of the responsibility for this is not devolved, but there are big responsibilities under your Government. So, what are you going to do about it all?

Yes, well, again, I largely agree with the Member—we certainly do need to improve some of the services. There is a particular concern around the perception around the Huggard centre in particular and we have just actually provided them with funding to improve both security and storage facilities at the Huggard, because the Member will know the detail—people are afraid that their possessions will be stolen while they sleep, and they don't feel the security arrangements are sufficient and so on. So, there is a perception issue as well, because I think—[Interruption.] Yes. Obviously, I personally wouldn't want to go to sleep with all my possessions on the bed in front of me and not know that—you know, somebody who just walks past could help themselves. Clearly, locker systems and so on are essential to anybody for basic human privacy and decency. So, we have provided additional funding to the Huggard centre for that, and we know that night shelters can be daunting and not the right option for large numbers of people. They are the right option for some—they have been very helpful for some people for a pathway out of homelessness. But the Member will know that we've been looking very carefully at funding and increasing trauma-centred pathways and the housing first type options for people so that we get people back into decent, secure accommodation as a first step, rather than having to climb a reward ladder, where you get yourself off the street and then you're rewarded with something else and so on, which has been an approach in the past. I think quite a lot of the thinking—. I've been in this post a very short time, but a lot of the thinking seems to have turned, quite rightly so, to learning from the lived experiences of people who've experienced homelessness about what would have worked for them and why it took them so long to get back to having a decent, secure home. And we are very keen on pursuing that.

Going back, though, specifically to prisoners, it isn't all devolved, but some of it is devolved, and what we're looking to do is to make sure that our local authorities that do have prison populations likely to be discharged into them can work closely with the prison to get a better information system going, so that the person who's coming out of prison will understand what's available for them and the local authority will expect them, because that's a big issue as well, because if they're all released on a Friday afternoon at 5.30 p.m., that's clearly going to be problematic and that clearly has been an issue at Cardiff prison, and I know from my own constituency work that it's an issue at Swansea prison as well. So, we are working very hard to make sure that those systems work better.

Thank you very much, Minister.