I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the effectiveness of prisons in reducing crime, an issue of great importance in many areas. Indeed, in all the surveys that I carry out in my constituency of Shipley, crime always features as the issue about which my constituents are most concerned. I am also grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), for taking the time to respond to this debate.

For far too long in this country, the small band of trendy, left-wing, liberal, Guardian-reading, sandal-wearing, politically correct do-gooders has had a disproportionate sway over the debate on law and order. “Prison doesn’t work,” they say. “We lock up more people than any other civilised country,” they add, working on the basis that if they repeat such mantras often enough, people will start believing them.

Unfortunately, the age-old political tip about repeating a lie often enough and people believing it appears to have worked. I therefore wish to focus on and try to explode two myths in particular: that we have a high prison population and that prison does not work. I also wish to touch on the prison regime in this country.

I start with the familiar myth that we have a very high prison population. Only recently, the Minister himself was quoted in our local paper, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, as saying that we lock up more people than any other country in Europe and that we have to look for alternatives.

Let us look at the facts. In terms of absolute numbers, we do have a relatively high prison population. However, we are a relatively highly populated country. If we consider the number of prisoners that we have for each 100,000 of population, we are nearer the average, but still quite high. However, those figures are meaningless; surely the only meaningful measure of the size of the prison population is how many prisoners there are in relation to the number of crimes committed. On that measure, the evidence is startling: we do not have the highest prison population in the western world, but the lowest. Compared with the US, Canada, Australia and the other EU countries as a whole, the UK has the lowest prison population of all. For every 1,000 crimes committed in the UK, we have approximately13 prisoners, compared with approximately 15 in Canada and Australia, well over 20 in the rest of the EU as a whole and a whopping 166 in the US. The Minister has recently been to the United States. I hope that he has been learning about its prison regime, which is much more effective than that in this country. Those figures clearly expose the myth that we have a high prison population. Will the Minister confirm that, on the measure that I have used, we have a low prison population? Will he clarify which measure of prison population he thinks the most relevant?

Then we are told that prison does not work. I am the first to concede that the prison regime is far too lax and cushy—something I will return to shortly—but even with such a soft regime, the evidence shows that prison does work in reducing crime. The fact is that the country with the lowest prison rate, the UK, has the highest crime rate—more than 10,000 crimes for every 100,000 of population. The country with the highest prison rate, the USA, has the lowest crime rate: about 4,400 crimes for every 100,000 of population. Canada, the country with the second lowest prison rate of the western countries that I looked at, has the second highest crime rate. The EU has the second highest prison rate and the second lowest crime rate. Is all that a coincidence? I do not believe so. Indeed, it seems blindingly obvious to me that the more criminals who are locked up in prison, the fewer there will be out on the streets to commit crimes. Does the Minister accept that blindingly obvious statement?

We should always beware of politicians who tell us that things are far more complicated than they really are. The issue is actually quite simple, but the simple fact appears not to have reached the Home Office. I hope that the Minister will clarify where he stands on the issue.

Then we are told that prison does not prevent people reoffending and actually makes it worse. However, just before Christmas, the Home Office sneaked out a report that blew that hypothesis apart. The report clearly demonstrated that the longer people stay in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. It might be presumed that the people with the longest prison sentences are the most hardened criminals and are therefore the most likely to reoffend. However, a Home Office report showed that that was clearly not the case. The “Re-offending of adults” report, published in November 2006, concluded that

“re-offending rates are lower among offenders discharged from a custodial sentence of at least a year (49 per cent) than among those discharged from a shorter custodial sentence (70 per cent)…This suggests that custodial sentences of at least a year are more effective in reducing re-offending.”

It is worth repeating those figures. Sentences of up to one year had a reoffending rate of 70 per cent. while in cases of sentences of more than two years, the reoffending rate dropped to 49 per cent. The report showed that for people who had spent more than four years in prison, the reoffending rate was merely 35 per cent.

I do not want to stunt the hon. Gentleman’s speech, but I want to be clear about his argument. Is he arguing for longer sentencing? Is he saying that people who go to prison should be in prison for more than 12 months, and that that should be the starting point?

The Minister has looked accurately into his crystal ball. I certainly am saying that prison sentences should be longer, and I shall explore that in more detail in a few minutes.

The reason why prisoners reoffend has nothing to do with prison. The Minister has been very perceptive; it is largely due to the fact that people do not spend long enough in prison. As the Home Office report suggested, most prisoners go to jail via the magistrates courts, and many have a drug addiction, too. The maximum prison sentence that a magistrate can impose is six months. If a criminal pleads guilty, they are likely to get a third knocked off. That reduces the sentence to four months. They are then likely to serve only half of the remaining time. In effect, that means that in many cases magistrates can send people to prison for only two months. They go into prison as drug addicts, and we should not be surprised that they come out as drug addicts to start their crime spree all over again. They need to be in prison longer, not only to be punished properly for their crime—or crimes, as few are sent to prison for their first offence—but to have time to kick their addiction.

Given that since 1997 alone, more than 7,000 crimes were committed by people who were tagged or were released before the end of the jail sentences handed down by the courts, ensuring that prisoners served the full sentence handed down by the courts would help to reduce crime, too. The public have no faith in the criminal justice system, and honesty in sentencing would do a great deal to reassure them as well as to reduce reoffending. Prisoners should not be let out of prison early for good behaviour; they should be left in prison longer for bad behaviour. When I was at school, if I behaved properly that was what was expected of me and I was allowed to leave school on time. If I misbehaved, I was kept back for detention. Can the Minister explain to the British people why he thinks that that should not apply to prisoners, too, and why they should not serve the sentence handed down by the courts in full?

The public know that that all makes sense. Surveys that I have conducted in my constituency show that 84 per cent. of people believe that prisoners should serve the sentence handed down by the courts in full. The police know that that makes sense, too. In my time on the parliamentary police scheme, working with my local Keighley division of West Yorkshire police, many police officers told me that if their top 10 persistent criminals were in prison, crime would be reduced by about half. If the top 20 persistent offenders were in prison, crime would be reduced by about 90 per cent. Does the Minister agree with that analysis by the police?

The Government are at sixes and sevens. They started off knowing that to be tough on crime they needed to send more people to prison. However, because the Chancellor has consistently refused to invest in building more prisons, that has resulted in their being full. The Government now have to pretend that prison does not work after all, and that it is tougher not to send people to prison and to give them some so-called tough community sentence. We saw pictures in the papers this week of such sentences, with people lying on benches instead of doing any work. That seems a laughable position for the Government to hold. Will the Minister make clear whether he believes that prison works or not? If he does, will he commit to not letting dangerous criminals out early and to abandoning the plans that we have read about this week to avoid sending people to prison at all costs?

I want to touch on the prison regime in this country, which I believe is far too lax. The fact that more than 1,500 prisoners have Sky TV in their cells—not in a communal area but in their cells—will disgust most decent people. I am sure that many people in my constituency wish they had Sky TV and could watch premiership football, but they cannot afford it. Why should they have to pay through their taxes for a regime that allows prisoners to enjoy such a luxury? It has also recently emerged that roughly 60 per cent. of prisoners have keys to their own cells. Most people could be forgiven for believing that that is just typical of the Government’s determination to put the human rights of criminals and prisoners above the rights of victims and decent, hard-working, law-abiding people in this country.

Successive chief inspectors of prisons and judges are parts of the establishment with a lot to answer for in respect of prison life. Those people leave their luxury, idyllic homes to visit prisons and report back on what an awful place they are. They do not consider the environment from which many people in prison come: not luxury homes in idyllic locations, but drug and crime-ridden estates. During my time on the parliamentary police scheme, a custody sergeant said to me that in her experience the biggest deterrent to crime was the prospect of being sent to prison for the first time. People were genuinely afraid of that. However, she said that once they had been sent to prison, they found that many of their friends and associates were there, they got three square meals a day, they had access to a gym, which most of us would have to pay for, and other facilities, and their quality of life was higher in prison than on the outside. That cannot be right.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I re-emphasise the point that he has just made. Like him, I took part in the parliamentary police scheme and officers in my constituency told me that, after having served time in jail, criminals saw further time in jail as a career break before they went out burgling, stealing and so on again.

As usual, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is an experience that police officers have across the country.

Once somebody has been sent to prison they should never want to go again. The fact that many people feel that it is not as bad as they expected is not only offensive but counter-productive. The Minister will no doubt use the word “rehabilitation” at some point in his speech—that is my crystal ball gazing for the afternoon. Of course we want people to be rehabilitated, but in my experience the word “rehabilitation” is simply used by the liberal left to excuse making life as luxurious as possible for prisoners. Can the Minister explain how giving prisoners Sky TV in their own cells rehabilitates them?

The Minister might wish to read about Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, Arizona, who has introduced a tough regime in prisons in his state and has a public approval rating of 85 per cent. Oh, what Home Office Ministers would give for a public approval rating of 85 per cent. Prison does work. We just do not have enough prisoners, they do not spend enough time in prison and the prisons too often resemble hotels or holiday camps rather than prisons. The Home Office blueprint should be to double the number of prisoners, to ensure that they serve the sentence handed down by the courts in full, to make prison more austere and to halve the crime rate. Is that a vision that the Minister shares?

I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and, like the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone), I congratulate him on securing the debate.

In his own unique way the hon. Member for Shipley has raised some interesting points about the importance of prison and, in his view, reducing crime. I notice that there is no one from the Opposition Front Bench in today’s debate. We have had many debates about prisons and what is going on with prison capacity, so perhaps he has to convince not only me but his Front-Bench colleagues of his views on prisons. I do not minimise the seriousness with which he has approached the issue. There is a need for a debate about what is going on in our prisons.

The hon. Gentleman has painted a picture of our prisons as almost like holiday camps. I was in Belmarsh yesterday, and if he went there he would not see the regime as anything like a holiday camp because of the high security aspect of that prison. Clearly, we need to strike a balance on the matter of punishment. That aspect needs to be there for dangerous and serious offenders, and it is quite right that we have prison places for those people. However, I take issue with the hon. Gentleman on some of the other points that he has raised, and I shall try to go through some of them in the time that we have. As usual, one can only set the scene in a half hour debate. I know that on several occasions the hon. Gentleman asked questions of the Home Office but was not able to get answers because of the time it takes to provide them. There was no deliberate move by me to make sure that we did not get to his questions.

This Government are proud of their record on tackling crime. It is a success story that has been independently commented on by bodies such as the British crime survey, which shows that, compared with 1997, all crime is down by 35 per cent., burglary is down by 55 per cent. and violence, as measured by the British crime survey, is down by 34 per cent. The survey estimates that there are 5.8 million fewer offences overall than in 1997. The crime rate, particularly for householders, is at a historically low level: 24 per cent., down from 35 per cent. in 1997.

We aim to build on that success. Hon. Members will know that yesterday we published “Building on progress: Security, crime and justice”, which sets out the vision for confronting crime and criminals over the next 10 years. It endorses the direction that we have been taking in rebalancing the criminal justice system, including putting more time and effort into dealing with serious and persistent crime and offenders, improving early intervention and mental health care, and strengthening both non-custodial sentences and prison programmes in order to cut reoffending. I believe that prisons play an essential part in that vision.

Yes, there must be punishment that protects the public. The hon. Gentleman is arguing for longer prison sentences and more prison capacity, but that comes at a cost. He will know that we have brought into play 19,000 extra spaces since 1997, and that we have announced a further 8,000 places. He talks about prison capacity. Clearly, there is a problem with prison capacity. The prison population, which is nearly 80,000, is at a record high.

I agree that building more prisons comes at a cost, but will the Minister clarify whether he accepts that the crime rate would be reduced if we had more prisons and more prisoners serving longer sentences, irrespective of the cost?

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but I do not accept it. One must think about the offenders and the types of crime that people are in prison for. It is clear that serious and dangerous criminals must be locked up in prison to protect the public, and that is why in 2003 the Government introduced the indeterminate sentence, under which the Parole Board must determine whether somebody is safe to release back into society. That is an appropriate sentence, and I am pleased that the figures are increasing.

Yes, prison has to be there for dangerous offenders, but we must consider how we deal with and view offenders. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I was a councillor in Bradford before I became an MP. The reality is that, as elected representatives—in my case, as a councillor and then as an MP—our view of people who enter the criminal justice system must be different from that of the rest of the community. Offenders come from our communities. Yes, the punishment must fit the crime, but we must try to find out why people are committing crimes and try to rehabilitate them back into society.

Prisons are austere places. The hon. Gentleman makes a point about televisions in prison cells. Prisoners do not get Sky TV. They have to pay £1 a week for television sets, and not everybody gets them. The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of keys. I am sure that he will have read this morning’s Daily Express, in which the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) sets out her view that it is appropriate for prisoners to have keys on the basis of protection of an individual’s property and, in some circumstances, because of some of the bullying that goes on in prison, on the basis of protection of individuals in dangerous situations. Keys are given out in an attempt to get people to become responsible, and to be part of society when they come out. The weakness in the hon. Gentleman’s argument is that people should be kept in prison longer and then they should be released, but we must consider that old process of offender management.

I do not wish to interrupt the Minister unnecessarily, but can he clarify what he said about prisoners having Sky TV in their cells? I asked a parliamentary question about the matter last year and was told that more than 1,500 prisoners had Sky TV in their cells. Is the Minister telling me that the answer to my question was wrong, or that the practice has now ceased? Or did I mishear him?

Let me read the briefing note that I have on the issue. I am sure that it is in line with the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s parliamentary question. If it is not, I shall be asking questions as well. Prisoners can have televisions in their cells as part of the incentives and earned privilege scheme. TVs must be earned and can be withdrawn if a prisoner fails to comply with the prison regime or breaches discipline. A small number of prisoners have access to freeview in their cell. Like the rest of the country, the Prison Service must prepare for the switchover to digital TV, and that will mean that prisoners who have earned the right to have a TV will have access to additional channels, because everybody will have that access with the move to digital TV. As I said, prisoners pay £1 per week to rent a TV from the Prison Service. That is a million miles away from the hon. Gentleman’s comments about watching Sky TV or Sky Sport on television in prison.

The hon. Gentleman’s argument trivialises the tremendous work that is being done in prison. There are different types of prisons. For example, there are local prisons, where people are sent immediately. There is one close to his constituency and mine—Armley prison in Leeds—which he may have visited. I do not know whether he has. If he has not, he should visit it. It may change his view about prisons being holiday camps. They are about making sure that offenders are managed properly.

I read out the figures for where we are nationally in trying to reduce reoffending. The rates are far too high, and the hon. Gentleman makes a serious point when he talks about drugs in prisons and people entering prison with a problem. They may enter detoxification, but the solution involves not just what prisons do but what society does. The Government have involved primary care trusts in health provision in prisons because we need to consider how to manage offenders from end to end.

From the minute someone is arrested, we try to find out what caused the offence—why have they offended? We must consider the different types of offenders. As I said, the prison population is at a record level of 80,000. Of those, fewer than 4,000 are women. We must try to find out what causes offenders to offend and do something about it, but something must be done by society, not just the prison regime. We must try to find education and work solutions so that people come out of prison not to reoffend but to find sustainable work or education. That is the way to stop reoffending.

That is why the National Offender Management Bill is important. The hon. Gentleman voted against it, as did the hon. Member for Kettering, and I am concerned about that. They must think through the issues. Yes, the public must be protected, and we must lock up dangerous and serious offenders, but not everybody in prison is a dangerous or serious offender. We must look at ways to reduce reoffending.

One way to deal with the problem is by involving a wider range of people. One of the problems is that when people are released from prison, there is no proper resettlement plan to help them avoid going back to what they were doing before. Offenders need housing and educational support. I believe that alternatives to custody are important, and that the public will understand and accept that they are not soft options.

I refer the hon. Member for Shipley to the north-west, where community justice is taking place. Communities identify projects that need to be carried out in their communities. Magistrates sentence against those projects and everybody wins: the communities see the work being done and that it is not a soft option, and they benefit from what is taking place, and the offender’s skills are developed.

We must consider alternatives to custody. I was pleased by the comments of Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, that we need to look at alternative custody as a way not of dampening down the prison population but of offering up an alternative to try to cut reoffending rates. We have been working with the youth justice scheme. I know that the hon. Gentleman was on the police scheme, so he will know how many youngsters are involved in crime. We must try to nip that in the bud by supporting those young people, and ensuring that that they do not end up in a warehouse situation in prison as that can lead to a vicious cycle. We have to consider those alternatives.

I have just received further information on Sky TV. The hon. Gentleman is right on the figures; there were 1,500 Sky sets in cells and the parliamentary answer was correct. As I said, we changed the system in relation to the digital position.

We have an ambitious target of reducing reoffending by 10 per cent. by the end of the decade. Adult prison places cost £40,000 a year, and young offender places cost £50,000. That cannot be the right way to progress. We need to consider the alternatives and find ways of ensuring that people understand what prison is about. Elements of punishment are quite right when the punishment fits the crime, but so is rehabilitation and trying to bring people back into society by using the expertise of a number of bodies that work with prisoners.

This is an important debate, because we need to understand that prison is only part of the solution. The hon. Gentleman was right to raise the subject of public confidence in the criminal justice system. That was one of the things that the Home Secretary brought about when we took over as a new ministerial team. We were concerned that people did not understand existing sentencing policies. It is important that we have an independent judiciary, and that judges base their decisions on what is before them. However, it is also important to ensure that the public understand and have confidence in sentencing. We are embarking on that through consultation to ensure that people understand that reductions in sentences can sometimes be about the witness and the victims not having to go through the court procedure, and that it can be a benefit if someone pleads guilty. Nevertheless, such a process must be carried out in a good spirit and should not become the norm; it has to be appropriate and proper.

We will ensure that prison places are provided for serious offenders, but we need to drill further to find out what motivates people to offend. We estimate that offending is often drugs-related, and we are trying to deal with it by a 974 per cent. increase in drugs spending in prisons. It is not about addressing that problem only in prison; it is about ensuring end-to-end offender management so that people are supported in the community when they come out. Whether it is an educational matter or a drugs issue that needs to be addressed, rehabilitation should be a continuous process. I believe that the public will accept that.

There was a recent poll on women in prison. The hon. Gentleman will know about the work that Baroness Corston has done on vulnerable women, which indicated that prison should be the last alternative for women. The impact on women prisoners who have families often means that those families then have problems with crime. There are other problems associated with dysfunctional families.

It is important that the people who offer alternatives to prison are not seen as left-wing liberals, as described by the hon. Gentleman. Such people have witnessed what has happened to the prison system over many years.

Before he winds up, I would like the Minister to touch on the report from November on the reoffending of adults, which shows that the reoffending rate for those serving sentences for up to a year was 70 per cent., for those serving over two years it was 49 per cent. and for those serving over four years it was 35 per cent. Does he agree that that demonstrates that the longer people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend?

That is an easy set of figures, but we must consider the complexity of what takes place in terms of reoffending rates. That is why I asked the hon. Gentleman for his view on that. He is arguing for longer prison sentences after which, in his terms, people would magically turn into well-formed residents for whom, when they come out of prison, everything is okay. That is not how the system operates. The different reoffending rates are about the different types of sentences that are passed. My fundamental point is that there are people in prison who should not be there and should be offered alternatives. That is the complete opposite of what the hon. Gentleman is saying in the sense that he believes in longer sentences, more people in prison and therefore—

It being quarter past Five o’clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.