§ Mr. HANCOCKasked the Home Secretary whether he will consider the desirability of the transfer of the Prison Medical Service to the Ministry of Health and of prison education to the Board of Education?
§ Mr. SHORTTThe arrangements for maintaining the health of prisoners and providing means of education are intimately bound up with general questions of prison administration, and it is most undesirable that the responsibility for this should be divided among three separate Departments of Government.
§ Mr. GLANVILLEasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the body of evidence adduced in the recently published Report of the Penal Reform League to show that under the prison system youths who enter in a condition which gives hope of their reformation are converted by contract with their fellow prisoners and the system under 248W which they live into the most hardened criminals; and whether the Government proposes to introduce legislation to remedy this state of affairs?
§ Mr. SHORTTMy attention has been drawn to the Report. The records show that the charges against the present system are greatly exaggerated.