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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)
It is a pleasure, Ms Dorries, to see you in the Chair. This is my first opportunity to speak with my new responsibilities. It is an even greater pleasure to be able to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). I congratulate him on obtaining this debate, and on how he presented his case. I agree entirely with the assessment by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) of how he serves his constituents.
I want to put on the record the Government’s appreciation of the continued efforts of all those who work at HMP Wellingborough. Like front-line staff in prisons throughout the country, they do a huge amount of excellent work that is hidden behind prison walls. I want to make it clear that any decision to close the prison is not a reflection of their work or performance.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough knows that any decision to close a prison is not taken lightly, and is never easy. As he would expect, it follows a comprehensive evaluation process led by senior operational managers in the Department and in the National Offender Management Service. Any such decision deserves an explanation not just to him, but to those he represents and to those who have campaigned to keep HMP Wellingborough open. The way in which he heard about the announcement of the closure is, as he said, profoundly unacceptable. It should not have happened, and I apologise to him for that.
I want to explain why the decision was made, and to set out the context for the decision-making process. As my hon. Friend knows, it is the duty of any Government to ensure that the prison system retains sufficient capacity and resilience to manage all those committed to custody by the courts. I assure him and the House that neither the Secretary of State nor I, as the prisons Minister, will announce any reductions in prison capacity unless we are confident that that duty can be discharged. It is equally clear that the Government have a duty to their citizens to ensure that we make best use of public funds. As a result, we must ensure that we do not maintain an over-provision of prison accommodation or operate prisons that are uneconomic. My hon. Friend should know that there has been the sort of comprehensive analysis that he says he wants across the system to determine which prisons those should be.
The prison system is necessarily complex, as my hon. Friend understands it must be to meet a variety of needs. They include being able to receive new prisoners direct from courts throughout England and Wales, providing health care and education, tackling deep-rooted, dangerous and harmful behaviour, and providing specialist intervention to particular groups of prisoners. Maintaining a wide geographical spread of prisons and a functional balance that meets the changing needs of the prison population is essential. By doing so, we remain able to carry out the punishments by the courts, to maintain strong security to protect the public, and to provide opportunities for different types of offenders to reduce the likelihood of them committing further crimes. Accordingly, individual prisons are robustly assessed to determine whether their closure is operationally viable before a recommendation is made.
My hon. Friend has reminded me that this is my first day in the job with all the constraints involved. A large proportion of my career at the Ministry of Justice so far has been spent on HMP Wellingborough, and I have, as he would expect, asked some questions about the decisions that have been made. I am satisfied that the process has been followed correctly, and that all the necessary criteria have been met. I know that that will discourage him from continuing his campaign, and I fully understand that. I and, I am sure, my right hon. Friend Secretary of State for Justice will be happy to discuss the matter with him further, but I want to be realistic.
Mr Bone
I am grateful to the Minister for reading out the notes from his officials, and he is doing exceptionally well. I thank him for offering to have a meeting with me and perhaps the Secretary of State. Can that meeting take place soon? Otherwise, there will be no point in having it.
Jeremy Wright
At this early stage in my career, I cannot speak for my diary, let alone for that of the Secretary of State. However, I have no doubt that if my hon. Friend, with all his persistence and eloquence, asks the Secretary of State for a meeting, he will get one as soon as it can be arranged.
Mr Hollobone
I very much respect the Minister, who is a good man, but this is day one of his job, and he has not even had time to sleep on the matter. As a human being, he cannot possibly be confident that the assessment of this prison closure is right. I know that that is what his officials are telling him, but he has simply not had time to digest it and to think about it. It would be perfectly reasonable for him to tell the House that as it is day one of the job and he has not had time to sit and think about the matter, he will postpone the decision for a set period. He could then be confident about whether it should close.
Jeremy Wright
My hon. Friend makes a tempting offer. This may be day one for me in the job, but it is not day one of consideration of the issue. If he is patient, I will try to explain the work that has been done, and the reasoning that led us to the decision. I take him back to July when the then Secretary of State announced the closure of HMP Wellingborough. The gap between the prison population and our useable capacity then stood at 3,500 places, which represented the most headroom experienced in the prison estate since early 2011, with more empty prison places than there were before last year’s announcement of the closures of HMP Latchmere House and part of the Hewell cluster, formerly known as HMP Brockhill. It also represented more unused places than were available immediately before the serious public disorder in August 2011, and I remind the House that the prison system coped admirably with the unprecedented prison population growth experienced following those events.
The latest figures demonstrate that that degree of headroom has widened further, with a population of 86,708 on Friday 31 August against a useable capacity of 90,897, a gap of more than 4,100. Throughout this year, the capacity of the prison system will increase further as new accommodation at HMP Oakwood and HMP Thameside, with a total of more than 2,500 places, becomes fully operational. The provision of new accommodation is part of our wider strategy to improve prison conditions, to reduce operating costs, and to ensure that the prison system is able to provide opportunities for prisoners to work and to reduce their risks of further offending. That goes entirely to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough made about capacity within the system. Accordingly, it is clear that the loss of 588 places at HMP Wellingborough will not materially affect the Government’s ability to accommodate all those who are committed to custody by the courts in the foreseeable future.
My hon. Friend made the point that even if a prison closure is necessary, it need not be the prison in his constituency. Indeed, he has previously made similar arguments forcefully. The reason for closing HMP Wellingborough is, as he knows, linked to what happened when the running of that prison was put up for competition by the previous Government. He will recall that the reason for withdrawing HMP Wellingborough from that competition has been known to the House for some time. It was central to the decision on closure, and is summed up in the comments of the then Secretary of State:
“During the preparations for the bid it became apparent that competition could not produce improvements at HMP Wellingborough without significant capital investment to secure its long-term viability. In the current financial climate, this is clearly not a tenable proposition, so I took the decision to remove it from the competition process.” —[Official Report, 31 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 526.]
It has taken longer than we would have hoped to determine the prison’s future, not least because of the significant pressure placed on the prison estate in the aftermath of last year’s public disorder. However, in the intervening period, the continued deterioration of the site has only served to make the need for a decision more pressing. They key point is that the cost of running the prison is not solely operational, as there are also costs for repairs and for bringing the prison up to an acceptable standard.
My hon. Friend mentioned that Wellingborough is the third most cost-effective prison in the country, but as ever, it depends on how that is calculated. That statistic relates to the prison’s running costs; it does not take account of the capital costs required to deal with the backlog of improvements that are needed on site. He is right that Wellingborough has an annual budget of £11.6 million for 588 places, which does not compare unfavourably with other prisons of the same type. However, as it was built in the 1960s, the physical fabric has deteriorated over the years.
Mr Bone
I hope that the Minister does not believe everything he is being told. More than half the prison was built in the last 10 years and it is exceptionally modern. The renovations that he mentions are about knocking down and completely rebuilding the old part of the prison. It is not quite as he is explaining it to this Chamber.
Jeremy Wright
In my understanding, it is true that almost half the current prisoner accommodation was built in the last 12 years, but sadly, that accounts for less than 25% of the prison’s overall infrastructure. It is not simply the accommodation that needs bringing up to standard; many other improvements are required and I shall come back to those, if my hon. Friend will forgive me.
My hon. Friend mentioned the figure of £50 million, which is the amount required in a major refurbishment programme. He is right that there is no such thing as an accurate, round number in these matters—if he wants the accurate figure, however, I understand that it is £49.7 million, and I hope he will forgive that being rounded up a little. The prison is increasingly unsafe, with poor services and infrastructure.
The proximity and size of the financial liability has presented prison management with a decision. We could either proceed with the outstanding and necessary refurbishments, which, as I have said, are estimated to cost up to £50 million. That would improve the wings that were not built in the past 12 years—wings A to E—and includes the services infrastructure. That would happen at a time when there is sufficient prisoner accommodation in the rest of the prison estate and many other pressures, as my hon. Friend knows, on the Department’s budget. Alternatively, we could close the prison and use the capital to better effect elsewhere.
Prison closures are only part of the Department’s wider strategy, and we will discuss them at length on another occasion. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept—if not today, at subsequent meetings—that we have looked at this very carefully. I am sorry that I cannot offer him better news this afternoon. I can assure him, however, from what I have been able to determine, that careful consideration has been given to the matter.
