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Baroness Burt of Solihull
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to address challenges around prison capacities, and to ensure the safety and wellbeing needs of vulnerable prisoners.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I am so glad that so many noble Lords have expressed their wish to speak in this debate, and I am sorry that each noble Lord will have only a short speaking time. I will try to be succinct. Please do not waste time congratulating me on securing the debate.
I thank all the agencies that have sent information, which I have heavily leaned on, including the Howard League for Penal Reform, and of course our excellent Library.
We are in a sorry mess with our Prison Service today. The number of prisoners is double what it was just over 20 years ago, and the average length of sentences has doubled. One does not have to be a statistical genius to work out that there is some kind of causal connection.
The Minister himself has described this increase as a societal addiction to punishment, leading to sentences that are much too long. I was delighted to read that the Government have indicated that they will review sentencing—a move that is very welcome indeed. I wonder if I can tempt the Minister to say a little more about this review, such as how soon it might take place, what sentences it would cover, and whether alternatives to prison will be used more frequently.
On the subject of sentence reviews, will the Government consider implementing the recommendations of the Justice Select Committee to the previous Government on imprisonment for public protection, including a resentencing exercise for that unfortunate rump of individuals still serving sentences that are today obsolete? Today, no one receives this cruel sentence, and no one has since 2012. The British Psychological Society describes such a sentence as leading to a sense of anxiety, helplessness and depression, with self-harm and suicidal behaviour. I strongly commend the work of the previous Government, in particular that of the former Secretary of State Alex Chalk, on diminishing the time on licence and delivering more improvements for IPP prisoners. But the point remains: all this falls short of the one thing that would make the difference—having the certainty of a release date.
IPPs are just one problem confronting the prison system, and those people are not the only vulnerable group suffering in our prisons today. Women prisoners are another; their travails warrant a separate debate in their own right. While they themselves are low risk, they typically suffer from trauma, domestic abuse, mental ill-health and substance misuse. Their rates of self-harm are eight times that in the male estate. And all that is before we take into account the separation effects on families and children.
Mental health problems are also huge. The British Psychological Society says that nine out of every 10 prisoners enter prison with at least one mental health or substance abuse problem. There is a complex cocktail of health and social problems. In the last year alone there has been a 24% increase in self-harm and a rise of 27% in the number of assaults in the men’s estate. Too many prisoners mean that there is not enough space, and not enough resources, to make a prisoner’s experience rehabilitative, or even safe.
Recently, the BBC’s Sima Kotecha wrote a piece about Pentonville prison, describing the dire conditions, in which most prisoners were being held in their cells for up to 22 hours a day. I think if those prisoners were animals, the RSPCA would be called. Overcrowding makes everything so much worse. Prison officers have to deal with a highly inflammatory situation. Trying to keep prisoners and themselves safe preoccupies most of their time, and rehabilitation sometimes goes out of the window—no wonder recidivism gets worse.
I hope the Minister will outline a more effective plan to control the eternally rising prisoner numbers—a plan that does not necessarily use prison. He himself has said that society has an addiction to punishment that leads to sentences that are much too long, and we know that long sentences have an inverse effect on rehabilitation.
We also know that we cannot build our way out of an overcrowding problem. The Ministry of Justice’s forecasts say that the prison population will grow to between 94,000 and more than 114,000 in the four next years alone. It is time to stop the rot, because other services are not equipped to deal with this situation. The Probation Service is on its knees, with chronic staff shortages, excessive workloads and poor morale. Many of us will have had a briefing from the probation officers’ union Napo, which is dismayed at the mass release of 1,700 prisoners this week; it fears that they will not cope, so there will be more risk to the public and to themselves, and more mistakes will be inevitable.
Turning people out of jail earlier, without proper preparation before and after release, is a recipe for disaster. People will not get the help they need. They will reoffend, and the whole merry-go-round will go faster and faster until the parts fly off.
My final question for the Minister is this. How does he plan to address the needs of prisoners? If he does not, our Prison Service will continue on its inexorable spiral of decline until it breaks. Wrongdoing must be punished, but there are other methods of punishment as well as prison.
Lord Mann (Lab)
My Lords, I shall make two quick points—or perhaps two and a half, if I am quick.
My first point is to ask the Minister why, with the prisoners released this week, the local authority where I live was given no notice of which prisoners would be released from the local prison or who had a previous address in the local area? That has been the case with other prison releases over the past decade, but why is it that somebody does not inform local authorities and did not do so this week? Is that going to happen again?
The Government have made a big announcement, and rightly so, about planning infrastructure and bureaucracy, and there has been a lot of talk of a 10-year plan. That gives me the opportunity to raise something that I raised in the House of Commons many times, without any success. We have old prisons, such as Armley, in Leeds, that clearly want knocking down and the land used for expensive capital development, such as housing or whatever else, but they will need replacing with new prisons. Near where I live, and once represented, is Ranby prison. It is a more modern prison and does not need knocking down, and has vast amounts of land. I have regularly proposed to Ministers in many Governments that it would be a suitable place. There is a suitable workforce, with plenty of people who would love to work there in that industry, as plenty have done and do. Why not get on and build a brand-new prison there, with one governor and one set of management managing the two prisons as a combined prison? On long-term planning, I do not understand why that has not happened.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, successful rehabilitation reduces pressure on prison places. My two reviews for the Ministry of Justice, which it continues to implement with dedication and enthusiasm, emphasise that healthy relationships greatly reduce reoffending, as those who receive family visits are 39% less likely to reoffend than those who do not have them. HMPPS is very mindful of closeness to family when selecting which prisoners to send abroad. Some 28% of foreign national prisoners are Romanian, Polish or Albanian, and would be closer to home in Estonia than in British jails, which would give us some more space.
Many prisoners without family on the outside or friends to help them go straight benefit from well-supervised peer support in prison, and those relationships protect against repeat offending. Trained prisoners mentoring others derive much purpose from this. They take a huge load off officers and recipients more readily take their advice about going straight.
I recommended that prisons be extrovert and draw in local charities and other organisations to expose men to opportunities on the outside. Community days in prisons ensure that those who never see the visits hall can learn there about work and volunteering, including from former prisoners. One revolving-door prisoner attending his first community day was very doubtful but said, “For the first time I found myself thinking about what comes next. Now I never want to come back in again”. Does the Minister plan to roll out peer support and community days across the estate?
Finally, the Question refers to vulnerable prisoners. Much is said about diverting women who have experienced trauma and abuse away from custody. Male offenders with similar histories are treated far more harshly. Surely we should be moving towards equality of approach in this area.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
Many years ago, when I was a Member of another place, I was one of many who were horrified that the prison population had reached 45,000. We do not see a more law-abiding country today, with double that number in prison. I will offer a short urgent shopping list.
First, we must deal with sentence inflation. Then we must give young offenders the opportunity to graduate out of their juvenile criminal records, which can cause them trouble with employment. We need a vast improvement in prison education facilities. We need to provide release accommodation for those who are released and have nowhere else to go. We need to provide opportunities for prisoners to leave prison for the day to be able to work their way into the normal economy. We need to enable much earlier release, maybe 25% of the sentence where it is justified; for example, by a prisoner having been to work or undergone education courses which will lead them to a better life outside. As already has been said, we must reduce the number of women in prison. It is far too high and much too damaging. Finally on my list, which I could increase, mental health provision has to be much better in person, including a greater possibility of transferring prisoners from prison mental health supervision to supervision in hospitals or in the community.
I welcome the appointment of the Minister. He comes here with very great and relevant experience and a background as a prison and punishment reformer. I hope that the promise of his appointment will reap a reward with results.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for enabling this debate and for the opportunity to speak in it. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Gloucester, lead Bishop for prisons, is unable to be here today. I know she wishes that she had been able to contribute. I share her interest in the welfare of prisoners and of those called to work in prisons, not least in the four prisons in my diocese in and around Doncaster.
Ministers have made plain their deep concern at the capacity problem in our prisons and have set out their plans to address it in both the short and longer term. I urge the Government to think deeply about the factors that have led us to this crisis and to respond creatively and boldly when considering the purpose of prison and the alternatives to custody. At their best, prisons are places of transformation. Every person supported to turn away from offending makes our country safer for everyone. But truly effective rehabilitation almost always takes place in a context of care and trust. It surely goes without saying that overcrowding in prisons is not conducive to a transformative culture.
On these Benches we celebrate the important role that prison chaplains play in helping to create the sort of culture of respect and trust which maximises the chances of rehabilitation. Those working in prisons rightly expect to be protected from harm and to carry out their duties with dignity. Current overcrowding has made a difficult role immensely challenging. Hidden from public view, prison staff work in conditions in their place of employment that few of us can appreciate or would tolerate.
Prisons must be safe for staff if a culture of respect and trust is to be built there, yet training and support for prison staff in this regard are limited and staff retention is a concern. What assessment are the Government making of the training and support required for prison staff when working under these pressures?
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
I will focus on one of the most vulnerable groups in our prisons, elderly prisoners, who all too often can be forgotten amid all the other problems in our prisons. The Prison Reform Trust, of which I am a trustee, reported last week that the number of prisoners aged over 50 in England and Wales has nearly tripled in 20 years, from 5,000 in 2003 to a projected 14,800 by next July—that is one in six prisoners.
The ever-rising length of prison sentences is obviously a contributory factor. It is hard enough coping with age-related infirmities outside prison. Dealing with illness, disability, dementia and other health problems in prison means coping with the significant challenge of accessing adequate healthcare. Diet, restricted physical space and sedentary lifestyles accelerate the onset of frailty and worsening health conditions. Some prisoners face the lonely prospect of dying in prison.
In 2020 the Ministry of Justice promised a national strategy for the care and management of older prisoners. I would be most grateful if the Minister could indicate when that will emerge. Such a strategy should ensure that older prisoners are placed in the prison estate so as to maximise accessible and personalised health provision. More resource needs to be committed to training our hugely dedicated prison staff in recognising and responding to the needs of older prisoners, including the necessity of restraints for prisoners who are frail and present less risk, as well as dealing with dementia and pain relief. As ever, it comes back to the invaluable front-line prison staff on whom the entire prisons edifice daily depends.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, I shall highlight the vital work being done by Barnardo’s. I declare an interest as its vice-president.
We are seeking to address the factors that lead to young people entering the prison system, with a focus on how to address the overrepresentation in prison of care-experienced young people, especially black boys. We need to identify the young people most at risk of being drawn into crime and build a package of support that responds to the challenges they are facing, addressing issues before they escalate.
The Government’s proposed young futures hubs will play a vital role in preventing young people becoming involved in crime in the first place, but it is also important that when young people encounter the police they are treated fairly, with a focus on ensuring their safety, not illegally strip-searching them.
Research shows that one in 10 black children in care has received a custodial sentence by the time they are 18. That simply cannot be right. This is why I have been working closely with Barnardo’s and the Ministry of Justice over the past year to look at this issue and what needs to be done to tackle it. Barnardo’s Double Discrimination report reveals that many black children face racism from the very systems that are supposed to be supporting them, leaving them feeling isolated, marginalised and vulnerable. As one black care-experienced young person said, when someone treats you like a problem you become one.
We must stop the conveyor belt of vulnerable young people getting involved in crime. We need to focus on the treatment of care-experienced young people by the justice system and the police if the Government’s aim is to prevent and reduce young people’s involvement in crime.
Will the Minister meet me and Barnardo’s to discuss our vision of how to keep vulnerable children and young people out of prison? Every child deserves to have the opportunity to be safe, happy, healthy and loved, because childhood lasts a lifetime. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, amid the serious general concern about the state of our prisons, which we all share, I want to focus particularly on the risk of prisoners committing suicide. The death of anyone by suicide is a great sadness but there is a particular forlornness, a sense of failure and defeat, when someone kills themselves in prison.
The number of self-inflicted deaths in prisons last year went down slightly, from 92 to 85, and the number of deaths—1 per 1,000 prisoners—has remained roughly the same since 2018. However, as we know, the rate of suicide in prison is much higher than it is in the population as a whole and 54% of deaths that occur in prison are self-inflicted. For a range of reasons, those in prison are particularly at risk of taking their own lives. Stresses that contribute to those deaths include mental health struggles, deaths of loved ones, planned transfers to different institutions, the prospect of deportation, lack of family support and sex offender status. It is easy to see how those factors, often in combination with one another, can push people to the brink of despair.
A breakdown of the kind of person likely to kill themselves and the time they are at most risk is revealing. I do not have the most up-to-date figures, but those from previous years reveal that those most at risk are predominantly male, nearly all white and in the age groups 21 to 24 and 30 to 39. Moreover, a high percentage of suicides took place in the first 30 days in prison, even the first week, the rate being particularly high among those on remand, mostly by hanging. Arrival in prison is a particularly high time of risk. One-fifth of prisoners who take their own lives in prison do so within seven days of reception, and 39% of them die within a month of arrival. All this indicates a group of people who are particularly at risk.
What steps are taken in the early stages of remand in prison to try to identify those most at risk? Is the Minister really satisfied that those who are mentally unstable are given the opportunity to see a medical specialist?
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in two minutes I will speak about two films.
I recently saw the film “Sing Sing”, based on the wonderful Rehabilitation through the Arts programme at Sing Sing maximum security prison in New York. One key figure, Divine G, a former prisoner who plays his younger self in the film, is an inspiring reminder that, yes, prison is there to punish and prisoners need to acknowledge they have been anti-social and were a threat to their fellow citizens, but that prison can find ways to help prisoners to become the best version of themselves.
However, we also know that prisons can be unsafe hell-holes that breed criminality, cynicism, addiction and despair. This sadly brings me to the second film. I was proud to speak at the premiere of “Britain’s Forgotten Prisoners” at the Sheffield documentary festival in the summer. The director, Martin Read, does an excellent job of following the stories of individuals on IPP sentences, trapped in
“a Kafka-esque world of labyrinthine bureaucracy that has seen them swallowed up by a system”.
I cried at both films, one at the humane hope of rehabilitation and one at the frustration and cruelty of inhumane and unjust prison policy.
For prisoners to stand a chance of rehabilitation, they need to believe that, however firm the system is, it is at least relatively fair. Recent events suggest there is no fairness for IPP prisoners. Never mind two-tier policing; we have a two-tier prison policy. Imagine you have done the crime, you have done your time—years earlier, in fact—yet now, way beyond your release date, you are still locked up indefinitely. The excuse is that IPP prisoners are too risky and could present a threat to public safety, with no evidence ever given. Now fellow prisoners, who have committed far worse crimes and have not done their time, are being released early for pragmatic political reasons. Will the Minister promise to at least look at releasing a batch of IPP prisoners via the early release scheme as a gesture of good faith that could restore much-needed hope to the IPP prison community?
Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)
My Lords, if we are to cut prison numbers we need to cut reoffending. If we are to cut reoffending, prisoners need jobs, housing and hope. If they are to get jobs, housing and hope, they need to be seen in a different light.
I have visited 50 prisons in the last seven months, and 170 prisons in the last eight years. I have visited 12 different types of prisons—category B and C—and have been surrounded by hundreds of men. I have never once had an act of violence, threat or intimidation shown to me, or even a hint of one.
That scandalously bad scaremongering BBC report last Monday, which highlighted terrible travesties inside Pentonville, did not reflect the visit to Pentonville that I had made just two weeks earlier, when I was surrounded by multitudes of men of different ages, all of whom were positively looking forward to the graduations that they will receive on 23 September, when I will graduate over 100 of them on the Time4Change programme. In other words, we need to change our attitude to how we see prisoners: we perceive them to be a perpetual risk. This week’s headlines have been nothing but appalling, scandalous and destructive; they do not reflect the reality. I wonder whether the very good governor at Pentonville, Simon Drysdale, was happy with that distorted view of his prison, or whether the chaplain, Jonathan Aitken, previously of another place, was happy with that distorted view of the prison in which he serves so effectively.
I wonder whether we could take account of the fact that many prisoners who have gone through reform and renewal are fantastic role models for others who follow behind them. At the moment, through the group that I lead, we have a man called Anton who served a sentence in Swaleside and then in The Mount. With still four years left to go before the end of his sentence, he moved to HMP Isis to act as a father figure to the young men up to age 27—he is 40. He leads responsible training programmes inside the prison to change mindsets. Another prisoner from Ranby prison will move in three weeks’ time. We need to change the perspective on prisoners so that they can get jobs and housing.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, the crisis in prison capacity results from the fact that the prison population of England and Wales has more than doubled over the last 30 years, and this trend is expected to continue. Why? A large part of the answer is that the length of prison sentences has been steadily growing over the same period. Indeed, the sentences imposed today are about twice as long as they were when I started out at the Bar; they are far longer than those imposed in the rest of Europe and, indeed, in Northern Ireland.
Sentencing laws have long provided that a prison sentence should be for the shortest term commensurate with the seriousness of the offence, but successive Governments have not been content to leave it to the judges to apply this test. They have introduced legislation requiring judges to impose higher sentences for offences considered to be of particular concern to the public. These have not been necessary for the purposes of deterrence, rehabilitation or protection of the public. They have usually been imposed to cater for a perceived public demand for greater punishment, but this has come with a cost: over £50,000 a year for each man in custody.
It makes no sense to spend such sums on increasing punishment when they would be better spent on rehabilitation and other measures to prevent reoffending. Doubling sentences has brought no benefit to the criminal justice system; it has led to the crisis that confronts the Prison Service today. Will the Minister seek to persuade the Government to consider the merits of reversing the trend rather than building more prisons?
Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)
My Lords, I add two points to those already made. First, there is much talk of prison capacity, but it is important to appreciate the difference between capacity in the sense of how many can be crammed in and the real capacity of our prisons. The Ministry of Justice has its own “baseline certified normal accommodation”, designed to provide decent accommodation. At the end of August, its figures suggested that it was about 8,500 over that baseline—perhaps fewer today. The adverse consequences are well understood. Its baseline, in its own words,
“represents the good, decent standard of accommodation”.
When does the ministry expect to achieve that level of decency and return to its baseline?
Secondly, overcrowded prisons risk the courts seizing up. During my final months in office as Lord Chief Justice, I received daily prison figures, broken down region by region. There was a risk that people being remanded into custody or sentenced would have nowhere to go—and, if they cannot be taken away, the work of the court is paralysed.
We have seen two interventions by the senior judiciary to delay cases that were likely to result in custody to avoid that eventuality. There are also prisoners being located far from courts in which they are appearing, resulting in transportation problems and delays in their hearings. I observed to colleagues on more than one occasion that we were only one riot away from meltdown—and so, alas, it has transpired.
Severe overcrowding in our prisons has a multiplicity of adverse consequences beyond the most obvious. There is little realistic prospect of substantially expanding prison capacity in the near term. That is, in any event, the wrong solution. The record number of those in custody must come down.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, by this time, the Minister must be thinking that this is going to be an easy job. I am afraid he has to learn, if he has not learned already, that the House of Lords is not the best place to assess either public opinion or opinion in the other place about penal policy. Nevertheless, the contributions that he has heard today should give him confidence that if, as most of us are hoping, he will lead the charge in genuine prison reform, he will not be without support.
Fourteen years ago I arrived at the Ministry of Justice with the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, as Secretary of State. One of the first things we did was to send a memorandum to No. 10 suggesting that we manage down the prison population to under 80,000 during the course of the Parliament. The message came back from No. 10: “Not politically deliverable”. The truth is that today it is not politically deliverable to continue longer sentences, with more and more people in prison and a criminal justice system at the point of collapse.
In some ways, the Minister has come to office at just the right moment to press the arguments that he has heard from all parts of the House: there is another way, a better way, a more civilised way of treating offenders. That is not to move away from the need for them to take responsibility for their crimes, but in many of the suggestions that he has heard today there are real and positive ways that we could cut prison numbers, make the public safer and do a really good job in our criminal justice system.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, the one thing that we can take away from this timely debate, which was well introduced by my noble friend Lady Burt, is that it has demonstrated that the Minister has an inbox full of difficult decisions. The current action to release prisoners early cannot remove all the risks inherent in this exceptional situation, but it does expose the problems, weaknesses and failures of the current justice system. The immediate need to free up prison spaces cannot be allowed to mask these failures. A top-to-toe set of reforms is needed from pre-sentencing through to licensing ending.
This debate has shown that the problems are extensive: there is a lack of meaningful activity in prisons; sentence inflation; vulnerability of prisoners to self-harm; drug abuse; poor morale in the Prison and Probation Service workforce; shortage of staff at all levels; and a lack of resource to effectively provide essential housing, skills and healthcare when leaving prison. The list goes on—in the course of this debate I have written down another seven or eight that should appear on the Minister’s action list. I want to add another: the so-called dynamic pricing of facilities offered to those seeking to train offenders within prison, which is pricing NGOs offering training out of prisons, such as Redemption Roasters at The Mount prison.
But there is great work going on, as we have heard. That needs replication and augmentation. Will the Minister, with all his experience at his elbow, agree that wholesale reform is needed, and as swiftly as possible? When will he be able to set out the actions that we need to take to resolve all these difficult issues, and will he provide a wholesale reform?
This is a massive project, which needs fixing so that the punishment needle can be moved back towards rehabilitation and reducing offending. That will produce a much more productive activity list for prisoners when they leave prison as well, but it will also save huge costs to taxpayers and make an improvement to society at large. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, this will be quick. Four years from now, the prison population will be around 106,000. The Institute for Government has stated that, even with new prisons being built, there could be a shortfall of 8,000 prison places by 2028. Under the previous Government, we delivered the largest expansion to the prison estate since the Victorian era. Please will the Minister let us know exactly when and where the Government are going to build new prisons to accommodate these additional offenders?
It has been reported that probation officers are aware of criminals convicted of sexual and serious violent offences who are eligible for the early release scheme because they are serving consecutive sentences and Prison Service staff take into account only the sentence for a less serious, non-sexual offence. Please can the Minister reassure the House that this is not the case and confirm that any offender serving such consecutive sentences will not be eligible for early release?
The Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales has warned that a third of the victims where perpetrators were due for release on Tuesday were likely to be unaware of this. Many of these victims are not eligible for victim notification schemes, and those who are often fall off the Probation Service’s lists. Please can the Minister let us know how that can be allowed to happen and the exact number of victims who have not been informed?
A senior probation officer has also recounted that, by the time the Prison Service had determined who was eligible, many colleagues had been given only four weeks to prepare for offenders confirmed for release. In one instance, a colleague had been given just one week’s notice. The Government said that at least 1,000 new trainee probation officers would be recruited by the end of March 2025. Please can the Minister explain why it takes seven months to recruit trainees? That is surely too long. Does he not agree that four months should be the target to complete this?
Finally, for prisoner well-being, will the Minister commit to building an extra exercise facility in each of the UK’s 141 prisons to help the mental and physical rehabilitation and social interaction of prisoners?
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on securing a debate on prison capacity and the safety and well-being of vulnerable prisoners. The women’s estate, which she mentioned, concerns me greatly. As she said, it is a complex cocktail of social problems—I could not agree more. As well as the focus that we need as a Government to rehabilitate prisoners and help them lead normal lives, this has to be our focus.
I am grateful to all noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions. It is clear that there is a real strength of feeling about the state of our prisons, which I share. As your Lordships are aware, when this Government came into office, men’s prisons were consistently operating at around 99% of their capacity. In recent weeks we came closer to total collapse than ever before. If that had happened, the consequences would have been dire, with courts forced to grind to a halt and the police unable to make arrests. The result: a total breakdown of law and order. The impact is also felt in prisons. Overcrowded prisons are dangerous places: tensions run high, and violence can erupt without warning. That makes them dangerous for prisoners and prison officers, with violence against staff rising rapidly.
Prisons should be safe places. They should be places that create better citizens, not better criminals. When they are this full for this long, all prison officers can do is attempt to control the chaos. For the sake of public protection, as well as the prisoners themselves, prisons should help offenders get back on the straight and narrow. We know that is not happening as things stand, because 80% of offending is reoffending.
On coming into government and facing the total collapse of our prisons—going from running a retail business to running the Prison Service, this was quite a shock—we were left with no choice: this week, as noble Lords know well, the temporary change to the automatic release point for some offenders serving standard determinate sentences came into force. Let me be clear: this was not something we wanted to do.
We announced this measure eight weeks ago, to give ourselves as long as possible to put in place everything we could to protect the public. We excluded a series of offences: sexual crimes, a series of crimes associated with domestic abuse, terror offences, and serious violence with a sentence over four years. We gave probation time to prepare release plans for every offender. I have visited the probation units at Cheshire East and Camden and I know that staff are doing their very best in what are very difficult circumstances. Offenders released are subject to licence conditions, including tags, exclusion zones and curfews, and can be returned to prison as soon as any condition is broken. We have announced that 1,000 new probation officers will join by March next year. We have by no means solved the many problems that face the prison estate and the wider criminal justice system, but we have made a critical first step.
I turn to the contributions of colleagues, which led us through some of the challenges that this Government will address in the months and years to come. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, focused on suicides. I should note that, in prisons as full as ours have been, suicides at this level are, tragically, all too common. I can tell noble Lords that I receive a daily incident report and, in the first six months of the year, there were 36 self-inflicted deaths. Every death is a tragedy. In terms of prevention, new prisons have been largely fitted with ligature-resistant cells. Our ambition is to make a small number available at every prison for use by vulnerable prisoners.
To the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, I reiterate our appreciation for the work the chaplaincy does. Having been around prisons for 22 years, I always meet the chaplain whenever I can: I think the relationships chaplains build with prisoners are fascinating. As for prison officer training, which the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, also mentioned, before I took this job on I had just completed a review of prison officer training and I hope that now I am in the seat on level nine of the MoJ, the prison officer training review will come into action.
A number of noble Lords discussed IPP prisoners. The noble Baronesses, Lady Burt and Lady Fox, both talked passionately about imprisonment for public protection sentences. Those serving IPP sentences face unique challenges and there are, sadly, too many IPP deaths in custody. It is right that this sentence no longer exists, but we must address a historic challenge of the British state’s own making, and I will return to this place in the months to come with more detail on how we will do that.
For now, we are balancing two considerations. First, I know that many noble Lords feel passionately, as I do, about IPPs, and with 30% of IPP prisoners not currently in the correct prison to support them with their sentence plan, they continue to be failed by the system. I am clear that this must be addressed as a matter of urgency. We need to get it right, but IPP offenders need to engage with their sentence plans too. I have seen some fantastic work recently in HMP High Down, with its community living unit, where IPPs are living and really engaging. In my previous job running the Timpson business, I was proud to have 30 IPP colleagues working alongside me.
Secondly, however, we must always balance this against the importance of protecting the public, and any measures that are taken must begin with this as our priority. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, must be commended on his incredible visit record. I think he must have visited more prisons than any other Member of these two Houses. It is good to hear of the graduations coming up at HMP Pentonville: there is hope and there are great people, such as Anton, who need to be given a second chance.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and the noble Lords, Lord McNally, Lord Carlile and Lord Moylan, all made important points about sentences. The Government will be launching a review of sentencing, with a focus on how it both protects the public and reduces reoffending. I believe that we will soon be in a position to share the terms of reference of that review and announce its chair. I note noble Lords’ interest in the review and look forward to engaging with colleagues in due course. I am sure there will be plenty of opportunity to debate sentencing.
The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, mentioned violence in prisons. In overcrowded prisons, violence has soared. Now that we have begun to address the capacity crisis in our prisons, we must tackle violence too. Violence can be driven by the illicit economy. We are working to restrict the supply of drugs, reduce demand through rehabilitative services and support prisoners to build recovery from substance misuse. We know that debt drives poor safety and outcomes, and the drug trade really fuels it. We need to make sure that our vulnerable prisoners are not extorted, assaulted or forced to do things they do not want to do. There have been many instances of prisoners inheriting the debt of a former resident of a cell. Some prisoners arrive with no money, so they borrow to get canteen items and have to repay “double bubble”.
The noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord German, spoke about education and purposeful activity, healthcare, and housing. As I have already mentioned, capacity pressures make these more difficult than they should be. However, we continue to build on good practice through our employment advisory boards, and we work with education experts, employers and the voluntary sector to improve the offer across the prison estate so that offenders have the best chance to get the input they need to turn their back on crime for good.
With the capacity as it has been, it has been difficult for prison staff to get people into classrooms and places where they can find housing and employment. In my time going round prisons, I have walked past too many classrooms where there are lots of computers but no prisoners. That is something I want to sort out. The noble Lord, Lord German, asked about the level of reform I am hoping to do. I hope to be here for a long time—I think it will take a long time.
The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, asked about prison building. It is very much our plan to build the 20,000 prison places that we need. We are committed to building more prisons and the rate of prisoner growth means that we will have to.
I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, brought up the subject of elderly prisoners and I was interested to read the Prison Reform Trust’s recent report on this. While the physical prison estate can present challenges to older prisoners’ safety, the newer prisons we are building are accessible by design, with cells adapted to the needs of those with mobility issues and physical disabilities. I recently visited HMP Holme House, where they are building a specialist wing for elderly prisoners which is wheelchair-friendly. I remember going to HMP Stafford a few years ago, where I met a prisoner who was in a wheelchair. On talking to him, I found out he was 104 years old. We have a range of work ongoing to improve provision for elderly prisoners, focusing on health and care support, how we are using the estate to best meet their needs and how to spread best practice on purposeful regime activities. There is a lot more we need to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Mann, asked about local authorities and the recent releases of this week. All local authorities were engaged with by probation teams and they have done their best in very difficult circumstances. It is not perfect by any means—but the prison system that we have inherited is far from perfect.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for his continued and considered commitment to supporting the important work on strengthening offenders’ positive ties with their friends, family and peers, and for our recent meeting. Phone calls, visits and temporary release from prison help prevent offenders returning to crime when they leave prison, by providing the opportunity to build these crucial ties. I want to be inspired by the best practice demonstrated by the impressive visit centres that I have seen, and the community days that I have been a part of are inspirational. Holding establishments to account by means of the family ties performance measure has led to a continued improvement in this vital contribution to reducing reoffending.
The plan to rent prison places in Estonia was explored by the previous Government but is not something we intend to implement. We value our strong relationship with Estonia, and I know we will continue to co-operate and share learning on a range of justice and security measures.
The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raised a very good point about young people coming into the prison system. I completely agree that it cannot be right. I was brought up with foster children and far too many of them ended up in prison. I will arrange for colleagues at the Home Office and the Department for Education to meet the noble Baroness and Barnardo’s—only last week, I met Martin Narey, who used to run the prison estate and then went on to run Barnardo’s.
I remember discussing the daily prison figures with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, when he was in his previous role. The impact of prison capacity on the courts is significant. Had we not acted, I think it would have been even worse, but we cannot have prisons overflowing. The recent civil disorder has highlighted how difficult this is. Further reform will be necessary to ensure that we never get so close to the catastrophe we have had in the past.
In closing, I once again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for raising this hugely important issue for debate and noble Lords for their contributions. If there is anything I have missed from the debate, I will be happy to write to colleagues as soon as possible.
I have been around prisons for longer than I care to admit, but while I am new to this House, I already feel enriched by the level of your Lordships’ expertise and engagement. In all these years, I have never known things as bad as they were when this Government took office. We are acutely aware of the pressure this has put on our prisons and probation services when they operate so close to the limits of their capacity. Full prisons put prison staff and prisoners at risk of harm from violence and disorder, and they make it much harder for our dedicated staff to support offenders properly. For a small but significant number of vulnerable offenders, that can lead to tragic cases of self-harm and suicide.
As Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending Minister, I am clear that any one tragedy in our prisons is one too many. I am determined to work throughout the life of this Parliament to support prisons to become safer places to work and live for everybody inside them.