Prison Maintenance: Insourcing

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. The prison estate suffered historic underinvestment by the previous Government over the last five years, which has led to a growing backlog of maintenance tasks and shocks to the estate from dilapidations. This has made the prison capacity crisis even more acute. As future prison maintenance contracts approach expiry, we will conduct detailed assessments to inform decisions about whether to continue to outsource services, alongside our usual performance management process. Stopping the contract process we inherited last year would have meant incurring additional costs and delivering less value for money. I am glad that the noble Lord mentioned Q-Branch, which is an innovative model that has empowered prisoners to build new skills and play a part in keeping their prisons running smoothly by undertaking tasks such as basic cell restoration, painting and decorating. It is currently active in 25 establishments and I am exploring how we can expand it further, alongside a similar operation called CRED, which helps build skills within prisons that can be used on release to get a job and not reoffend.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, among the myriad problems that the Minister faces is the fact that probably half of the security cameras around the perimeters of our prison estate are not working. Is that because they are too old or did the original contracts not include appropriate maintenance so that these cameras can be made to work for our security and that of prisoners?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is correct that the security of our prisons is of utmost importance and that we need all our security apparatus working correctly. We have had years of underinvestment in our prison estate. I am pleased that the Government are spending £520 million from this year until the end of 2026 on lots of projects, including improving our security.