Prisons and Youth Custody Centres: Safety

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged again to the noble Lord, Lord Marks. Complacency is not a badge that can properly be applied to the Government with regard to the issue of prisons and the prison estate.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

Or to the coalition Government.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

This matter has not arrived overnight or over the past two years—in a sense, this has been a long time coming. We have seen an increase in the prison estate from 40,000 or so about 15 years ago to about 85,000 today. Again, that did not happen overnight. It reflects a number of different changes in policy, including changes in sentencing policy. But looking to what we are doing today, we are already committed to and involved in an expenditure of £1.3 billion on the prison estate. We have already opened and are developing the prison at Berwyn to provide a total of 2,100 new places. We are addressing the issue of staff shortages. We have already committed to bringing forward 2,500 further staff by 2018 and, as I noted earlier, in the last quarter, the net increase in prison officers has exceeded 500. Complacency is not a badge. Reaction and response to these difficulties are the mark of what the Government have been doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we are not bringing forward 2,500 inexperienced prison officers; we are bringing forward properly trained prison officers to fill 2,500 places. We did not wilfully remove 7,500 prison officers; we closed 18 prisons and, in conjunction with that, there was a material decrease in the number of prison officers. Of course, we are committed to the idea of healthy prisons that can have a positive effect on the rehabilitation of inmates. With regard to the prisons Bill, I just make this observation: we are still committed to the provisions of the White Paper set out by the Government, many of which can be implemented without the need for primary legislation.

[Lord Lee of Trafford]

My Lords, when will the Government admit that the state has effectively lost control of many of our penal institutions, with violence against staff and prisoners at a totally unacceptable level and getting worse? Is not the only solution in the short term to call in military support to restore proper control, as I have urged before?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

We do not agree that it is appropriate or indeed necessary to have regard to military intervention in the civilian prison system. That would be a wholly unprecedented step that would not be welcomed, I suspect, in any quarter. In September last year, we rolled out a new test for psychoactive substances across the entire prison estate. I mention that because the presence of psychoactive substances within the prison estate is a major cause of violent behaviour, bullying, intimidation and further difficulties with staff. We have now invested £2 million to equip every prison across the estate with hand-held mobile phone detectors because, again, the presence of mobile phones is connected to the presence within the prison estate of drugs and other psychoactive substances. In addition to reducing the number of mobile phones within prisons, we have taken steps to reduce the quantities of drugs there. In 2016, prison staff recovered about 225 kilograms of illicit drugs across the prison estate. By taking these steps, we can effectively seek to reduce the level of violence between prisoners and towards staff.