Prison Maintenance: Insourcing

Debate between Lord Timpson and Lord Woodley

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woodley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential merits of insourcing all prison maintenance.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

The Government are committed to ensuring that there are professional facility management services across our prison estate. A 2023 assessment conducted in partnership with the Cabinet Office determined that an insourced solution was not the preferred option for future prison maintenance services. Financial analysis determined that an outsourced option would be more cost-effective and would deliver the best value for money. The Government have therefore initiated a programme of work that will put in place new contracts for the provision of maintenance services for prisons, which are being competitively tendered. However, I am keeping this approach under constant review to ensure we get the best value for taxpayers’ money.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his response, but it is undeniable that a decade of prison maintenance privatisation has been an absolute disaster. A disgraceful experiment has gone badly wrong and it blights the lives of everyone living and working in prisons. Does he agree that it is more than time to kick out the incompetent and greedy privateers and bring maintenance back in-house, which is far more cost-effective, and make much more use of works departments to give prisoners valuable extra skills through in-house maintenance and light repairs? I think this is called Q-Branch.

Drones: High-security Prisons

Debate between Lord Timpson and Lord Woodley

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the question; I would be delighted to meet up and to learn more. The problem we have with serious organised crime in our prisons is that these people are in there to make money. They do that by selling phones and drugs, which creates debt and violence, so it is essential that we tackle this. We are giving more focus to our dedicated serious and organised crime unit and we are working across government, but the noble Lord is right that this is vital.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, yesterday the Justice and Home Affairs Committee heard from the chair of the Prison Officers’ Association that it was only a matter of time before arms were sent into prison via drones. There were even concerns that, with drones now being able to carry 75 kilograms, they could be used to facilitate some form of escape. Can the Minister please explain what anti-drone technologies we have in place, and will they be whizzed out across the rest of the empire?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. I am afraid that, due to security reasons, I cannot go into any details on the measures that we have and that we will have. However, I can assure him that we will spend £520 million on maintenance over the next two years, because we have inherited prisons in such a bad state. A lot of that money will be spent on repairing nets, grilles and windows.

Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity

Debate between Lord Timpson and Lord Woodley

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for the question. Yes, I hope the panel will engage with the whole sector, and there are so many experts who have so much experience. As far as the scope of the sentencing review goes, it will be reviewing the framework around longer custodial sentences, including the use of minimum sentences and the range of sentences and maximum penalties available for different offences and how we administer them. The panel will also review the specific needs of young offenders, older offenders, female offenders and prolific offenders. It has a lot of work to do, and we hope it will do it by the spring.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, there are 1,800 prisoners serving IPP sentences, as the Minister knows. One has been in prison for 12 years for stealing a plant pot; another has been in for eight years for stealing a mobile phone. At the same time, there is no review. When we look at prison places, I look forward to the Minister’s efforts in reviewing this situation, which cannot go on any longer. Does the Minister agree with me that we do not need large warehouse prisons? As the Prison Officers’ Association says, we need something local—something that can be looked after socially in the local area—and that makes sure that reoffending does not take place.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. As for what kind of prisons we need, I think we need a good mix of prisons of all shapes and sizes and in all locations. On IPP sentence prisoners, I am sure the House knows me well enough to know how deeply troubled I am by the state of the lives of IPP sentence prisoners. It is not included in the sentencing review because I feel we are already making good progress, albeit early progress. The IPP action plan is solid and we need to push on fast with it.

I am looking at two things at the moment. One is that 30% of IPP sentence prisoners are in the wrong prison for helping them fulfil their needs to get out of prison. I am also heartened by a dashboard that we now have so we know where every IPP prisoner is and where they are up to with their sentence—it may not sound much, but it is a game-changer for how we can support people to work through their sentence. So I want to make rapid progress. I also reassure my noble friend that, when I was running the family business, I managed to work alongside 30 colleagues who were IPP prisoners and they were absolutely fantastic, and the second chance that they were given was paid back in buckets.