Prisons: Planning and Policies

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Ninth Report from the Justice Committee of Session 2014-15, on Prisons: planning and policies, HC 309, and the Government response, Cm 9129.

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. This debate is a voyage of discovery for many of us, because very few of us were members of the Select Committee at the time the report was drawn up—[Interruption]—apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who will therefore carry the bulk of the burden on the report’s technical detail.

As well as welcoming you to the Chair, Mr Walker, this debate gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor as Chairman of the Committee, Sir Alan Beith. He was not only a very distinguished Committee Chairman, but a good friend to many of us, and I want to put on record how grateful I am for the support and wise advice that he has given me since I took over the chairmanship. I am sure that that will be recognised across the House.

This will not be a long debate. The report itself is not long, but it is important because it touches on key issues relating to prison policy. Interestingly, that has become topical once more with the very welcome comments from the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. I am very grateful to see the Minister for prisons in his place today, and I thank him for the courtesy that he has already shown to our Committee in responding to a number of inquiries that we have made of him.

In essence, I want to concentrate on two issues that the report highlights: first, the size of the prison population, and secondly, the sort of regime and purposeful behaviour that we ought to see in our prisons. It is worth bearing in mind that against the background to this report, the most up-to-date figures, as of 2 October this year—after the report was published—show that the prison population is now 85,973. That is one of the highest rates of incarceration in western Europe, and we ought to pause to think about why that is the case. We know, too, that the National Offender Management Service is operating at about 98% of its usable operational capacity, so things are pretty tight in our prison regime. NOMS is—properly, I think—going through a period of substantial change, with significant modernisation work, and the Department will have to take its share of the necessary savings that we have to make as part of the deficit reduction strategy.

A number of members of the current Committee and I had the chance to visit Holloway prison recently, and I want to pay tribute to the governor and her staff there. Despite the pressures on them, they are clearly doing a great deal to modernise, improve and upgrade their work, and they are getting very good results indeed. There are some very dedicated people in our Prison Service, and it is worth putting that on record.

That need for change, which is recognised at Holloway and right across the prison estate, has two aspects: first, the new-for-old policy, and secondly, the benchmarking scheme. The new-for-old scheme seeks to replace old and inefficient prisons with newer and more efficient establishments. Holloway is a good example of that. I remember, many years ago, as a young barrister, having to go to see clients in the old Holloway prison, which was a pretty dreadful establishment. The work that has been done with the modern building has made things much better. I think the last prison I had to visit was Chelmsford, and we are still dealing there with old establishments and old buildings. We only have to look at Wandsworth, Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville to see that the nature of the estate constrains our professionals’ ability to do rehabilitative work. I think that we all very much welcome the Lord Chancellor’s comments and his commitment to look at finding the means to replace old estates with something new and fit for purpose. The report flags up that very important aspect of the work.

The benchmarking was described by Phil Wheatley, who was the former director of NOMS, as, in effect, finding what

“the most efficient way of doing everything”

is and then making sure that everybody does it. That is why a series of benchmarks were established—those of us who have been involved in local government will be familiar with the concept and approach.

The Committee agreed with both those matters in principle but raised a number of substantive concerns: first, the rising level of overcrowding; secondly, the fall in prison performance and the extent to which understaffing may be an issue; and thirdly, prisoner and staff safety in prisons. A linkage between all those matters is clear from the report.

Overcrowding is important. It is not adequate simply to say, “Overcrowding is merely about people sharing a cell.” It goes beyond that, as the Lord Chancellor rightly recognised in his recent comments. The current chief inspector of prisons has said that two problems stem from overcrowding. The first is the whole question of physical conditions. Prison is punishment in itself—the deprivation of liberty—and we have a duty to make sure that those who are deprived of their liberty, as a legitimate punishment, none the less have decent conditions in which to live. I know that the Minister is very committed to that, but we need to make sure that that is actually delivered in practice.

The second point is the impact that overcrowding has on access to purposeful activity, and my 25 years or so in practice at the Bar made me very conscious of that. All too often, I saw clients of mine on a merry-go-round, almost. They would go into prison and experience a lack of any purposeful activity while they were there, a lack of rehabilitation, and a lack of follow-up, and lo and behold, they were putting me in fees again perhaps two or three years later. That should not be the case. Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) nor I, as lawyers, want to have repeat clients frankly. It is a failure of the system, but we see too much of that in the current circumstances. Overcrowding makes it harder to do the rehabilitative work that is so critical, as the Government recognise. Many prisons have to operate split regimes at the moment, where half the prisoners are locked up in the mornings while the other half engage in activity, then they swap. That constraint is needless and makes it harder to deliver what we want to do.

The figures on the current state of overcrowding have been rising steadily, as has always been conceded. There were some errors in the recording of that in 2013-14, but 24.1% overcrowding seems to be the accepted figure now for that year.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Is it not right to point out that certain exceptional areas of overcrowding can be concealed beneath that average figure? I think—I may be wrong—that, in particular, York and Swansea prisons have a dramatically higher level of overcrowding. To the greatest extent possible, we need to ensure that that is not concentrated too much in individual prisons.

[Robert Neill]

That is absolutely right. I remember going to Swansea some years ago, where there was overcrowding even then, and that continues to be the case. That variation is really not desirable. There is a raft of constraints, and that is why, again, the new-for-old policy is hugely important. HMP Thameside, for example, was almost specifically built with the intention that it should be crowded. It was almost designed on the basis of a lack of capacity—before this Government’s watch, I hasten to add. However, we do need to address some real issues in that regard.

The Government are right to say that there are constraints on reducing overcrowding, because this is a demand-driven activity. We rightly cannot seek to influence directly how the courts sentence individual offenders. There will come a time, inevitably, when it is necessary for judges to pass custodial sentences. I know, as does any practitioner, that they do not do that lightly but, at the end of the day, the Government have to provide the necessary capacity to deal with that sentencing regime. At the moment—the Minister may have more up-to-date figures than me—the National Audit Office puts the cost of eliminating overcrowding at about £900 million. I accept that it is not possible to afford that in the immediate term, but it is important to have a programme that, over time, through capital investment, will bring on the new estate that will make dealing with the issue much easier.

Overcrowding is going to be an issue, but we need to manage and deal with that. That is why the Committee was anxious to see more attention given to overcrowding than has perhaps been the case. I think that the current Secretary of State recognised that in several comments; he certainly did so in the evidence that he gave in the first session of the new Committee in this Parliament.

The recommendation was to develop a broad range of measures to reflect the realities of prison conditions. Frankly, the Government were not willing to take that recommendation on board. I hope that they will think about that. The measurement at the moment may not be realistic in terms of capturing the actuality on the ground. We need not be wedded to any particular formula. There is no magic about the way the measurement is done. It is a question of what the most efficient measure is. I hope simply that the Minister and his colleagues will reflect again on our recommendation, particularly in the light of the Government’s new commitment to rehabilitation. Perhaps that is something we can do, because it is important that we have a measure that is measurable. One piece of evidence that we were given in the previous Committee was that the current system of measurement makes it very hard to measure the improvements and the outputs and inputs.

The other matters on which we concentrated were benchmarking and staffing levels. The inspectorate of prisons uses a four-stage healthy prison test in relation to its benchmarking. The four key figures are safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement. I do not think that anyone would disagree with those. Sadly, there has been, according to the evidence that the Select Committee received, a fall in those standards in the past couple of years. Each year, the inspector of prisons makes their report and provides a percentage figure for the inspected adult prisons and young offenders institutes that have been rated as good or reasonably good. Regrettably, the percentage of prisons so rated has fallen on each of those criteria, particularly in the past year.

Our report, comparing the figures for 2013-14 with those for 2014-15, showed that there had been a number of falls, which it is worth putting on the record. In relation to prisons inspected, the safety rating had fallen from 69% to 42%. The respect rating had fallen from 67% to 58%. For purposeful activity, it had fallen from 61% to 42%, and for resettlement it had fallen from 75% to 53%. It is fair to say that there has been an updating in the latest annual report, which I think was not available to the Select Committee at the time. It now shows safety at 52%, respect at 64%, but very worryingly from my point of view, purposeful activity at 39% and then resettlement at 57%. The linkage between purposeful activity and resettlement is, many of us would suggest, very significant. Although there are improvements on some scores, there is clearly more work to do. The Minister may have to hand yet more up-to-date figures, which I am sure he will share with us.

There is some improvement, therefore, but it does leave, overall—on the information that we have—the proportion achieving good or reasonably good ratings at about 40%. That means that 60% of prisons are not getting into that proper category. That is obviously a matter of concern. I know that the Government share that concern; I am very conscious that the Government are not complacent about the issue, but it is important that we put it on the record and see what is proposed to deal with it to take it forward.

Let me deal in particular with rehabilitative outcomes. I referred to the visit to Holloway by the current Committee. A number of my hon. Friends were on that visit. We were particularly interested to see how the restrictions on release on temporary licence sometimes denied mothers the chance to engage with childcare on ROTL and opportunities to work in the community before release. That is not, I think, for want of will among the staff involved, but it seems that we are not yet there in getting that delivered on the ground. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what more can be done on that.

The previous Committee called witnesses to find out as best they could what might have caused the fall in standards. The suggestion was that there was an issue about the incentives and earned privileges scheme—that, of course, allows prisoners to access benefits in exchange for responsible behaviour—and about staffing levels. That was the view put by the witnesses. It has to be said in fairness that the Government took a converse view, saying that essentially this is a demand-led matter involving unexpected and more challenging prison population levels and a cultural increase in suicide rates, which I think is accepted and is a matter that we have to deal with. There is no simple, one-size-fits-all answer to all this, but it does warrant our continuing attention and concern.