Prison Staff: Health and Safety

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

I thank the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) for leading this debate and for starting it in such a helpful and comprehensive way. I also thank the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), in his absence, for securing it. I entirely agree that he is doing the right thing, as is the Minister for whom I am standing in, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who is also self-isolating.

The debate has been genuinely excellent. One of the points made early on was this business about “The Shawshank Redemption”—the extent to which in our constituency mailbags the conditions in prisons are not necessarily the No. 1 priority. However, everyone in this House recognises that the state of our prisons is a critically important aspect of a functioning and decent society. I am grateful to all those who have taken the trouble on this most difficult day to make their points as they have.

I will add my own perspective briefly. A meeting with a constituent that I will never forget was with an experienced prison officer from Cheltenham. He had been seriously injured by an inmate at HMP Bristol, and came to speak to me about what had happened. What was so striking was that, despite that ordeal, he remained in post, undaunted, unbowed and utterly committed to his job. He demonstrated the finest values of the Prison Service, to which I pay tribute—not just with the usual platitudes about dedication, but acknowledging the values of courage, compassion, judgment and professionalism. He also demonstrated what everyone in the debate recognises as important: the determination to root out what Winston Churchill referred to many years ago as the

“treasure in the heart of every man”.

As the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) said, being a prison officer can be a rewarding career for that very reason—being able to turn lives around.

Perhaps the most important point that I have taken away from this debate, made by both Government and Opposition Members, is that we need people like my constituent to stay in the Prison Service, because there can be few jobs in which experience is more important. Those senior officers provide leadership to others and set the culture of a successful prison. Equally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, those governors who have been in post will make the difference too. That is just one reason why this debate is so timely and important, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Easington for bringing it before the House.

I will set the context not by way of excuse but as a fact that we have to address. The prison population is more volatile than it was 10 years ago. That is partly down to drugs and partly down to various other social symptoms, I am sure, but that population is more volatile. That is part of the context.

Let me turn, however, to the issue of covid-19, which the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), rightly raised. Covid-19 is testing, and will test further, every part of our national life. Our prisons will not be immune from that. The most careful thought and planning has gone into preparing our prisons. That work does not emerge from a clear blue sky, but is built on existing and well-developed policies and procedures to manage outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Prevention is of course better than cure, and basic hygiene practice has been rolled out in prisons, as one might expect. For those infected, prisons are well prepared to take action whenever cases or suspected cases are identified. Plans include isolating where necessary. Turning to the point about HMP Berwyn made by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), the issue of whether specific prison wings can be used is a matter, quite properly, for consultation with the governor. That may be the appropriate thing to do, but it is not a diktat from Whitehall. I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising the issue. The governor will need to be looped into any such decision.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I seek from the Minister a response to the concern locally that Berwyn will continue to fill. Its population is currently about 1,800, so it is slightly under capacity. It has been filled slowly, deliberately. At this time, it is even more important that there is not a rush to fill that prison, because it has the potential to do very good work in other ways.

[Alex Chalk]

I take that point and leave it where it lies. I thank the right hon. Lady for making it.

There is a long-standing national partnership agreement with the Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England for healthcare services for prisoners. Under that agreement, people in prison custody who become unwell do, as hon. Members know, have the benefit of on-site NHS healthcare services, which provide the first-line assessment and treatment response.

This second point is really important. We recognise the importance of prisoners maintaining contact with their family during this difficult period. Public Health England supports our desire to maintain normal regimes for as long as we can. If those cannot continue, well-worked-up plans are in place to ensure that that continues by other means, to the fullest extent possible.

Keeping people informed is also essential. We are issuing regular communications to staff and all the individuals in our care to explain the steps that we may need to take to protect them from the virus, to minimise anxiety and ensure maximum understanding and co-operation as the situation develops. That means providing regular updates via National Prison Radio, issuing guidance to staff and governors, providing posters and so on.

Let me turn to the staff impact. Staff have been and will be affected by this disease. We are moving swiftly to make additional staff available to establishments so that if current staff are unable to work because of infection, we can continue to run as normal a regime as possible. Some contingency planning may include the need to ask staff to work in a different place and potentially do different tasks; that will be to ensure that we can maintain frontline operational delivery to protect the public and robustly manage risks. In addition, as and when required, operational staff currently working in headquarters will be redeployed to prisons to support the service to maintain minimum staffing levels. May I take this opportunity to thank the unions, which are engaging proactively and co-operatively in this national endeavour? We are hugely grateful for that support.

The point was made about not penalising non-delivery of teaching hours. That seems to me eminently sensible. I hope that the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd understands why I cannot commit to anything, but I take that point in the spirit in which it was intended and I hope that it will be given appropriate consideration.

Let me turn to the fair point that was made that existing safety measures are necessary to tackle a threat that exists, notwithstanding covid-19. There has been significant investment in increasing staff numbers. We recruited more than 4,000 additional full-time equivalent prison officers between October 2016 and December 2019. A fair point was made on pay. In July 2019, the MOJ accepted the Prison Service Pay Review Body’s recommendations in full. The pay award was worth at least 2.2% for all prison staff, and there was a targeted 3% increase for band 3 prison officers on the frontline. It is the second year in a row that we have announced above-inflation pay rises, over 2%.

However, pay is only part of it. I completely recognise that conditions are critically important, too. How do we go about improving conditions so that experience is embedded in the Prison Service and those valuable officers will remain in place, providing the guidance, the culture and the leadership that a successful prison needs?

The first point is about the key worker role. This critically important initiative allows staff dedicated time to provide support to individual prisoners. That will help us to deal with emerging threats and improve safety, and of course it is important for those individuals to feel that they are being listened to and their concerns addressed. That helps them to feel valued, and of course helps the safety and stability of the prison. Key workers have a case load of about six prisoners. They have weekly one-to-one sessions with their prisoners to build constructive relationships and reduce levels of violence. That has started in all 92 prisons in the male closed estate, with 54 now delivering key work as part of their business as usual.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley made an excellent point about purposeful activity and gave the useful example of what is happening in Germany and, I think, Denmark as well. That is exactly what we need to be getting to, and I commend him for making that powerful point.

The second point is serious offender intervention. We also have a range of capabilities to manage the risk that the most serious offenders pose in prison, including rehabilitative interventions and separation centres. Mental health was rightly raised. There are mental health facilities, but, as per the entirety of British society, mental health is a bigger issue now than it was in 2010. In fact, one of the bright lights, if I can use that expression, in the prison estate is the improving quality of mental health provision. That needs further strengthening, of course.

The third point is about equipping prison officers. We are committed to providing prison officers with the right support, training and tools. One essential matter is that we have started to roll out PAVA synthetic pepper spray for use by prison officers, but we want to ensure that PAVA defuses tensions, not creates them. All roads lead back to having established and experienced staff, because they will need to use their discretion in a sensible way to operate it.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

The association between PAVA and key workers is understandable, but when many staff are away from duty and dependent on bringing staff in on detached duty to another prison, prisons end up, I am told, without that critical number of key workers—there is a vicious circle and PAVA will not be able to be implemented. Will he commit his Department to looking at how PAVA can actually be brought into prisons? The association between key workers and PAVA at present is not working in all prisons.

[Alex Chalk]

I will certainly look at that and escalate it to the right hon. Lady.

[Patricia Gibson]

Time is slipping away. I appreciate all the Minister is saying about what the Government are doing to make prison officers feel more valued and safe, but I must press him on the issue of pension age. A lot of forceful points have been made today and we have little time left to address them. I ask him simply to say whether he is sympathetic.

[Alex Chalk]

I absolutely take the point that the hon. Lady and others raised. The reality is that whether a prison officer is 68, 67 or 66, there will be challenging circumstances. If there is a 25 year-old prisoner and a 52 year-old officer, that will present real challenges. I do not have a glib response for the hon. Lady, but I have heard the matters that she has raised. To solve the issue of our prisons we need to ensure that there are enough staff of the right level of experience to deal with these challenges. That will be the most important point and, frankly, that will make more difference than whether somebody is 68 or 67. The reality is that we need enough people of the right calibre and the right experience to manage volatile situations.

Time is against me and I want to leave the hon. Member for East Lothian time to respond. I could talk further about the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, which addresses the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who is no longer in her place, raised. It means that those who assault emergency workers, including prison officers, feel the full force of the law.

We are supporting the emotional and social wellbeing of staff, which is critically important, as well as protecting them from violence. They have access to an occupational health service. We are rolling out TRiM—trauma risk management—that, as hon. Members will know, is being rolled out among police forces as well. There are post-incident care teams, occupational health support, cognitive behavioural therapy, and so much more.

The health and safety of our staff and those in our care remains the top priority for the Ministry of Justice, and we are making significant efforts to ensure that the safety challenges in prisons continue to be addressed. Covid-19 presents a new set of challenges. We are tackling them, informed by the best scientific evidence available, alongside the existing health and safety pressures we are facing in our prisons. I take this opportunity to thank prison staff. They are being tested and they are going to be tested. We value, admire and support them, and we are going to get through this.