Prison Reform and Safety

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Given the short time available, I hope that hon. Members will not mind if I restrict my comments to the conditions of my local prison, HMP Wormwood Scrubs, especially as this debate coincides with the publication of the independent monitoring board’s report last week. I start by paying tribute to Rob Foreman, the chairman of the board, and his predecessor, Chris Hammond. They have done an excellent job, as do the overwhelming majority of staff at the prison, who show dedication and professionalism.

I was initially heartened when I read the covering press release, which said that promising changes had been made in some areas, such as the introduction of more CCTV and a new system for prisoners to access their property—it is true that in July the Scrubs went from grade 1, the worst grade which only a handful of prisons are in at any one time, to grade 2—but that is probably where the good news stops. We have to be frank about this: there is nothing new about problems at the Scrubs. Many years ago, it had problems with violence against prisoners and poor management. An HMI report in only April last year talked about rat-infested and overcrowded conditions, with some prisoners too frightened to leave their cells.

The difficulty is that the current problems are specifically connected to underfunding, poor services and low staff numbers, despite what we are told are efforts by the Government to increase staffing, having cut it back so dramatically under the coalition Government. There were still 57 members of staff out last year, and only 21 in.

The report says that

“complaints made by prisoners are sometimes handled inappropriately, or passed to the staff member who is the subject of the complaint.”

It says that the

“lack of maintenance…means that prisoners are frequently subjected to conditions that are indecent and not suitable for them to live in.”

Prisoners experience unacceptable delays in accessing medical treatment, and the report says that

“Care UK is not always able to provide enough staff to deliver…triage and screening processes.”

On the key issue of safety, the report says that 40 to 50 violent incidents occur in a typical month, 25% of which are gang-related. The prison has

“the second highest number of prisoners moved by ‘Tornado teams’”

and had four deaths in custody.

A terrible contractor called Carillion is responsible for maintenance, but the report says that beds were in poor condition, that toilets were broken, that cells were unheated, that staff worked in overcoats, and that there were no working urinals in parts of the prison. People are living in medieval conditions.

As for the education services, attendance at classes in June was 24%, and the library was closed for several weeks because Carillion could not fix the alarm. The Koestler Trust, which does fantastic work in prisoner art, is based in the old governor’s house outside the prison, but there is no art teaching inside. These are truly terrible conditions.

The prison has the worst record in London for accessing legal help. What that means in practice, when solicitors try to see their clients, is, to quote the report, that

“prisoners are effectively being denied access to legal advice.”

I ask the Minister to look at that, because it is not acceptable in any of our prisons, especially one that is 45% remand.

The private community rehabilitation company is MTCNovo, which I remember telling the shadow Justice Minister was not a good appointment. The report says that it does not sufficiently engage with prisoners before their release, with far too many released without any accommodation to go to. Is it any wonder that reoffending rates are so high when that is the background? It is not an accident that we are talking about companies such as Care UK, Carillion and MTCNovo. The privatisation of prison services lies behind what has happened to a substantial extent.

When the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) became Justice Secretary, we were promised a prisons revolution, but of course he did not stay around long enough to achieve that. It is odd to think that the right hon. Gentleman would be seen as the champion of the underdog in that way, but he was following the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and a tip for anyone wants to have a good reputation is to follow him into a job. What will the Minister do to address the appalling conditions that are experienced every day in our prisons?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but we need to know what we are looking for, and we need to identify the prisoners who are most likely to have links with organised crime. We now know that about 6,000 prisoners have links with organised crime on the outside and are conduits for drugs into our prisons, and that allows us to be far more effective in what we are doing to combat those operations. It is still very early days, but the point I am making is that we are beginning to see success. As we go forward, we intend to build on these successes, through our new drugs plan, which he mentioned, and our work on corruption, where it exists—even if it be only among a very few officers. He will be hearing more from me about that shortly.

Of course, this is not just about seizing or intercepting drugs. We should never forget that we have a duty of care to our prisoners—we want to help offenders with drug problems—and more of our prisons now have specialist wings to support them in overcoming their dependencies. We are also working closely with health partners to provide information, guidance and support to prisoners, visitors and staff on the impact and damaging consequences of drugs.

Hon. Members have mentioned the safety of our prisons. Ensuring safety is partly about having the right staffing levels to deliver safe and consistent regimes, and we are making swift progress in recruiting the additional 2,500 staff in the adult estate we promised in 2016: 1,255 extra prison officers have been recruited in the last year, and officer numbers are now at their highest levels since August 2013. In the youth estate, we have likewise expanded frontline staff capacity in public sector youth offender institutions by about 20%.

Preventing suicide and self-harm is also a focus of mine. We are taking decisive action to reduce the levels of self-harm by strengthening the frontline. Each individual incident of suicide or self-harm is one too many and a source of deep tragedy. We have introduced new suicide and self-harm prevention training to give everyone working in prisons, whether officers or staff from other organisations, the confidence and skills they need to support those in their care. So far, more than 10,000 prison staff have started the training, and all new prison officer and prison custody officer recruits now complete the programme as part of their initial training. I am glad to say that the number of self-inflicted deaths in custody is significantly down from last year, although I will be the first to admit that there is still a lot of work to be done.

The Chair of the Select Committee referred to the architecture of the prison system and how we can hold ourselves to account. We are strengthening the ability of the inspectorate to hold the Government and the Prison Service to account and have introduced a new urgent notification process, which had formed part of the original Prisons and Courts Bill, to enable the Secretary of State to be alerted directly where the chief inspector has a significant and urgent concern about the performance of an institution. We launched that process last month. The Secretary of State will be directly alerted by the chief inspector if an urgent issue needs addressing to ensure that recommendations are acted upon immediately. A new team of specialists accountable to Ministers will ensure that immediate action is taken and will respond within 28 days with a more in-depth plan to ensure sustained, long-term improvement for the prison.

[Andy Slaughter]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but a lot of it sounds like firefighting. I quoted from a report on the Scrubs earlier, but tomorrow we have Her Majesty’s inspectorate’s report on the Scrubs—I do not know if he has seen it yet. I have not quoted from it because it is under embargo still, but it shows endemic, long-term problems that need powerful solutions, and I just do not hear that vision coming from the Government.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman is being unfair. Recruiting more staff, investing in intelligence and technology, rolling out a drugs strategy, introducing an urgent notification process, giving more power to the inspectorate—all these things will solve the issues in our prison. I hear him on the Scrubs—I admit that there are deep-seated challenges there—but prisons are, always have been and always will be difficult places to manage. That said, we are making significant investment in tackling the problems in our prisons. As I have always said, it will not happen overnight, but the actions I am outlining show our determination and will to overcome the problems and make sure that our prisons are places of safety and reform.

Hon. Members have touched on employment and education. We have recently announced the new futures network, which will be a broker between prisons and the employment sector so as to help prisoners to find work on release and get better purposeful activity in prisons. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) mentioned that sometimes drug habits develop because prisoners are bored. Having more and better purposeful activity is important to ensuring that prisoners are purposefully occupied in prison and can gain new skills and improve their chances of finding a job on release.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) rightly mentioned the estate. Yes, the plan is to create 10,000 additional places. Of course, there have been issues with maintenance, but those are issues for facilities managers, and I am in direct contact with them to ensure that, whatever the future plans for a prison further down the line, we maintain standards of decency in that prison.

In conclusion, reducing reoffending, protecting the public, reforming offenders and ensuring the safety and security of our staff and those in our custody remain my Department’s top priorities.