Prisons and Secure Training Centres: Safety

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) (Urgent Question)]

To ask the Secretary of State if he will make a statement on safety in prisons and secure training centres.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Michael Gove)]

The safety and welfare of all those in custody is vital, so we take seriously all reports of the mistreatment of those in our care.

On 8 January, the BBC and other media outlets reported allegations of verbal and physical abuse directed towards young people detained at Medway secure training centre, an establishment managed by G4S.  The allegations arise from an undercover investigation for a “Panorama” programme which will be broadcast this evening. It must be stressed that investigative reporting is vital to keeping government honest, and I am grateful to the BBC for the work it has undertaken.

We must treat these allegations with the utmost seriousness. Kent police and the Medway child protection team are now investigating matters on the basis of information shared with them by the BBC, and the police will decide in due course whether criminal charges should be brought.

It would be inappropriate for me to comment further on the specific allegations while these investigations are under way, but I can assure the House that my Department and the Youth Justice Board—under the determined leadership of my right hon. and noble Friend Lord McNally —will do everything we can to assist the police and the local council. Our immediate priority has been to make sure that the young people in custody at Medway are safe, which is why Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons and Ofsted visited the secure training centre this morning. They are meeting representatives of G4S, Medway council and the Youth Justice Board to ensure that all necessary action is being taken to ensure the wellbeing of young people at the centre. Inspectors will speak directly to the young people detained at Medway to satisfy themselves that everything is being done to ensure that people are safe. I will also be meeting G4S this week to discuss the allegations and to review its response.

I am under no illusions about the fact that our system of youth justice needs reform. Although youth offending is down, recidivism rates are high, and the care and supervision of young offenders in custody is not good enough. That is why I asked Charlie Taylor, the former chief executive of the National College for Teaching and Leadership, to conduct a review of youth justice. He will report back later this year with recommendations on how to improve the treatment of young people in our care. But it is not just youth justice that needs reform. We need to bring change to our whole prison estate. There is much more to do to ensure that our prisons are places of decency, hope and rehabilitation.

Violence in prisons has increased in recent years. The nature of offenders currently in custody and the widespread availability of new psychoactive substances have both contributed to making prisons less safe. There is no single, simple solution to the problems we face, but we are determined to make progress. We are trialling the use of body-worn cameras and training sniffer dogs to detect new psychoactive substances. We have made it an offence to smuggle so-called legal highs into prison, but ultimately the only way to reduce violence in our prisons is to give governors and all those who work in prisons the tools necessary more effectively to reform and rehabilitate offenders. That is the Government’s mission and one I am determined to see through.

[Andy Slaughter]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question on a most serious and troubling topic involving the mistreatment of children in custody. I am sure the Secretary of State and the whole Government take their responsibilities seriously, not least their duty of care under the Children Act 2004. I am grateful for the steps that have already been taken, which the Secretary of State mentioned, but perhaps he could have met G4S sooner, as I am sure the Government have had some notice. Perhaps he will tell us when he first had notice of these allegations.

As the Secretary of State said, these are serious allegations involving seven members of staff at Medway secure training centre. I also put on record my thanks to the BBC “Panorama” programme for bringing these matters to light.

The allegations involve matters such as slapping a teenager several times in the head; using restraint techniques; squeezing a teenager’s windpipe so as to cause problems in breathing; boasting of mistreating young people, including using a fork to stab one in the leg; equally seriously, the concealing of behaviour by deliberately doing it outside the sight of CCTV cameras; and covering up violent incidents to avoid investigation and the possibility of sanctions against G4S.

Deborah Coles, director of the charity INQUEST, has said that in any other setting the treatment “would be child abuse” and that

“this points to a lack of accountability and culture of impunity.”

Adding to the seriousness of this situation, it is clear that these allegations have come to light only following the investigative journalism the Secretary of State mentioned, rather than following any monitoring or oversight from the Youth Justice Board or Ministry of Justice. Perhaps he would say what the Youth Justice Board monitors have been doing, as they are supposed to be an essential protection in these circumstances.

Will the Secretary of State confirm that a full independent investigation of the circumstances of the abuse will take place and that this will not be swept under the carpet or blamed on a few rogue officers? Any culpability or negligence by G4S management must be exposed. We must also be told whether the Ministry of Justice knew about the alleged abuse before the story was broken by journalists. If it didn’t know, why didn’t it know?

Sadly, this is only the latest in a long line of failures and mismanagement from G4S. In addition to inspection reports at Oakwood prison and the removal of the contract for Rainsbrook STC last September, there have been investigations into a number of deaths in custody or detention, including those of Gareth Myatt and Jimmy Mubenga. There was a debate in the House last week on the appalling healthcare at G4S-run Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre. The Secretary of State may wish to confirm that the Serious Fraud Office is still investigating G4S over fraud in the prisoners tagging contract.

Given the concerns raised over many years and in many areas about G4S, we urge the MOJ to review all its contracts with that company to see whether it is fit and proper to manage major public contracts. In the meantime it is our belief that G4S should not be considered for bidding for other Government contracts. Can the Secretary of State give me those assurances today?

There are serious questions—I think the Secretary of State acknowledged this—that go beyond G4S. We have to see this in the wider context of a rise in violence in prisons. Figures show that 186 prisoners took their own lives over the 23-month period to September 2015, which means that, over the last two years, on average, a prisoner has taken their own life every four days. Last Friday, the outgoing chief inspector of prisons told “Newsnight” that there were more murders and suicides than there had been in 10 years. We need a cultural shift across the entire secure estate.

To begin that process, we ask that today the Government take immediate action to put all G4S-run prisons, STCs and detention centres into special measures to assess the safety and competence of their operation. The Secretary of State has powers under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to intervene in contracted-out STCs. We urge him to do so and to put in management teams alongside existing staff, particularly those with experience of working with vulnerable children. It is clear that the measures currently in place are not working. It remains for the Secretary of State, who has said that he wishes to reform our prisons, to take action now.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising these questions in a serious and sombre way. He is absolutely right to say that the allegations involve children and that we have a duty of care towards them. We must ensure that those who are in our care are treated appropriately and responsibly. “Panorama” informed the local authority on 30 December and appropriate steps were taken by the local authority to ensure that an investigation could be initiated. Of course, Kent police were also informed at the same time, and because a police investigation is necessarily taking place, we have to respect due process.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that the allegations that he has listed are very serious, but they are allegations, and it is important that we give G4S and those involved the appropriate time and space to respond in a way that is congruent with the seriousness of the allegations. It is because I take the allegations seriously that I do not want to rush to judgment or do anything that could be used to enable those who might be guilty of serious offences to wriggle off the hook.

I had the opportunity to meet the editor of “Panorama”, as well as the programme’s producer and the director who was responsible for this investigation, on the eve of the publication of the allegations in The Times and elsewhere on 8 January. It was as a result of that conversation that I had discussions with members of the Youth Justice Board and that we took the steps that I outlined earlier in my statement. It was also as result of that conversation that the roles of the YJB monitor and of Barnardo’s, which also visits the establishment, were enhanced to ensure that the safety of the children at that centre could be guaranteed to the best of our ability.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that G4S has, in a number of other ways, at times in the past, let the Ministry of Justice and those in our care down. It is also important to stress, however, that there are other institutions run by G4S that continue to do a good job, and it would be quite wrong to make a blanket allegation against the organisation of the kind that I know the hon. Gentleman did not make but that others might be tempted to.

The hon. Gentleman was also right to make reference to the remarks of the outgoing chief inspector, Nick Hardwick. I thank Nick Hardwick for the superb work he has done. His candour and honesty in that role serve only to underline the scale of what we have to do to ensure that children and young people in custody and everyone else in prison are in a safe and decent environment, and nothing will stop us making sure that safety and decency are at the forefront of the changes that we bring to our prison and secure training centre estate.