Prisons

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), another member of the club of exes. When I held the responsibilities that are now held by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Sam Gyimah), the right hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well which bits of the system were difficult to change, and I remember being regularly twitted by him about the impossibility of being able to transfer the necessary number of foreign national offenders out of the system. His regular interrogation on how we were doing on the numbers showed his expertise and understanding of the system. I am delighted with the work that he is doing on the Justice Committee and with his contribution to this debate. I hope that my reflections on the system, as another of the exes, will also make a positive contribution today.

I am delighted that my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey, is now the prisons Minister. In my experience, he has been open to talking to people with experience of the system, to getting ideas and to getting well across his brief. He is to be congratulated on that. He is lucky enough to be serving under the present Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, who has the qualities that my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) had. My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath and the current Lord Chancellor put policy back into the place where it had been left by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), under whom I had the honour to serve. The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) said that the change of policy between 2012 and the arrival of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath as Lord Chancellor had created significant difficulties for the prison service. I know that the policy during that period will have found some favour with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but we are now dealing with the consequences.

The Prison Officers Association is not innocent in this matter. The priority for my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) was to deliver the savings targets that the Ministry of Justice had to meet, and they were significant. He was presented with a deal by the Prison Officers Association: if he ended the competition programme for the potential privatisation of prisons—a programme started by the Labour party—and the wings were left in the control of the public sector, the POA would agree to the establishment changes in the public sector bid to try to hold on to the management of Birmingham prison. Those involved savage cuts to the establishment. Indeed, the winning bid for HMP Birmingham by G4S involved about 150 more staff than the public sector bid.

The second round of cuts, which were put into the service after 2012-13 and implemented during the course of 2013-14, involved severe establishment reductions in the prison service, all in the public sector. My hon. Friend the Minister is now having to wrestle with the consequences of that. The Government have now woken up to those consequences and are putting 2,500 prison officers back into the establishment. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) had to deal with the consequences of the previous policy when he was prisons Minister, and immensely difficult it was, too.

The message that I want to give to my hon. Friend the Minister involves the possible role of the private sector, and I want to try to win this argument across the House. The problem under my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell was the row with Serco and G4S over the management of the tagging contracts. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, it resulted in those companies—the biggest suppliers of private sector services in the custodial system—not being considered for contracts. That meant that we lost a serious amount of competition; indeed, the whole competition programme was stopped.

The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) referred to Doncaster prison, which is run by Serco. When I went to see it as prisons Minister, it was a quite outstanding prison. Serco had engaged with the Department, and its contract to manage the prison incentivised it to deliver the necessary rehabilitation. There is no right or wrong answer on public or private sector involvement, but the big advantage of private sector prisons is that they are cheaper to run and cost the service less. The companies also invest heavily in leadership in those prisons. In my experience, the most innovative practices and regimes, particularly around rehabilitation and the management of offenders, were in the private sector. I know that the reforms in the White Paper will try to give some of those freedoms to the governors of public sector prisons, and I wish my hon. Friend the Minister all power to his elbow in achieving that.

There are two ways in which to get resources into the custodial estate, and that process has to be done in partnership with the private sector. First, we need to change and improve the estate, which means continuing the process of selling off the old prisons—they are expensive to run and often occupy expensive real estate—and building new ones. Those new prisons should be built and operated by the private sector. We can take the savings there. If the money is not available in the public sector budget just now, at least the private sector will give us the ability to deal with the funding over a prolonged period.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What about Oakwood?

[Crispin Blunt]

The former shadow spokeswoman asks about Oakwood prison. The cost of a place there was £13,000 a year, compared with an average cost of £22,000 per place in a more expensive prison.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

If I am honest, I am entering the debate with a certain amount of trepidation, for the simple reason that we seem to have a veritable cricket team of former prisons Ministers and, for that matter, lawyers who have been involved in this area.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), who came with me on a cricket tour to Jamaica, where we visited a very interesting prison. The work he did to make sure there will be a new prison there, so that we can, hopefully, transfer some of the Jamaican prisoners in this country back to Jamaica, was quite helpful.

I am not going to pretend for one moment that I have any prisons in my constituency. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, I worked as the Conservative party agent in Mitcham and Morden for the prisons Minister at the time—one Angela Rumbold—and I learned quite a bit. Indeed, I visited Wandsworth prison, where staff were trying to get Ronnie Biggs to go back. When I asked what was happening, they said that they had his clothes and that they wanted him to go back and collect the stuff in person, which, of course, he eventually did.

In my constituency, I have probably the busiest custody suite in the whole country, and that is the end we have to start from.

We need to make sure that three things happen. First, people must be able to read, write and add up. I commend the Government for producing a league table of prisons that are achieving that. That is very good news. Secondly, we must get people off drugs. The Government are obviously very aware of that issue. Thirdly, we must think about veterans. I represent a naval garrison city with a large and growing Royal Marine population. I pay tribute to Trevor Philpott, who runs an organisation called Veterans Change Partnership that is seeking to change the justice system so that we do not get veterans in it in the first place. I encourage the justice system to make greater use of people who have served in the military as magistrates. That would be incredibly helpful, because at least they have some idea of what happens—

[Jenny Chapman]

rose—

[Oliver Colvile]

I am sorry, but I will not give way because I am very short of time.

I am involved in an organisation called Forward Assist in which the shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), has also been very involved. When I served on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, we went to Washington, where we learned how veterans are dealt with in veteran treatment courts. I urge the Government to examine at that in no uncertain terms, because it is vital that we get this right. We must also do something about mental health, where I ask the Government to look at better training for prison officers. Prison officers do a brilliantly good job. I have a lot of prison officers in my constituency who work just outside it in Dartmoor. I am really looking forward to visiting Exeter and Dartmoor prisons.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I echo the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) in thanking our brave prison officers for the hard work they do and extend those thanks to the Prison Service’s Tornado officers, who have been active over the past few months and have done a splendid job.

This has been a well informed and, at times, lively debate. We heard one speaker from Plaid Cymru, five from the Labour Benches and 13 from the Government Benches. The Government Members included two former prisons Ministers and two former Justice Secretaries, which shows how seriously we take issues in our prisons and turning around people’s lives.

[Jenny Chapman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gyimah]

I will make some progress first.

The Government have owned up to the problem. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said from the moment she was appointed that the level of violence in prisons is too high and has acknowledged that staffing is part of the answer to that complex problem, which has developed over a long period of time. There is consensus across the House that something needs to be done about this problem. The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that in the 30 minutes for which the shadow Secretary of State spoke, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) so eruditely put it, we did not get “a single positive alternative”. Listening to the shadow Secretary of State, I realised why one old wag referred to this House as the gasworks: his speech was full of hot air.

Our plan is very clear. In the immediate term, we are monitoring the situation and supporting governors to maintain order across the estate. In the longer term, we are tackling security threats, improving staffing levels and transforming the ways prison officers support and challenge prisoners. As part of that, we are looking at raising the prestige, status and role of prison officers. Those are not just words; they are backed by action, as was set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. There is a White Paper, new investment in staffing has been secured, and a prison and courts Bill, an employment strategy, a strategy to deal with women offenders and the probation service review are on the way. That is real action to tackle the serious problems in our prisons.

[Jenny Chapman]

Does the Minister take any responsibility at all for the deterioration in our prisons since 2010?

[Mr Gyimah]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made it very clear that it is incredibly simplistic to say that the problems in our prisons are simply due to staffing. There is the rise of new psychoactive substances and old taboos in prisons have been broken. It used to be the case that prisoners never attacked a female prison officer. Now we see that routinely on our wings. Our prisons have changed and to deal with that complex problem, we need a multifaceted set of answers. That is what this Government are delivering.

The Opposition made two principal points. The first was about overcrowding. However, we still do not know whether the Opposition agree with themselves, given Lady Chakrabarti’s view that we should reduce prison numbers to the tune of 45,000. Even on the issue of prison officers, when my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) challenged the shadow Secretary of State to commit to increasing prison officer numbers by 2,500, he could not make that commitment. At the end of an Opposition day debate, I am none the wiser about Labour’s solution to a problem it calls a crisis. It called the debate but has been unable to offer a solution.

In the brief time I have to sum up, I will pick up on some of the points made in the debate. The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) made a very good speech. On leadership, I agree that we want governors to stay put for longer. We also want to ensure that staffing is effective on the wings, and I totally agree that we do not want the 1:60 ratio she mentioned. The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath, made a characteristically erudite and eloquent speech, and I agree on the need for smarter alternatives to incarceration. One way is to deal with problems before custody. He also mentioned problem-solving courts. That concept, which we are currently trialling, is one I am very hopeful about.