Prisons: Planning and Policies

Debate between Charles Walker and Andrew Selous

Thursday 15th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

We have promised a response in the autumn. We are actively considering that extremely important report, about which I will say a little in a moment if my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Justice Committee, will allow me.

In September, we announced a departmental review of the youth justice system, led by Charlie Taylor, the former chief executive of the National College of Teaching and Leadership. I recognise the importance of clear responsibility for the young adult offender group. We have therefore appointed a deputy director of custody for young people, within NOMS, as senior lead on operational policy on young adults. We are also working to improve the evidence base around what works best with young adult offenders. That includes developing and testing a tool to screen for emotional and social maturity, which should help us to understand need better and better tailor services and interventions for young adult offenders in prison or in the community.

The shadow Minister quite properly raised prison safety. The safety of our staff as they deliver a secure prison regime is an absolute priority. We are tackling dangerous new psychoactive substances, to help drive down the number of assaults and violent incidents. Measures have been taken to help deter prisoners from violence. For example, we brought in, for the first time ever, a joint national protocol between NOMS, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, to ensure that there is a nationally consistent approach to referral and prosecution of crimes in prison. That is a really important mechanism. It is a significant change and will play its part in reducing violence in prisons.

The Serious Crime Act 2015 has brought in two new offences. Unbelievably, it was not an offence to possess a knife in a prison—if you can believe that—without authorisation. That has now changed. We are bringing in a new offence of throwing or projecting any item over a prison wall. The link to violence is very clear; it is mainly drugs that are thrown over the walls, and we know that new psychoactive substances are involved in provoking many violent incidents. That is why such measures are important.

We are bringing in other measures to record and understand the incidents of violence in prisons and the response to those incidents. We are developing a violence diagnostic tool, to enable better analysis at national, regional and local levels, and operational guidance for governors, to advise staff in prison on how they might better manage both potential and actual violent incidents. We are also piloting body-worn cameras in 22 public sector and two private sector prisons. I visited Glen Parva recently and was impressed by what I saw. The staff told me that they felt a lot safer; the prisoners also told me that they felt a lot safer, which is important. We will evaluate that early next year. We do not underestimate the hard work and challenges faced by our prison staff in dealing with serious violent incidents. We will continue to support our staff and help them to maintain safe and secure prisons.

The issue of self-inflicted deaths was rightly raised earlier. Whenever a prisoner takes their own life, it is a shocking and tragic event that is felt round the whole prison. We take our duty to keep prisoners safe extremely seriously. On any given day, prison staff provide crucial care to more than 2,000 prisoners at risk of self-harming. At times, that means someone literally sitting 24/7 outside a cell door, if necessary. We continue to make every effort to improve the care that we provide to vulnerable prisoners and learn from every individual incident.

It is too simplistic to attribute self-inflicted death or self-harm to staffing reductions or benchmarking. Deaths have occurred in contractor prisons, which have not been subject to reductions, as well as public sector prisons. All prisons are required to have procedures in place to identify, manage and support people who are at risk of harm to themselves. NOMS has put in place additional resources to undertake this safer custody work. NOMS is also reviewing the operation of the case management process for prisoners assessed as being at risk—procedures for assessment, care in custody and teamwork, known as ACCT. It is considering the recommendations of the Harris review into deaths of young adults in custody, about which the Chair of the Justice Committee rightly asked.

The Committee expressed concerns about staffing. The prison system has been under some pressure as a result of a rise in the prison population, combined with staffing shortages. That is most notable in London and the south-east, where the economic recovery may have contributed to a higher than anticipated staff turnover. Immediate action was taken early in 2014 to manage those recruitment shortages, including an accelerated recruitment campaign, the introduction of the Her Majesty’s Prison Service reserves, and staff sent on detached duty to the prisons with the greatest shortages. In the 12 months to June 2015, 2,230 new prison officers began training. Of those, 1,820 were new recruits and 410 were existing NOMS staff who have regraded to become prison officers. In the past 12 months to June 2015, there has been a net increase of 420 prison officers. Those officers will go at least some of the way to dealing with the issues of violence and safety that have been raised throughout the debate. We are also looking to recruit a similar number this year with our ongoing recruitment campaign.

There are, however, establishments where it remains hard to recruit. To address that issue, NOMS has looked at a number of options based on evidence, such as turnover, volume of vacancies and reward in other industries. A decision has been made against organisational objectives, Government policy on public sector pay and financial affordability, to improve our reward offer for prison officers at those sites. NOMS has worked, and will continue to work, to support its staff and provide them with the skills and development opportunities that they need to perform their duties with confidence and the necessary skills.

I shall quickly touch on the role of the external monitoring bodies. I wrote to the Chair of the Justice Committee in July, clarifying that the reference in the NOMS original response to the Justice Committee to a review of the independence of all criminal justice inspectorates was made in error, for which I apologise. A corrected version of the NOMS response has now been relayed in Parliament. I assure the House that in the absence of such a review, both the Secretary of State and I remain absolutely committed to safeguarding the imperative of an inspectorate that operates, and is perceived to operate, fully independently of both the sponsoring Department and the organisations in its remit.

The last major point I want to cover concerns our transforming rehabilitation reforms. As the Committee will know, reoffending has been too high for too long, which is why we have reformed the way that offenders are managed in the community. The transforming rehabilitation reforms seek to get the best out of the voluntary, public and private sectors to help offenders turn away from crime. These reforms mean that for the first time in recent history, virtually every offender released from custody will receive statutory supervision and rehabilitation in the community, including those offenders sentenced to less than 12 months in custody. We expect the new providers to make real contributions towards reducing reoffending, and we are closely monitoring their progress. The reforms have made substantial changes to how we manage offenders in England and Wales, and I am proud to be part of the team that has made those changes happen.

Of course, there remains much work to be done as we embed these reforms, and I take this opportunity to thank probation and prison staff for their continued hard work. They are doing a magnificent job, and they deserve our congratulation and recognition.

Regarding work, I agree with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell). I was interested to hear about the experience in German prisons; the Singaporean prison system also places a very high emphasis on both getting prisoners into work in prison and getting them into employment afterwards. I am grateful to him for making that point.

The hon. Member for Darlington was absolutely right to refer to the tragic death of Lorraine Barwell. It was an horrendous incident and I can assure the hon. Lady that it was taken extremely seriously within the Ministry of Justice; reviews are ongoing and a charge of murder has been brought. The flag on the Ministry of Justice flew at half-mast on the day of the funeral. The hon. Lady’s comments were absolutely right. I myself have said it many times before and I say it again now: prison officers are on the front line, keeping us all safe. We owe every one of them a debt of duty. They may not be in the public eye in the way other front-line professionals are, but what they do is every bit as important. We need to recognise that on every occasion.

Thank you very much, Mr Walker; I am very grateful for having had the chance to respond to the debate. I hope that I have managed to respond to all the points raised this afternoon. If I have not done so, I will gladly write to hon. Members.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Mr Neill, perhaps we can hear from you for a few minutes in summary.

Private Members’ Bills

Debate between Charles Walker and Andrew Selous

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

Any motions that we table are amendable, and if there is a desire in the House to consider a day other than Friday for such debates, the House may do so. It is not incumbent on the Procedure Committee to tell anyone to behave in a particular way. We have come up with a set of suggestions, and the House is free to accept them, amend them or throw them out as it sees fit.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I may have missed it, but does my hon. Friend’s excellent report deal anywhere with the issue of one single Member shouting out “Object”, effectively killing or pushing into the very long grass a Bill that might have widespread public support? Did my hon. Friend and his colleagues look at that issue; does he have any thoughts on it?

[Mr Walker]

It is to be hoped that our recommendations will ensure that when someone secures a position through the ballot or whatever other system the House chooses, that person will get a chance to put their legislation before the House and let it decide on its merits or otherwise without having it talked out or ruined by a single individual or a small minority. If, however, my hon. Friend has found a deficiency in our report, please point it out to me, the Clerk and others, because we hope to bring these recommendations forward in the not too distant future and we want to make sure that what is put before the House has been properly tested.