Social Media Access in Prisons

Edward Argar Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

As ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair. You will be reassured to know that I do not intend to take all the time available and speak until 10.30 pm, but I am genuinely pleased that in a debate of such significance we have enough time to address the issues that have been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), whom I congratulate on securing it.

I want to take this opportunity to express my deepest sympathies for my hon. Friend’s constituent Zoey McGill, the bereaved mother of Jack. For Jack’s murderer to have been allegedly using TikTok in prison is sickening, and no parent should have to suffer in this way. That is one of the reasons I stand at the Dispatch Box this evening to respond to my hon. Friend and explain how the Government plan to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

How can I say no to the hon. Gentleman?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) said that the video had been made in prison, and the other people involved were in prison. Surely, given the clear evidential base, there must be a methodology enabling the governor to take this person to task and impose sanctions to ensure that he spends a longer time in prison.

[Edward Argar]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear with me for a moment, because I will turn to that specific point. However, I want to begin by highlighting the close interest that my hon. Friend has taken in this horrific case on behalf of his constituent. As we all know, he is unfailingly courteous, diligent and passionate as a constituency Member, when acting and speaking on behalf of his constituents, but I think he would acknowledge that however diligent he is in relation to all cases, some cases have a real impact on an individual Member of Parliament, and I suspect that this is one of them. He and I have spoken about this case on a number of occasions, and I pay tribute to his work on behalf of his constituent, but I can reassure the House that no sooner did it hit his desk than it hit my own desk and my mobile phone.

I also thank my hon. Friend for raising the extremely important and challenging issue of knife crime—a crime that destroys lives and, so often, not just the lives of those who are not carrying knives and who end up as innocent victims. We also need to remember, and to remind people, that those who carry knives are at serious risk of being victims themselves. The Government take the threat posed by knife crime incredibly seriously, as has been demonstrated by our investment of £170 million since 2019 alone on prevention and enforcement initiatives in the 20 policing areas where violent crime is most prominent. That includes Northumbria, which covers Newcastle, Sunderland, and the surrounding area. Through those initiatives, an estimated 136,000 violent offences across the country have been prevented in the first three years of their operation. As a result of these efforts, together with the broader Home Office serious violence strategy, 120,000 weapons have been removed from Britain’s streets, and knife crime is now 7% below pre-pandemic levels.

I also want to acknowledge the important work of the North East Knife Crime Taskforce. I am aware of the vital work that it does—not least from the representations made to me by my hon. Friend—and of how it brings together victims’ families, representatives of sports clubs, teachers and people from across the criminal justice system to share ideas and forward-thinking strategies to help prevent lives from being lost on our streets. This relatively new organisation, founded last year, has been set up and driven by that national institution The Northern Echo and by brave local parents, including Zoey McGill. Let me take a moment to pay tribute to her for her dignity in the face of a terrible tragedy, and her willingness to put herself out there to try to make a difference and prevent this from happening to other families. In that vein, I should recognise, as my hon. Friend did, Theresa on behalf of Chris, Samantha’s family and friends, and Tanya on behalf of Connor.

As constituency Members of Parliament and as a House, we owe a huge debt to those who have suffered the most unthinkable things, but who want to make a difference and prevent them from happening to anyone else. Tackling knife crime and preventing future victims is a policy area led by my colleagues in the Home Office, but I will be very happy to work with my hon. Friend and Home Office colleagues to see what can be done to work with the taskforce.

My hon. Friend rightly mentioned that Jack Woodley’s murderer allegedly being able to access social media potentially undermines the criminal justice system and, of course, torments the families of victims. That is clearly unacceptable, which is why my Department has invested in the digital media investigations unit. As soon as it spots or is alerted to prisoner misuse of social media, it acts swiftly to work with social media companies to have the content taken down. In the case of Jack’s murderer, the team did just that: they quickly and thoroughly investigated that social media misuse, and successfully worked with TikTok to remove the content—and, indeed, the account—within three hours of it coming to our attention. I appreciate that this will frustrate my hon. Friend, but I must be a bit cautious about speaking about the details of that specific case in the public forum of the Floor of the House.

We are clear that there are robust systems in place to prevent and address poor behaviour in prisons, including serious rule breaking. Under section 40D(3A) of the Prison Act 1952, those caught with a mobile phone can face referral to the police and extra custodial time for the offence of possessing a communications device in a prison without authorisation, while those who are caught smuggling in phones can face the same consequences under section 40B(1)(a) of the same Act. As the Minister responsible for prisons, I am increasingly concerned by photos and videos from custody being shared on social media. Such content traumatises victims, can intimidate prison staff and threatens the security of our prisons. It is indeed a critical issue, and I recognise the impact that this type of online material can have on victims of crime and their families.

In separate cases from those mentioned by my hon. Friend, I was made aware that a parent whose son had been murdered contacted His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service after seeing photos on social media that were posted from prison by their son’s murderer. HMPPS reported the content to the platform in question but, regrettably, it remained online. In another example, the victim of an assault contacted HMPPS about a video of their attacker in prison, who talked for almost 15 minutes about the offence and was disparaging about the victim. Again, HMPPS reported the video to the platform on which it was hosted but, regrettably, it remained online. I cannot imagine the distress that seeing those posts must have caused.

As my hon. Friend stated, we cannot allow prisoners to use illegal phones to engage in criminality from behind bars. The Ministry of Justice has a zero-tolerance approach to illegal phones, and prisoners caught smuggling illicit items can and, rightly, do face extra time behind bars, a loss of privileges and other sanctions. The most serious crimes, including those where a mobile phone has been used for criminal activity or identified as belonging to a prisoner who is a high-risk offender, are also referred to the police, in line with the crime in prison referral agreement. We have a commitment from the Crown Prosecution Service that it will always seek to prosecute in serious cases. Moreover, prisoners are not permitted to have unsupervised access to the internet or any access to social media. Again, they can be punished if they access the internet without authorisation. Under national policy, prisoners can only access the internet in a supervised environment, and only for rehabilitative purposes.

We are clear that harmful social media content posted from prison should not have a home online and that we need to take effective action to remove it. Clearly, the current legislation does not quite go far enough, which is why the Government are committed to supporting the Prison Media Bill, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher). The Bill tackles the issue of harmful media, such as videos and images created within, or showing the inside of, prisons, being uploaded to social media platforms by strengthening existing legislation—namely, the Prison Act 1952. Crucially, the Bill would close existing loopholes, because although it is currently illegal for a person to upload content from inside a prison, it is not yet illegal for a person in the community to upload media that they have been sent by someone in custody. This means that social media companies need to try to establish whether content was uploaded from inside a prison, to determine whether it is unlawful.

The Bill would make the uploading of all unauthorised prison content illegal, regardless of whether it is uploaded from within a prison or from within the community. The Bill will also address loopholes around the creation of prison content. While it is currently illegal to film inside a prison, the law is not clear that it is illegal to film the inside of a prison from the outside—for example, by drone—or to film staff from outside the prison walls. For example, videos taken from above by drone can pose security risks by showing the lay-out of buildings in detail as well as the movement of staff and prisoners, thereby helping prisoners to smuggle in drugs or weapons. The Bill provides a solution to these issues by making it an offence to create or upload unauthorised media of the inside of a prison from outside or of prison workers on prison land. These measures will remove any ambiguity and bring the law up to date.

This is a wide-ranging problem with real-world impacts. I have mentioned a just few examples today, but in 2022 and 2023 combined, HMPPS identified and reported over 1,200 pieces of harmful prison content. The Bill will support the work of HMPPS’s specialist digital media investigations unit that I have already referenced. Last year this Government passed the Online Safety Act 2023, placing world-first legal duties on social media platforms to protect the public from harmful online material. If this additional Bill passes, we will explore how content created of or inside prisons could be added to the list of priority illegal content in the Online Safety Act, meaning that social media companies would be required by law to proactively remove it.

My hon. Friend touched on the significant investment already made by the Department in stopping mobile phones being smuggled into the prison estate. We finished delivering our £100 million security investment programme in March 2022. We continue to adapt and develop our countermeasures to tackle new methods as they emerge. That investment included the deployment of 75 additional X-ray body scanners, allowing staff to see whether prisoners are smuggling illegal contraband, including phones, internally. This means that we have the ability in every single closed adult male prison to detect illicit items via X-ray. This is particularly important as some phones, known as micro-mobiles, are no bigger than a matchbox. They are small, easily concealed and hard to detect. Between July 2020 and October 2023, the X-ray body scanners have recorded 46,925 positive indications, helping to tackle the supply of mobile phones and drugs into prisons.

The programme also delivered airport-style enhanced gate security at 42 high-risk prison sites across the private and public prison estate, implementing routine searching of staff and visitors. This investment paid for 659 specialist staff, 154 drugs dogs and more than 200 pieces of equipment, including archway and handheld metal detectors. These are vital tools in stopping mobile phones and SIM cards circulating in our prisons. We have procured, developed and installed a variety of detection and other mobile phone technologies across the estate, targeting prisoners that represent the highest risk of harm through illicit phone use.

I am sure my hon. Friend will appreciate that I always try to be as open as I can in this public forum, but I cannot go into in as much detail as he would wish about the specifics of what the equipment does, where it is deployed or the extent of its capability, or disclose suppliers due to security and commercial sensitivities and to protect the tactics involved. It is vital that those seeking to undermine our defences are not given any information that helps them to do so, but I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend separately and privately to discuss this area in more detail and hopefully provide him with further reassurance about our capabilities in this respect. He mentioned virtual reality, and that is an area I will look into further. We will consider the merits of potential options that would allow for VR delivery in regard to the training and rehabilitation of prisoners.

As my hon. Friend highlighted, in October 2023 we also introduced new legislation to crack down on criminals using drones to deliver contraband including mobile phones into prisons. The new airspace restrictions make it an automatic offence to fly drones within 400 metres of any closed prison or young offender institution in England and Wales. Drone operators who break the rules could face fines of up to £2,500, while those found smuggling illicit items will face up to 10 years in prison. These restrictions mean that police and prison staff can quickly identify suspicious drones and take action against suspected criminal activity, including the illegal filming of prison establishments. We are also investing in a new digital forensics unit to interrogate devices smuggled into jails, to produce improved evidence that is more likely to bring a successful prosecution in court.

Of course, as my hon. Friend said, there is fundamentally no need for a prisoner to be in possession of a mobile phone. The last installations of landlines across all closed public sector prisons in England and Wales are due to be completed this month. These phones are installed in prisoners’ cells to enable closer family ties and to improve safety on wings where payphones on landings were previously used. A PIN is used to access a prisoner’s account, and credit must be purchased in advance. The calls are restricted to security-cleared numbers and are outgoing only. Furthermore, since 2020, all prisons across England and Wales are able to offer social video calls with approved family members and friends, in addition to existing means of contact including social visits, phone calls and letters.

I commend my hon. Friend for raising the important issue of how young offenders can engage positively with a wide range of rehabilitative endeavours, such as music, helping them to move away from criminality and to rebuild their lives.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) mentioned books, and he alluded to an example from when our parties were in coalition in 2014. He is right to highlight the importance of books but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield said, we need to exercise a degree of caution. I had the privilege of visiting HMP Leicester last week, and I saw its amazing prison library and the work it does with the Shannon Trust and the National Literacy Trust. I have about 2,000 books cluttering my house, but we all know the power of books to give people new ideas and new opportunities to make a positive start.

I echo the views of my hon. Friend: sentencing has five objectives, one of which is to deter people from committing crime, and depriving people of their liberty represents a significant deterrent. Of course, those sentenced to custody are paying a debt to society and to the people they offended against. Prison also protects the public by keeping in custody those convicted by the courts.

The core role of protecting the public from serious offenders should also extend to giving those in custody a positive choice not to pursue a lawless life but to set out on the straight and narrow. This means that they do not reoffend, which means fewer victims of crime in all the communities we represent. It is important that we recognise that creating and uploading social media content from within prison does not form part of that rehabilitative journey. I urge colleagues across the House to close the loophole by supporting the Prison Media Bill’s Second Reading on Friday.

I pay tribute to Zoey and others who have seen their families ripped apart by the horror of knife crime and other violent crime. They will know that, in my hon. Friend, they have a fantastic champion and a genuinely caring and dogged advocate in this House. I believe we have made significant progress, but there is always more to do, and we are determined to do it.

Question put and agreed to.