Prevention of Future Deaths Report: Terance Radford

Debate between Edward Argar and Lee Anderson

Wednesday 20th March 2024 Westminster Hall

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

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing a debate on this important issue. It is, as we have all seen, inevitably a sad debate, given the nature of the tragic events we are discussing.

First, I express my deepest sympathy to the hon. Member’s constituents and to Mr Radford’s family and friends. I want to highlight, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), did, the dignity that they have shown throughout what has been an horrific set of circumstances. The circumstances of Terance’s—Terry’s—death are truly terrible, and my thoughts are with them and the rest of his family. I also extend my sympathies to the other victims of Mr Collins’s crimes that day.

The hon. Member for Ashfield has rightly been tenacious in raising and pursuing this matter, and I am conscious that, prior to my appointment to my role in November 2023, he engaged with my predecessor. I have taken the time to read carefully his extensive correspondence with the previous Ministers.

The circumstances of this crime, and the other serious offences committed on 19 April 2019, are not just deeply troubling but deeply upsetting. I am grateful to the coroner for her work in highlighting areas in the home detention curfew policy, as it was at the time, that require action. That helps to ensure that we have updated, improved policies and practices in place to help prevent things like this from happening again.

I note the shadow Minister’s points, but I am going to focus on the specifics of the case, rather than ranging more widely into the broader political sphere. We took the findings and recommendations in the coroner’s report extremely seriously. I will explain the Government’s actions in response, although I fully appreciate that those will not lessen in any way the pain and the loss to Terry’s family and friends. I acknowledge that the internal investigation into the case identified errors and failures, which it is also important for me to speak about.

It may be helpful for me to say a little about the home detention curfew scheme, or HDC, under which Collins was released. It has been in place for over two decades, having been created and introduced in 1999 by the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw. It is a tool in successfully managing the transition of eligible offenders from custody back into the community. It does so by enabling certain prisoners to be released before their normal automatic release date while remaining subject to significant restrictions on their liberty, including a curfew, which is monitored by electronic tag. The scheme is limited to certain types of offenders: all sexual and serious violent offenders, for example, are excluded from it, as are those subject to Parole Board release. Offenders are required to undergo a robust risk assessment to ensure they are released only if there is a plan in place to manage them safely in the community.

I am sorry to say that, having looked into this case following the hon. Gentleman’s tabling of the debate, the process in Collins’s case was clearly found to have fallen short of what was expected and what people had a right to expect. Although the offences for which Collins was serving his sentence were correctly identified as eligible and suitable for HDC, the risk management planning was undertaken without all the relevant information being obtained, as the hon. Gentleman has highlighted. That included information about the mental health of Mr Collins at the time. I will say a little more about the investigation and its findings.

Protecting the public must be our overriding priority, and it is therefore right to keep HDC policy and practice under review, to ensure that it remains as robust and safe as possible. Of course, that must mean learning lessons and taking action when something goes tragically wrong, as it did on this occasion. Every failure or serious incident committed by someone who has been released on HDC is, rightly, taken incredibly seriously, and what happened in the case of Terry’s death was truly appalling.

I should have mentioned at the beginning that I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for painting a very human picture and making this House, and those following our proceedings, very much aware that this is a real person. This was someone who served his community, served his country, and was much loved by his family and friends. He was only going about his normal daily life, which he should have been able to enjoy peacefully. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making this a very human story and bringing that across in our debate.

We have taken actions to investigate what happened and address the concerns raised by the coroner. I would never wish in any way to detract—in what I say or in the lessons learned—from the huge impact that that has clearly had.

I will turn now to the lessons learned from the prevention of future deaths report. The report raised three central concerns about the HDC policy that was in place at the time of Collins’s release. First, the coroner —I pay tribute to His Majesty’s coroner, then Her Majesty’s coroner, for the work on this—highlighted that the prisoner in this case, at the time he was released on HDC, was being held in prison segregation due to his poor conduct in custody and concerns about the risks he might present to others in the prison, as highlighted by the hon. Member for Ashfield in his remarks. The coroner rightly raised concerns about release in that context and, as a result, we have since taken action to address that issue.

The policy framework has been amended to ensure that those in segregation are not released on HDC unless the most senior governor in the prison, the governing governor, has specifically considered those circumstances and determined that the offender can be safely managed in the community. It is now the policy that no one is released on HDC directly from segregation, unless the risks have been explicitly considered and a decision actively made at the time of release that HDC remains a safe and appropriate route.

Secondly, the report highlighted that the policy at the time required decision makers to consider the risks that the offender might present to those at the proposed curfew address, but not to the public more widely. Rightly, changes have been made to address that, too. The policy now in place requires that, when considering a prisoner for release on HDC, account must be taken of the risks presented overall to people in the community, not just those at the address the offender is going to. It has been made clear that those wider, more general risks must form part of the process of determining whether an offender is safe to be released on HDC.

Thirdly, concerns were raised that the HDC policy contained insufficient guidance on the need to share information properly between the various agencies and professionals involved in managing releases. I fully agree that such information sharing is vital to ensuring that any risks or concerns about a potential release are picked up and acted on. Therefore, again, the policy framework has strengthened the requirement to draw on information from all relevant departments of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and from external agencies, including the police and social services, when making such HDC decisions. Again, it has been made clear that prisoners are not to be released on HDC if any important risk-management information is missing. The failings—let us call them what they are—and tragic circumstances of this case underline the importance of prisons, probation and the wider system working together to ensure the safe release of prisoners on HDC while maintaining public protection.

The hon. Member for Ashfield, entirely understandably, asks about the officers at HMP Ranby involved in this case, and the decision to release Collins on HDC. A thorough internal HMPPS investigation was conducted by senior managers into the release of Collins and the decisions leading up to his release on HDC, as the hon. Gentleman highlighted. That investigation concluded that Collins should not have been released from on HDC from HMP Ranby in April 2019, as the decision to release was not in line with HMPPS policy—I have already highlighted that not all relevant information about risk had been obtained to inform that decision.

The investigation also found that, as Collins had been subjected to adjudication proceedings, the HDC process should have been paused to allow those proceedings to take place. It also made a number of recommendations about policy and practice that have been taken forward, in addition to the changes I have described to the national policy framework to strengthen the approach to assessments, information sharing and decision making on HDC.

In the light of the investigation, HMPPS did decide that there were sufficient grounds to bring disciplinary proceedings against staff at the prison. As part of any internal disciplinary process, if the investigator finds any evidence that a criminal offence could have been committed, the matter is referred to the police to investigate. No evidence of criminal conduct by the three members of staff at HMP Ranby was found, so the matter was not handed to the police.

The hon. Gentleman mentions the police in that context. I am conscious that he will be aware that the police operate independently of the Government and indeed of the Home Office, their sponsoring Department, for want of a better way of putting it, and they make their own decisions. I am sure that his point will have been heard in that context, and I suspect that, knowing the hon. Gentleman as I do, he will have communicated those points directly to Nottinghamshire Police on behalf of his constituents. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that, absent criminal proceedings or public trial, there has been no public process around this.

Concluding that there was no evidence of criminal conduct, HMPPS then took action under its own disciplinary proceedings. I appreciate the points the hon. Member for Ashfield makes, and I understand why he makes them. Although it pains me, I am legally unable to disclose the details of those disciplinary proceedings, as I am advised that to do so would be acting in breach of the law. I totally appreciate and understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes as, prior to taking this portfolio in November of last year, I served for a number of years as the Minister for Victims and Community Safety. I appreciate the importance of closure and of people being able to move on, even in a tiny way.

That said, I am sure that the process and decisions in this case have been looked to very carefully by senior officials in HMPPS. Following the hon. Gentleman’s securing of this debate, as well as the research I have done and the information I have asked to be provided with for it, it is an issue I intend to return to with my officials. I will continue to look into the points that the hon. Gentleman has raised. If it is helpful to the hon. Gentleman, I offer him a meeting with relevant senior HMPPS officials and me to discuss how that disciplinary process works and the legal implications of it. I suspect he would rightly put across his point there courteously but firmly. If he indicates that is helpful, I would be happy to have that conversation with him. I appreciate it will not go anywhere near as far as he may wish, but it may none the less be of some help. I leave that offer with him.

[Lee Anderson]

I completely understand that the Minister would be breaking the law to tell us what sort of disciplinary measures were taken on the three governors. However, can the Minister confirm whether the three governors are still working in the Prison Service?

[Edward Argar]

I am afraid, as I have said, I am unable to give any details on the nature of that disciplinary process in the Chamber. I hear everything the hon. Gentleman says, and I hope he will take up the offer of a conversation. That is his choice, and I will respect whatever decision he makes on that.

We take our responsibility to keep the public safe very seriously. Where there have been lessons to learn from horrific and tragic cases such as this, where the most horrendous outcome has occurred, we have taken decisive action to address and respond to the issues raised. I am incredibly grateful for the contributions to this debate, for its tone, and for the approach adopted by the hon. Member for Ashfield. I repeat my heartfelt condolences to Terry’s family and friends, who have suffered so terribly. I reiterate my gratitude to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate and allowing us to cast a light on important issues that are of great concern both to those in the Chamber and more widely. I hope he will consider the offer of conversation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Argar and Lee Anderson

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

We will endeavour to respond swiftly, but if the hon. Gentleman would like to meet me about capital funding for those sorts of projects, I am always happy to meet him.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

Now then: the Health Secretary will be aware that King’s Mill Hospital in Ashfield was built under a disastrous private finance initiative deal under the last Labour Government. It now costs us about £1 million a week to service the debt—money that could be spent on social care in Ashfield. Will he meet me to discuss how we can rid my trust of this crippling debt of £1 million a week and spend it on social care?