Prison Reform and Safety

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

There are three issues that could promote the progress of effective prison reform, all of which relate to improving prisoners’ contact with their families. As time is short, I will summarise those issues at the outset. First, there is a need to consider the appointment of a deputy director for families, mirroring the staffing priority given to drugs and violence in prisons. Secondly, there is a need to speed up the long-awaited policy announcement on the revised procedures for release on temporary licence. Thirdly, could Skype and other innovative face-to-face digital platforms be used to strengthen prisoners’ family ties?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for successfully championing the importance of good-quality family contact to prisoners and their rehabilitation when he was Prisons Minister. His leadership paved the way for the excellent Farmer review.

The need to replicate the good practice that exists across the prison estate in supporting prisoners’ family ties and to address inconsistencies in that area was one of the key messages of the Farmer review, “The Importance of Strengthening Prisoners’ Family Ties to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime,” published earlier this year. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) for his wholehearted commitment to implementing in full every one of the Farmer review’s 21 recommendations.

Another reason for the Farmer review so successfully gaining traction in government is that senior officials are personally committed to the families agenda, often because they have been No. 1 governors in prisons and have seen at first hand the difference made by good family contact. However, this important agenda cannot be dependent on an individual official’s conviction that it matters. Civil servants move on.

Indeed, Paul Baker, the most senior official working on the implementation of the Farmer review, is leaving at the end of the year. I pause here to acknowledge the decades of excellent service he has given to our Prison Service, his dogged pursuit of reform and his championing of prisoners’ families, who are among the most neglected and stigmatised people in this country.

Mr Baker currently heads that work alongside his responsibilities as deputy director of custody for London and Thames Valley, a large group of prisons. In other words, the families agenda is tagged on to a very demanding existing work load. Does the Minister agree that now would be the ideal time to give this agenda the same priority within the management structure of the prisons system as drugs and violence, each of which has a dedicated deputy director? If the importance of family and other relationships is to be the golden thread running through our prisons, we need senior staff who are mandated to keep the issue salient until it is embedded in the estate as firmly as action to combat drugs and violence. Indeed, family involvement drives improvements in those other areas.

Will the Minister kindly look at speeding up the development and announcement of the release on temporary licence policy? ROTL allows for the temporary release of prisoners, where it is safe to do so, to undertake purposeful activities that will benefit their resettlement, including rebuilding closer ties with their family. If men undertake parenting and other family learning courses, such as on how to be a responsible father, open conditions such as ROTL give them the opportunity to put theory into practice.

Exceptional negative incidents will always be reported, but the evidence showing high rates of compliance with ROTL terms and a consequential reduction in reoffending rates is positive. For example, an offender could attend parent-teacher evenings, as well as case conferences to discuss their child protection and care proceedings. This also helps families adjust to having the person around more. Many prisoners begin to feel less legitimate as a parent, which makes it difficult to build rounded relationships with their child, and ROTL would help boost their confidence as a parent. Indicators suggest that all forms of ROTL have fallen significantly since 2013. Governors have been waiting for guidance on this for more than a year and do need it now.

Finally, may I ask the Minister whether Skype or other face-to-face platforms could be used to aid prisoners’ family contact time, enabling digital visits to homes to see their family members in that context?