Prisons

Gordon Henderson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

Thank you for sharing that good news, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

It can be five minutes if you want some even better news.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Henderson]

It is great to follow the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods). Like her, and like the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), I have three prisons in my constituency: Elmley, Standford Hill and Swaleside, which is mentioned in the Opposition motion. Combined, those three prisons house almost 3,000 inmates—one of the largest concentrations of prisoners in the country.

I start by paying tribute to the fantastic men and women who work in Sheppey’s prisons. They are dedicated, hard-working professionals, of whom I am immensely proud. They work in an extremely challenging environment, facing the threat of violence almost daily, with few complaints and great courage.

That threat of violence is growing for all sorts of reasons, some of which have been mentioned. Those reasons include: the increased use of drugs, which are smuggled into prisons, often by drones that deliver contraband direct to cells; the consumption of illicit alcohol; an increased gang culture in prisons; retribution for non-payment of debts; violence generated by the recovery of stolen contraband such as mobile phones; and frustration caused by a reduction in recreation time as a result of a shortage of prison officers. I am particularly concerned about that last factor because unless something is done soon to increase staffing levels in Sheppey’s prisons, all those other problems will simply get worse.

There is no denying that morale among prison staff is low, which is hardly surprising given the environment in which they have to work. The police are dealing with people all day, but many of those people are either victims of crime or people suspected of a crime but who turn out to be innocent. The people with whom prison officers have to deal day in, day out have all been found guilty of a crime, many of them violent crime.

If a police officer is attacked and injured, the perpetrators are rightly tracked down, prosecuted and, if found guilty, sent to prison for a lengthy sentence. However, if a prison officer is attacked by a prisoner, too often the only punishment meted out has been withdrawal of privileges. I believe that prison officers should be treated in exactly the same way as police officers. If a prisoner attacks a prison officer, or indeed another prisoner, that person should be tried and, if found guilty, given as harsh a sentence as if the crime had been committed outside prison. That sentence should then be added to the sentence that the prisoner is already serving.

We need a proper review of the working conditions and pay structure of prison officers, which might include a regionalisation of pay to recognise the higher cost of living in the south-east of England and the difficulties of attracting people into a job with so many challenges when better employment opportunities are available. I believe that the Government also need to re-examine their policy on prison officers’ retirement age. It is simply unfair that police officers and firefighters can retire at 60, whereas prison officers, whose work is just as physically demanding, are expected to work until they are 68.

My prison officers have a very difficult job, made worse by the ratio of frontline officers to inmates, which I will set out using information from the National Offender Management Service quarterly workforce bulletin. The key operational grades in public sector prisons are band 3 to 5 officers. According to the most recent available figures, on 30 September 2016 there were 18,000 band 3 to 5 officers in post. At the same time, of course, there were 80,000 prisoners, so what are the implications for those 18,000 band 3 to 5 prison officers?

First, we have to take into account the fact that at any one time about 20% of those officers are off work for one reason or another, such as sickness, court duties or holidays, which leaves a total of 14,400 officers. But, of course, those officers work only 37 hours a week, yet prisoners are incarcerated 24/7, which is 168 hours a week, so it takes 4.5 officers to provide continuous cover over a whole week. That means that at any one time there are just 3,200 band 3 to 5 officers on frontline duty in prisons in England and Wales. Each officer on duty has to look after 25 prisoners.

Finally, I will quickly address the Opposition motion. There is much in the motion with which I cannot disagree, not least because the facts it sets out are incontrovertible. Indeed, if the motion had finished on the word “overcrowded”, I would have been happy to support it. However, I am not happy with the remaining lines of the motion. Calling on the Government to

“reduce overcrowding and improve safety while still ensuring that those people who should be in prison are in prison”

is both illogical and nonsense. I will not be voting against the Labour motion, but I cannot support it.