Prisons and Probation

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

The tone of this debate has been very civil, so let us hope that that continues—I am not sure whether it will. I am reassured by the civil tone taken by the Justice Secretary, a man I have a lot of respect for, as I do for the Prisons Minister, who I have met on many occasions to discuss the prison nearest my constituency. The Opposition’s motion is well crafted and spells out clearly the situation facing not only the Prison Service, but the probation service—the debate so far has not focused enough on the probation service.

It is absolutely clear that the Prison Service is in utter chaos. Now, I am not looking to put the blame on anybody. I am not looking to hold these six fingers up and say, “You’ve been in for six years, so you should have cleared it by now.” And I do not want anybody to intervene and ask, “What did you do when you were in power?” That is not the issue; the issue is how we put this situation right. The Prison Service is in utter chaos, and I am not bothered about what anybody says, because I have had constituents coming to see me about it, including prisoners, members of the public, teachers, chaplains, people who work on the prisons estate and members of the Prison Officers Association. It is right to place on the record our high praise for the men and women in the Prison Service and the probation service, who do a fantastic job in the most difficult circumstances. It is important that they realise that Members of this House understand the problems they face.

It was not just the unions or individuals who have suggested that the Prison Service has deteriorated; it was the chief inspector of prisons himself. He said that they were the worst he had seen them for 10 years. At the same time as the prison population continues to increase—a record 85,000-plus people are now in prison—we are seeing a reduction in the number of staff on the prisons estate. We have more prisoners but fewer people looking after them. Surely that is a recipe for disaster.

The Justice Secretary said there have been 500 new recruits over the past year or so, but we must consider the staff reductions on the prisons estate before then. We lost lots of people with tremendous experience from the Prison Service, and the people who filled that hole are on lower wages, have worse terms and conditions and lack any experience in what is an important occupation. We lost that experience from the Prison Service and have not regained that ground.

All of us, as politicians, have deep concerns about this situation, and I will tell Members why. This has been mentioned already, but let us look at the bare statistics on what is happening in the Prison Service as we sit here debating. Deaths in custody are up by 14%, self-harming is up by 21%, and prisoner-on-prisoner assaults are up by 13%. There were 4,156 staff assaulted by prisoners last year—a 20% increase, which has got to horrify everyone—and 572 serious assaults on staff, an increase of 42%, as Members on both sides of the House have said. At the very least, we should be ensuring that members of the Prison Service, who are doing the job that they are paid to do, should be safe in doing so. These rates show that there must be fear and stress every time they get out of bed in the morning or the evening. We are not looking after them—the statistics show that. We have seen the horrific injuries that many of them have received while doing a day’s work to put shoes on the kids and bread on the table. We should be looking at ways and means of ensuring that these statistics are greatly reduced.

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) talked about reoffending rates. The adult reoffending rate is now 45.8%—that is wholly unacceptable—and the juvenile reoffending rate is 66.5%. We have to get to the bottom of this, because if we do not, the rates will continue to increase and there will be further chaos on the prison estate. It is frightening. I am not being alarmist, but the Prison Service is in complete and utter meltdown and mayhem.

When we talk about the privatisation of prisons, which has happened many times, it is said, “Well, the Opposition privatised prisons when they were in government.” That is true—it is pointless my standing here trying to erase historical facts—but that does not make it any better when we see what is happening in some privatised prisons today. Sodexo was the successful bidder to operate HMP Northumberland, the prison nearest to my constituency. Immediately, the Sodexo model was to reduce the workforce from 440 to 270. That frightened so many experienced people—I have mentioned them before—that there was a rush for redundancies and many of them left the service, something that we did not want to see.

People who come to see me are frightened. We hear reports about what is happening in the likes of HMP Northumberland with the drugs and the Spice. Spice must be unbelievable. I am not sure if anybody here will admit to having taken it. Certainly I have not, and it would not be my intention to do so. People reckon that Spice is rife—that everybody in the prison is on it, and if not there is something wrong with them, so they should be on it. How are they getting this stuff into the prison? Why has it been allowed to escalate to the proportions it has? Someone mentioned earlier the Bill on legal highs that is passing through Parliament. It does not matter whether these highs are legal or illegal—we must stamp them out on the prison estate, because they are causing problems with violence and everything else associated with the things we are discussing.

Alcohol is a huge problem. There is alcohol in the prisons. People are making their own alcohol. Not last Christmas but the Christmas before, there was an emergency situation in HMP Northumberland where the contact room could not get in contact with one of the prison officers. He was a man who had just been employed; he had not even been checked. He was one of the people who had no experience, but he knew from where he lived a few of the prisoners, who were his mates. Those in charge looked for him and tried to contact him—this was on new year’s day—and when they eventually went up on the wing, where the doors were open and everyone in the prison was having a whale of a time, they found not the prisoners lying intoxicated on their beds, but the prison officer. The real crime was that the keys for the wing were lying there for anybody to get hold of, which I believe is considered a cardinal sin.

I have raised such points with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who has responsibility for prisons. Similar things are happening. We have people with mobile phones arranging crimes from their cells. That cannot be right, and we must stamp it out. We have discussed such things. We have bullying and intimidation as we have never seen them before. Another incident at HMP Northumberland that we need to look at happened when there were not enough prison staff to ensure the segregation of vulnerable prisoners from ordinary, mainstream ones. That caused absolute mayhem, as hon. Members can understand. Faeces were found in the vulnerable prisoners’ food, which cannot be allowed to happen in the modern day.

I will wrap up simply by saying that I hope, in this debate on prisons and probation, that someone will speak about the probation side. Since privatisation, the fragmentation of the probation service has caused lots of problems within the service, which is something else we need to consider.

[Several hon. Members rose—]