Prison Reform and Safety

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend clearly remembers it vividly.

The point was well made. There are some people whom we will always have to imprison, because they deserve to go to prison, and I saw enough of them during my career as a barrister practising criminal law. However, many others are in prison due to far more complex reasons, such as bad choices, lack of support, lack of background, poor education and mental health issues. We need to be much more discerning, and that means that we need a much more sophisticated approach to our penal policy. We need to introduce genuinely robust alternatives to custody, in the right cases, for those who do not pose a threat and a danger to the public, and who can be reformed without their going to prison. That is critical. We have not yet achieved that. The objective must be not only that the public have confidence in sentences, but that we have proper systems for the rehabilitation of those who are incarcerated. However, as almost everyone will be released at some point, we must make sure we release them in a better state in which they can contribute to society than at present.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly emphasises the importance of education and rehabilitation, but may I add to that the critical aspect of access to family? May I also commend to him the report on mental health in prisons by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and the work that we did in particular to look at the risks to young people and offenders with mental health problems? Such people were not always guaranteed access to family support at critical times when they were self-harming or at risk of suicide?

[Robert Neill]

That is a good point. I know that other Members are likely to take up such issues in our debate.

While we welcome a number of the initiatives the Government have implemented, more still needs to be done. We particularly regret the loss of the prison element of the Prisons and Courts Bill from the last Parliament, because implementing that statutory purpose, which would have covered rehabilitation for prisoners, would have been an important umbrella under which to link the good work that is done. It is good news that we have a proper prison reform and safety plan, but it needs to be put into a full context. We need positive actions, not just the good aspirations that are set out.

It is essential that there is a genuinely independent and robust inspectorate, so it is regrettable that we have so far lost the opportunity to place on a statutory basis not just the chief inspector of prisons, but the whole inspectorate as an institution, and to strengthen the requirement for his recommendations to be complied with. It is scandalous that at present only a minority of his recommendations in some cases are taken up. That needs to change. It is also regrettable that the prisons and probation ombudsman has not yet been placed on a statutory basis. I hope we will find a legislative opportunity to do so. I believe that that is what the Minister wants to do, but we must not lose it from the agenda.

Our present indicators on safety in relation to self-harm, suicides, prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and assaults on staff continue to go in the wrong direction. More prison officers have been put in, but we must look in the round, too, at how many people we are sending to prison and why, and what sort of regimes are in place.

We have heard reference to an action plan on prison safety and reform, and what we hope to see are specific strategies on employment, mental health, women in prison, and the retention and recruitment of officers, because keeping experienced officers is particularly important. We need a proper robust inspection mechanism under which the inspectorate, which includes excellent people, has genuine teeth to do what is necessary. We also need more transparency, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) will talk about transparency and data.

It is not acceptable that of the 29 local prisons and training prisons inspected this year, 21 were judged to be poor or not sufficiently good. I know that the Minister agrees that we have to turn that around, but all too often I have found a culture of defensiveness among some of the senior management in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. We must use the changes that have been made to the structure of the service to refresh that culture at every level. That is a most pressing matter. Great work is done further down, but all too often prison officers and governors have said to us that they feel cut out from what can still be too hierarchical a chain of command. That needs to change.

Prison reform was rightly described by David Cameron as a “great progressive cause”, and so it should be, for politicians on both sides of the political divide. Let me end with this thought. A former Home Secretary who became Prime Minister said that one of the purposes of prison was to seek the treasure in the heart of every man. That was said by Winston Churchill in 1910. I say to the current Prime Minister that, as she has had the same career trajectory, such a phrase would fit very well with her desire to tackle burning injustices in society. Some of the injustices and challenges are as acute in our prisons as anywhere else. This is a great cause, and we hope that we will have some more specific responses from the Minister to our reports, and a further indication of the direction of travel. Above all, I hope the House will not let this issue slide down the agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson), and indeed to work with them on the Justice Committee. I apologise to the House that I will not be here for the wind-ups. I have already apologised to the Minister and to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I might be here in body at the moment, but my heart is currently in court 47 of the High Court, where my district council and our brilliant campaigning group are bringing a judicial review against our clinical commissioning group for its failure to consult us properly on changes to our local hospital. I will be whizzing along there immediately after I have spoken today. Nothing else could stop me talking about prisons, as colleagues in the House well know.

I realised during my time in the judicial review yesterday how much I, as a former civil servant, cared about evidence and good government. That is why I shall focus on the importance of data provision today. I am disappointed that the Prisons and Courts Bill did not make it into this parliamentary Session, but I accept that many of the changes envisaged by the Minister do not require legislation and can be taken forward in other ways. However, those changes must be driven by reliable performance data. During my two and a half years on the Justice Committee, we have asked successive Ministers for up-to-date information on prison safety indicators such as incidents of disorder, staffing levels and activity levels, including the number of hours each day prisoners spend locked in their cells. Our efforts have resulted in better-quality data on recruitment and retention, but we have struggled to scrutinise the Government’s efforts to improve the overall situation because we have not received all the information we need.

The Secretary of State delivered welcome news when he appeared in front of the Committee in October and told us about the justice data hub, which went live the following day. I encourage hon. Members to look up the data hub on the Ministry of Justice website—though possibly not during the debate. It holds information ranging from prisoners’ perceptions of safety to accredited programme completions and deaths in custody. I am far from techie myself, but I have tried the hub out and found it quite easy to use. It is definitely a step in the right direction, but much of the information on it is based on annual statistical releases. If we are truly committed to reform in our prisons, we need more data that really drills down on specifics. We need to know how much time prisoners are spending locked in their cells on a daily basis, and to be able to work out whether the funding given to the most under-pressure prisons has actually had an impact.

I am in regular contact with Ian Blakeman, the governor of HMP Bullingdon in my constituency. He was very understanding when I had to postpone our meeting, which had been scheduled for this afternoon, so that I could speak in this debate. The prison recently underwent an inspection and areas of improvement were identified, but without comparative performance data and without knowing where he stands in comparison to other prisons, it is difficult for the governor to feel genuinely empowered to achieve the better outcomes we are all looking for.

We must also know more about what our prisoners are doing once they have completed their sentences. The online hub tells us how prepared prisoners feel on release, but nothing more about those who find housing or employment after they have left prison. We know that there are some fantastic organisations working hard to prepare prisoners for their release, including the Clink restaurant and the Langley House Trust, which provides specialist housing, programmes and support services in the community for people seeking to live crime-free. Just 2.6% of people in the trust’s housing are reconvicted, which is one of the lowest rates in the country.

[Ms Buck]

The borough of Westminster has the highest incidence of rough sleeping in the country. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that those involved in Westminster Council’s rough sleeping strategy have found that one in three rough sleepers have been released from prison? We have to make finding a stable and secure home central to the issue of prisoner release.

[Victoria Prentis]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. Housing is absolutely key to the proper rehabilitation of offenders. I do not think I would be breaching any confidences by saying that the Justice Committee will be working with other Select Committees to ensure that we fully cover the issues relating to housing in the coming parliamentary Session.

The Kainos Community transforms lives through the Challenge to Change programme, which includes post-release mentoring. To break the cycle of reoffending, we must have more data to target projects like these where they are most needed and most effective. Becoming a data-driven Department is a laudable ambition, but it is vital that the statistics we are given do more than scratch the surface. Prison management and the provision of safe and decent prison conditions that promote rehabilitation are complex tasks. They must be well grounded in evidence. Finding solutions to the problems our prisons are facing requires us to delve much deeper than we have yet done. In conclusion, off I go to court to deal with the way in which good government is run, but I ask all hon. Members to remember that, when considering prisons, data really matters.