HMP Liverpool

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, very troubling matters were raised by the report, but I am not going to comment on the contents of a leaked report. What I can say is that the inspector debriefed the Prison Service immediately after and we have responded to that. Her Majesty’s Prison Liverpool was originally a Victorian prison, and there are indeed real issues with the standard of cell accommodation. It is worth noting that no expenditure—not one pound—has been spent on cell accommodation at Liverpool since 1994. In the intervening period, there was a Labour Government from 1997 to 2010.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, is not one of the most disturbing aspects of this troubling report the failure to respond to the mental health needs of inmates? Given the reported suicides or deaths of perhaps as many as three prisoners in recent weeks, and the absence of secondary screening, is not this a national requirement? How do these squalid conditions, in a prison overrun with rats and cockroaches, meet Churchill’s famous dictum that the treatment of criminals is,

“one of the most unfailing tests of a civilisation of any country”?

How does it encourage fundamental reform of those we have incarcerated?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, where the courts impose a custodial sentence, the punishment is deprivation of liberty. But where someone is kept in custody, the conditions should be decent, safe and secure. We accept that as a Government.