Prisons Competition

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The right hon. Gentleman was indeed involved in the competition process, so he cannot start protesting—however mildly—about the outcome. I assume that he contemplated that either the private or the public sector bids would win, and that is what has happened. The public sector has the contract at Buckley Hall and the private sector has the contract at Birmingham and the other prisons. Serco was already the contractor at Doncaster. To show how ideology is fading, the irony is that Buckley Hall, when it opened, was a private sector prison, but it has been in the public sector and this renewal of the contract has been won by the public sector again. The law on TUPE remains in place, but we are consulting on the wider implications on transfers of ownership from the public to the private sector. The outcome of this competition should be the kind of thing that the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly happy to contemplate when he was party to the decision in 2009.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s decision to build reducing reoffending into the Doncaster contract, but will he assure us that he recognises that that will require the provider to work closely with a range of other organisations, and that they too increasingly need to be incentivised to reduce the reoffending that creates more victims of crime?

[Mr Clarke]

My right hon. Friend is right. There are two major voluntary parties with which the provider at Doncaster proposes to be in contact, but their names escape me—one is called Catch22 and the other is something else—and there will be local voluntary and charity groups subcontracted below them. Serco will manage the prison and will be the principal contractor, but the delivery that it hopes to achieve will be effected by subcontractors. I have emphasised to those who have attended seminars on this subject that I hope that the operator will deal responsibly with the small local contractors. Serco is entitled to use its bargaining power when negotiating with the representatives of Government to get the best deal it can, but I hope that it will not overdo it when dealing with smaller voluntary and charitable bodies that are also entitled to expect to boost their funds if they deliver the results required.