Serious Disturbance at HM Prison Birmingham

Lord Beith Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, another week, another crisis for our underfunded, understaffed Prison Service, this time of a magnitude unmatched since the Strangeways riots 26 years ago. They prompted the seminal Woolf report. Last week I suggested that we needed another Woolf Report and I repeat the suggestion today. Thankfully, we still have the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, among us, although I am unsure whether he would be willing to undertake the task, especially if there is to be no commitment by the Government to implement any recommendations which might emerge.

As matters stand, we have an unprecedented level of violence, self-harm and drug abuse, and several riots or near-riots occurring in what should be and must be quintessential places of safety. We are told that the Secretary of State was warned two months ago of the risk of a riot at Birmingham. Was she, and if so what action if any was taken to forestall trouble? For that matter what is the Government’s response to the charge of Nick Hardwick, the former Chief Inspector of Prisons and now chair of the Parole Board, that:

“Successive ministers cannot say they weren’t warned about this”,

adding that he had been sounding warnings for several years?

Birmingham, a once renowned establishment, has been made a dangerous laughing-stock by the vacuous ineptitude of G4S, fully illustrated by the removal of a third of the prison population back to a state-controlled establishment away from the indiscipline and naive ideology of G4S and its hopelessly over-promoted and inexperienced management structures. These are not my words, but those of Michael Kelly, a retired senior manager who worked at Birmingham for nearly 30 years.

Last week I commended the Secretary of State for her presentation of a White Paper on prison reform, but voiced regret over her stubborn failure to acknowledge that at the heart of the problem lies the fact that we have far too many people in prison and too many of those are jailed for too long. We need to reduce our prison numbers—the fourth highest, in proportion of population, in Europe. This should include reviewing the length of sentences.

Several Members, across the House, have tried to pursue this issue. My noble friend Lady Smith, for example, tabled two Written Questions on 22 November, respectively on drug use and violence, and on the ratio of staff to prisoners. She should have had an answer by 7 December. She has not. There are seven other MoJ Questions beyond their reply date. Nor can the adequacy of any reply be taken for granted. I asked about the number of prisoners on remand and how many of them ultimately did not receive custodial sentences, only to be told that the information was not available and would be too expensive to collect. There remains, of course, the oft-challenged failure of the Government to deal with the vexed question of IPP prisoners held long after the tariff for their sentence has been exceeded. Both these groups contribute to the overcrowding which places such enormous pressure on prisoners.

There is widespread scepticism about the Government’s plan to recruit extra staff. Some 2,500 are promised, but this would still leave the workforce down 4,500 from what it was just a few years ago. In addition, it is estimated that some 5,000 more will have to be recruited to replace officers retiring or securing jobs outside the service—numbers which may well be enhanced by recent events.

Pay for the men and women willing to work in this challenging environment clearly needs to be reviewed. New starters can expect to earn all of £20,544 and qualified officers £21,166. G4S, I understand, recruits on a weekly basis from the jobcentre. In these circumstances, the Secretary of State’s call for officers to be recruited might be compared to the captain of the “Titanic” telegraphing the ship’s owners for additional crew members after the iceberg has struck.

We need to reduce prison numbers. This means looking at sentencing policy with a view to reducing the length of sentences, and investing in well-run probation services—where there are also signs of growing pressures—and health, especially mental health, services. We need the Secretary of State and the Ministry of Justice to exercise greater oversight of the system, listen to the advice of the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Parole Board and cease to rely so heavily on providers such G4S, with a reputation as providers of everything and masters of next to nothing.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, in thanking the noble and learned Lord for repeating the Statement I ask him to recognise that, but for the skill, courage and day-to-day resourcefulness of prison officers and governors across the prison system, there would have been even more serious and violent incidents than have occurred. The prison system is holding far more prisoners than it is resourced to manage. As a result, rehabilitation programmes are disrupted or not in place at all. To make matters worse, when there are riots those prisoners who want to do their time peaceably, take the courses and train for a job are prevented from doing so and therefore more likely to reoffend when released.

I put two questions to the noble and learned Lord. First, will he say whether G4S had fallen short of its contracted staff numbers at Birmingham? Then, on the wider question, when will Ministers accept and cease to deny that there are offenders in prisons who could be better dealt with by tough community sentences? Unless we use the expensive resources required for prison places more sensibly, as most other European countries do, and unless we address sentence inflation we will build up even more potential for future violence in prisons. Getting the numbers down is not a quick solution to the immediate crisis, but if Ministers do not begin to deal with it now the problems in our prisons and outcomes on release will just get worse.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to noble Lords. I begin by responding to some of the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. Staff in all our prisons, whether public or private, work hard to keep prisoners safe and to address the causes of reoffending. Our recently published data show no obvious differences in performance levels between public and private prisons. There are of course issues across the entire prison estate, seen in both public and private sector, and there is no question but that these are attributable to a mix of factors, including the increased use of psychoactive substances, the increased availability of mobile phones within prisons, the increased level of gang violence within prisons, as well as issues about retention of staff and numbers of staff, all of which we are seeking to address and have addressed already by virtue of the White Paper. So far as G4S is concerned, we robustly monitor the performance of all contractors providing services to the Ministry of Justice, and privately managed prisons are subject to the same rigorous external inspections as those in the public sector by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons.

With regard to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, as to the precise number of staff at Birmingham, I do not have those numbers to hand but I am quite happy to write to him and will place a copy of that letter in the Library once I have the relevant information.

On sentencing, since 2010, the prison population has remained relatively stable and static, at about 85,000. There has been a marked decrease in the number of those serving short sentences, by 1,500, but there has been an increase in the number of those serving longer sentences, especially for sexual offences and offences involving violence. Public safety must be at the forefront of our minds when we address these issues.

We are seeking to increase staffing levels across the entire prison estate and are investing in the prison estate itself—a £1.3 billion programme is under way. In February next year, Her Majesty’s Prison Berwyn will open in Wrexham. It will be the second-largest prison in Europe and will ensure that we have enough capacity within the prison estate to address overcrowding.

So far as an investigation is concerned, as I indicated previously, there is already a proposal that an inquiry should be undertaken by Sarah Payne, adviser to the independent Chief Inspector of Probation. We will await the outcome of that investigation before we decide what further steps should be taken.