Farmer Review

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on the way that he introduced his excellent report. I applaud the depth of his recommendations, which is due in part, I have no doubt, to his inclusion of so many experienced people in his task group. I also applaud that, unlike too many Secretaries of State and officials in, first, the Home Office and, then, the Ministry of Justice, he has drawn on recommendations made as long ago as 1991 by my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf in his masterly report on the 1990 prison riots, particularly that there should be:

“Better prospects for prisoners to maintain their links with families and the community, through more visits and home leaves, and through being located in community prisons as near to their homes as possible”.


Since being appointed Chief Inspector of Prisons in 1995, I have never ceased to be amazed that no Secretary of State has implemented any of the 12 carefully thought-through ways ahead for the Prison Service set out in the 1991 White Paper, Custody, Care and Justice, that followed my noble and learned friend’s report, which included direction that:

“Prisoners should be held in prisons suitable to their status and security category as near to their home as possible, unless they request otherwise … Location near to home is likely to lead to greater stability in prisons, and will enable programmes to be linked more closely to the opportunities available to the prisoner after release”.


Based on the patchy performance that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, saw during his prison visits, he rightly draws attention to the need for the Secretary of State to be responsible and accountable for ensuring that family ties are consistently treated as important across the prison estate. I am afraid that it is wishful thinking to assume that the prison system will automatically respond to direction, even from the Secretary of State, because the Prison Service, unlike every business, hospital and school, does not have named people responsible and accountable for different functions. I have been pointing that out, and questioning it, for the last 22 years.

I would like to suggest two adjustments to the noble Lord’s recommendations about empowering prison governors. Of course governors are responsible and accountable for everything that goes on in their prison, but unless there is someone above them to whom they are themselves responsible and accountable, there is no way that Secretaries of State can rely on any recommendation being implemented or expect any consistency of implementation. I suggest, as I recommended in my annual report for 1997, having seen them in operation in prisons in Scotland, that every governor should appoint a family contact and development officer—FCDO—responsible and accountable for overseeing all family contact arrangements, above whom the Prison Service should appoint an FCDO who is responsible and accountable to the Secretary of State for overseeing the consistent treatment of family ties throughout the prison estate, on whom governors can call for advice, and with whom NGOs and others working in the area can have a point of contact. Unless those appointments are made, I predict that—as has been the fate of literally hundreds of reports and thousands of recommendations over the years—neither the noble Lord’s admirable report nor his recommendations will long survive their initial acknowledgment, because no one in the prison system is responsible and accountable for their survival.

The point that I am making is that there is a grave danger that all the hard work and deep thought that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and his task group have put into this admirable and helpful report will be wasted if they merely receive the Ministry of Justice’s habitual response to any outside advice, which is studiously to ignore it. I therefore beg the Minister to do everything in her power to ensure that action is taken to prevent that happening.