Prison Maintenance: Insourcing

Lord Timpson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woodley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential merits of insourcing all prison maintenance.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

The Government are committed to ensuring that there are professional facility management services across our prison estate. A 2023 assessment conducted in partnership with the Cabinet Office determined that an insourced solution was not the preferred option for future prison maintenance services. Financial analysis determined that an outsourced option would be more cost-effective and would deliver the best value for money. The Government have therefore initiated a programme of work that will put in place new contracts for the provision of maintenance services for prisons, which are being competitively tendered. However, I am keeping this approach under constant review to ensure we get the best value for taxpayers’ money.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his response, but it is undeniable that a decade of prison maintenance privatisation has been an absolute disaster. A disgraceful experiment has gone badly wrong and it blights the lives of everyone living and working in prisons. Does he agree that it is more than time to kick out the incompetent and greedy privateers and bring maintenance back in-house, which is far more cost-effective, and make much more use of works departments to give prisoners valuable extra skills through in-house maintenance and light repairs? I think this is called Q-Branch.

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[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. The prison estate suffered historic underinvestment by the previous Government over the last five years, which has led to a growing backlog of maintenance tasks and shocks to the estate from dilapidations. This has made the prison capacity crisis even more acute. As future prison maintenance contracts approach expiry, we will conduct detailed assessments to inform decisions about whether to continue to outsource services, alongside our usual performance management process. Stopping the contract process we inherited last year would have meant incurring additional costs and delivering less value for money. I am glad that the noble Lord mentioned Q-Branch, which is an innovative model that has empowered prisoners to build new skills and play a part in keeping their prisons running smoothly by undertaking tasks such as basic cell restoration, painting and decorating. It is currently active in 25 establishments and I am exploring how we can expand it further, alongside a similar operation called CRED, which helps build skills within prisons that can be used on release to get a job and not reoffend.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, among the myriad problems that the Minister faces is the fact that probably half of the security cameras around the perimeters of our prison estate are not working. Is that because they are too old or did the original contracts not include appropriate maintenance so that these cameras can be made to work for our security and that of prisoners?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is correct that the security of our prisons is of utmost importance and that we need all our security apparatus working correctly. We have had years of underinvestment in our prison estate. I am pleased that the Government are spending £520 million from this year until the end of 2026 on lots of projects, including improving our security.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister touched on this in his earlier comments. Does he agree that all prisoners should have an opportunity to work and earn while they are imprisoned?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

As someone who has employed many people in prison over many years, I am a big fan of enabling people to gain skills and confidence so that when they are released, they are less likely to come back. But it is all about risk, and not everybody in prison is ready to work within prison. The first workshop I opened was in HMP Liverpool, where we taught people to repair shoes and watches—due to risk assessments, we were not allowed to teach people to cut keys.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his reply, but he must be aware, from reports in the press and his own extremely diligent visits to the prison estate, that something needs to be done about the poor quality of prisons. Will he therefore revisit the ideological decision by the previous Government not to allow the public sector to bid for maintenance contracts when the existing contracts run out at the end of this year?

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[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. The key is to deliver value for money. If we had intervened in the process, it would have cost more. Ultimately, we are not opposed to considering a public sector option, and we will keep it under review. The question I keep asking myself and officials is whether we are getting value for money, and rehabilitative, safe and decent prisons?

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, Rule 31 of the Prison Rules 1999 provided that all convicted prisoners should be required to do useful work for up to 10 hours a day, and indeed it is a disciplinary offence for a prisoner to refuse to work. Yet we are constantly being told of prisoners spending 20 hours a day idle in their cells or cellblocks. Is this a failure of management or a failure of resources? Will the Government undertake to review such initiatives as the New Futures Network, which was established to allow businesses to set up workspaces within prisons?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

It is vital that, when people are in prison, they are in purposeful activity and not in their cells, so we are putting a lot of effort into getting more people out of their cells for longer. We have still got an awful lot more to do. We have too many prisons for the workshop and educational spaces that we have. The New Futures Network, with which I have been involved for many years, has been very successful in increasing the amount of people who get jobs on release from prison. Three years ago, 14% of people who left prison had a job after six months, and it is now over 30%.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the work that he is doing. I hope he agrees with me that powerful voices, including the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and the Justice Committee in the other place, have highlighted how costs have soared while conditions have crumbled in prisons since privatisation. I hope that the Minister will take very seriously both the value for money question and the urgent need to consider insourcing—that is, having public maintenance of prisons.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

It is vital that the Government are led by the evidence and deliver value for money for the taxpayer. HMPPS has worked closely with the Cabinet Office to undertake a detailed assessment of prison maintenance requirements and how best to deliver them—I have even read all 175 pages of it. While they consider insourcing, the current evidence indicates that the private sector is best placed to provide a safe and decent estate, supported by effective maintenance that delivers value for money. I am continually monitoring performance and will keep my mind open to the best future options.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, last week, during a meeting with the National Preventive Mechanism, I was told that women in prison in Scotland with psychiatric conditions have to be transported 300 miles away. Can the Minister take an urgent look at that situation, but also tell us what is being done about self-harm and suicide in prisons?

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[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I have a wide brief, but it does not include the prisons in Scotland. So far as female offenders are concerned, the issue is the same. This week, I was proud to chair the first Women’s Justice Board, and we will be tackling many of these issues. I have visited a number of women’s prisons over the years, and last week I visited Willowdene, which is a rehabilitative centre just outside Birmingham where women go as an alternative to custody. It is clear that many of those women are very ill and need help.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I have been in HM Prison Liverpool, in Walton—as a visitor—and seen first hand the work superb that the Minister refers to. His family deserve credit for all they have done. My experience of contracting, which is not as great as that of some in this House, is that the whole thing falls apart if the tender spec and terms of the contract are not clear. Any Government must be careful about picking the right price but the wrong provider—cheap is not always the best thing. Can the Minister give us an indication or a commitment that he will get the best person for the job, not the cheapest?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her kind comments; it is nice that we have known each other for many years and discussed this topic. I like to think that I bring to this job my skills as a business leader, where commercial decisions are not always about price but about service as well.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, this is another Tory shambles: the Tories were very good at locking up people but very bad at maintaining our prisons and the number of prison officers. We have got people locked up who should not be locked up. Will part of the Minister’s review look at whether alternative methods could be used where they are more suitable than prison?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the question. He will be pleased to know that we are at 99.5% of the required level of prison officers. That does not mean that they are all in the right place or experienced, but that is one of my jobs to do. It is clear that there are a number of individuals in the criminal justice system whose chances of reoffending are higher by going to prison than others. That is why the Women’s Justice Board is looking specifically at this very important area.