Prisoners: Work Programmes

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on securing this debate on this important subject. He has set out the issues compellingly and I do not want to rehearse them here again or go over the ground set out so well just now by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott.

I want to focus my remarks on the difficulties that small voluntary organisations face in making a contribution to the important work that is the subject of this debate, particularly if these organisations are offering activities that do not fit within conventional models of the work that prisoners do. I want to illustrate this through the experience of Fine Cell Work, a charity with which members of my family have been involved for some years. Fine Cell Work is a social enterprise that trains prisoners in paid, skilled, creative needlework; it is taught and supported by volunteers from the Embroiderers’ and Quilters’ Guilds. The prisoners are paid for their work, which is then sold around the world. The pieces are high-quality craftwork, interior design commissions and heritage pieces for organisations such as the V&A, English Heritage, Tate Modern and the National Gallery. Fine Cell Work has had great success in the 17 prisons where it currently works.

Craftwork in prison has been shown to help prisoners develop the more constructive and disciplined aspects of their personalities as they learn new skills and support their families with the money that they earn. It connects inmates to wider society and gives them hope for their future. This is exactly the sort of work that NOMS should be supporting. Apart from everything else, through the combination of work in cells and in studio workshops, it enables prisoners to do practical, skilled vocational work in a 50-hour week—which I think is unprecedented in prisons—with a focused link to employment opportunities on release. It is significant that 80% of the work of Fine Cell Work is done in cells. At a time when budget cuts are leading to more time being spent in cells, it means that prisoners can continue to learn skills that will make them more employable with minimal cost and supervision.

However, because this work does not fit within recognised categories, it has faced real obstacles in realising its full potential. Many prison managers still call it “hobby work” in spite of the professionalism of the products and its commercial success. More than £200,000 worth of goods are sold annually. Prisons have been reluctant to support the training side of the work by seconding education staff to support the charity’s volunteers. To reinforce the prisoners’ sense of achievement and encourage their rehabilitation, their skilled production work should be accredited, but the volunteers are not qualified to deliver accredited training on their own.

Fine Cell Work’s ability to progress has been obstructed by such lack of support and the difficulties it faces in meeting bureaucratic criteria. This is an innovative, small social enterprise but if it is to expand, it needs to work in partnership. It is not a normal business because 70% of its income comes from grants and donations, and it is discounted as a factor in rehabilitation because the very specific NOMS methodology makes it impossible to prove that Fine Cell Work on its own prevents reoffending. Therefore, in this new world, can the Minister say what NOMS can do to safeguard such unorthodox training and rehabilitation programmes over and above work regimes that generate revenue for prisons? What will NOMS do to help small organisations such as this provide the evaluation data that NOMS rightly requires to enable it to make judgments on what sort of providers it wants to operate in prisons? What must small, hard-pressed organisations such as Fine Cell Work provide from their own slender resources? What can NOMS do to facilitate partnerships between small organisations such as Fine Cell Work to enable them to achieve the critical mass they need to meet the requirements of the Ministry of Justice?

I hope the Minister will recognise the threat that the failure to nurture small organisations poses to creativity and innovation in these programmes. I hope he recognises that, over and over again, experience under this Government and the previous Government has shown that the default option of delivering public services by commissioning large organisations—whose main talent has often been only to comply with the bureaucratic procurement criteria of central government—has failed all too often to produce value for money. If we are to get value for money, and if we are to pioneer new approaches to delivering public services, we need these innovative, small organisations to flourish. They have a vital role to play in delivering public services, but to do that work they need a system in place that encourages them to do so and does not place unnecessary obstacles in their way. I hope that the Minister, in his response, can reassure your Lordships’ House on all these points.