Prisons and Courts Bill (First sitting)

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st Sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Q If you as ombudsman make recommendations, how confident are you that the Secretary of State will act on them?

Nigel Newcomen: I published a report today on self-inflicted deaths among women and I said in the introduction that I was disheartened that I was saying again many of the things I had said previously. I have been in post six years, and I say very little that is new; I tend to repeat things. That does not necessarily mean that there is any ill will or any lack of desire to implement the recommendations I make. Virtually all the recommendations I make are accepted, almost without exception. I have given action plans, and my colleagues from the prisons inspectorate will go and see whether progress has been made.

Progress is often made to a degree. I am sure that if we go back to Chelmsford, to look at one establishment you just mentioned, much will have been done in the aftermath of the case of Mr Saunders and the aftermath of other cases there, too. But sustained and consistent improvement is something that the Prison Service has struggled to achieve. One of the aspirations the Bill must have is that by ensuring greater accountability and some devolution of responsibility to governors, sustained development and improvement can be achieved. To go back to your question, I personally am quite disheartened that I have been saying the same thing for so long.

[The Minister for Courts and Justice (Sir Oliver Heald)]

Q I want to ask you about mobile phones and drugs. Obviously, prison has never been a pleasant place, and I visited many prisons when I was practising as a barrister, but recently I visited a prison and talked to one of the trusted prisoners who said that the impact of psychoactive substances has been marked, particularly on younger men prisoners, with there being a lot more violence than there used to be. Mobile phones are also enabling prisoners to commit crimes at one remove that they did not use to be able to do. Will you each say a word about drugs and mobile phones—what their impact has been and whether the measures in the Bill are a help?

Martin Lomas: The linkage is very clear. The tsunami of new psychoactive substances in the last three or four years has had an enormously destabilising impact on prisons. The chief inspector referred to that in his annual report, and I for one have never seen anything quite like it. Interestingly, some prisons cope better than others, and there are some lessons to be learned there.

The linkage between drugs and the use of mobile phones and technology is clear. It facilitates criminality—there is no doubt about it. I was talking to a colleague of mine who has inspected this regularly and one of the tricks is to meet a new prisoner arriving in the institution who does not have a phone card and so is unable to communicate, and entrap them in a sense by lending them a phone, in which the numbers are stored. That facilitates the intimidation of families and leverage on them.

The answer to that is proper prevention mechanisms to stop mobile phones coming in and to interrupt those that arrive, and the Bill is supportive of that; but also, in tandem, effective means of ensuring that prisoners have access to legitimate phones, either in cell—we see that in some more modern institutions, which is incredibly helpful—or through phone cards and effective access to, for example, the canteen. We routinely report on new arrivals to institutions who do not get access to the canteen for 10 days, which increases their vulnerability both to self-harm—it is a high-risk time—and to others. It is a twin-track response, and the Bill helps.



Rachel O'Brien: I agree with all of that on phones. You see that really small things in prisons, like not having your phone card and getting the small stuff right, can have a huge impact. On NPS, to go back to the centralisation and the local, we took a long time to respond—inspections were raising that from 2012 onwards —and it is an absolute game changer. We have not been adaptive and responsive, and I think that is partly because we wait for the central machine to respond. That resulted in a quite punitive initial response; it was like we had forgotten everything we know about healthcare and substance misuse, with NPS seen somehow as different, which is ironic, because it is legal outside. It is very strange. So you have had a really punitive response generally, and I think that is beginning to change now.

Thirdly, you need to look at supply and demand. Yes, stopping it coming in in the first place is absolutely critical, but if you have no activity and no purpose—there is a lot of evidence to suggest it is partly about boredom and time out of your head, if not your cell—you are going to seek it out. I am not sure I would not seek it out, if I was stuck in a cell day after day. We have to look at the demand side, as well as supply.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Q If you take the aims in the Bill of active reform and rehabilitation, and trying to prepare people for the world outside, are you saying that if you achieved that sort of purposeful regime, you would have a more peaceful regime?

Rachel O'Brien: Absolutely.

Nigel Newcomen: You would also have a safer regime. Access to legitimate phones increases family contact and the ability to mitigate your pressures inside. If you have more activity, you are less likely to be bored and less likely to need the bird-killer that is NPS. I endorse what colleagues have said: it is absolutely, fundamentally right for supply reduction to be at the heart of the Bill, but demand reduction—the lessening of the need—has to be implicit, and I take it to be implicit in the new purposes of prisons that have been specified. If it is not, we will be chasing a punitive response without the likelihood of success, because we will not have dealt with demand.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Q I do not know whether you would agree, Mr Simpson, but I think a lot of prison officers find it very rewarding if they are able to help a prisoner to come round and live a better life after he leaves prison, and to help him get some skills while he is in there. I have certainly always found that when talking to prison officers. Do you agree that the overall idea of having proper purposes for prison, trying to increase the number of officers and tackling this scourge of drugs and mobile phones is the overall package that is needed?

Joe Simpson: It is, but drugs are not new in prisons.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Q No, it is these psychoactive substances, which are allegedly legal.

Joe Simpson: Yes. The Government have also said it is illegal to bring them into prison or throw them over the wall, yet it still happens. When you are talking about supply and demand, say for argument’s sake that you can buy a bag of NPS on the street for £1. When it comes into prison, it is worth anywhere between £60 and £80. It is big business, and it does not have a great effect on the person who is supplying it from the outside, because they are never, ever going to get into trouble, because nothing ever goes back to them. Mobile phone are big currency in prisons. As a union, we have been asking for mobile phone blockers to be put into prison for years. That would stop the criminality inside and outside of prison.

Then we have drones. When they come over, it is about what they are carrying. We have had to approach the employer and say, “When there is a package dropped off into the grounds of a prison, you have got a prison officer immediately being told to go over and pick it up. It could contain anything, and there is no proper control over that.”

Yes, more time out of cell, and a prison officer watching them and interacting with them, would help. When I was a prison officer at Holme House, we used to have prisoners out on association, and they played pool and went on the phone. When you had a bank holiday weekend, such as Easter, by Sunday dinner time they were bored, because they were doing the same thing every weekend and every evening. It is about changing that, with education in the evening, gym programmes and programmes that prison officers can lead on, because before we entered the job, we had a prior life. We have teachers who have joined the Prison Service. They have a wealth of experience, but no one is using them, because we are going back to what we fear is a turnkey situation.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Q Of course, a lot of these prisoners could benefit from that experience, could they not? They are not very well educated, and they could get some skills and make more of their lives.

Joe Simpson: Yes.

Martin Lomas: I agree that NPS is a specific challenge, and it has been a game changer. We have seen prisons that do better than others—this is a bit speculative, and there needs to be more research into this—and that seems to be down to effective multi-disciplinary working, particularly with local law enforcement and the like.

However, your point is valid: there cannot be reform, work, education and rehabilitation without safe institutions, but there is then a feedback loop. If prisoners understand, believe and realise—as enough of them do; there is a critical mass—that they might have to be in prison, but at least there they have a chance, or that it is worth investing their effort, or that there is a constructive opportunity for them, that in itself will begin to lift the bar and create a sense of positivity and civility within the institution.

[Matt Warman]

Q You briefly mentioned mobile phone blockers; the Bill allows for more rapid blocking of individual mobile phones that are associated with prisoners. Presumably, you would welcome the fact that you would not have a blanket ban on everything, or use more widespread blocking, because prison officers have mobile phones, which are useful for keeping in contact with families and all that while in the prison. Of course, people who live nearby prisons do not appreciate their systems being blocked, either. This helps with that, I would hope.

Martin Lomas: Whatever technology works. Actually, in prisons, nobody is allowed a mobile phone; there may be a community consequence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

To add to the point made by the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the hon. Member for Hexham, I am still owed thousands of pounds in fees, some of which I think may be from insurers.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I am a barrister, not currently practising, and I am the legal aid Minister, so I apologise, boys.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

May I also declare an interest? I am a solicitor, not currently practising, and a prison visitor at HMP Lowdham Grange in my constituency.