Prison Media Bill

Paul Howell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Katherine Fletcher]

As usual, and as his service as a magistrate shows, my hon. Friend is quite right. It is illegal to have a mobile phone in a prison estate at the moment, and it is potentially punishable with an additional two years of sentence. The Bill strikes the right balance between preventing criminality, in terms of filming prison officers and providing protections, which I will turn to, for people who happen to live close to a prison, such as those in Ulnes Walton.

We are aware that, while it is illegal to have a phone in prison—from legislation from the 1950s, prior to the social media age—it does happen occasionally, and there is a worrying increase in media being uploaded outside of the prison estate by members of the community for various nefarious means, which I have set out. The figures in the briefing pack show that there have been about 2,000 such incidents in the last three years, so it is important that we have the legislative powers to prevent it.

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

In terms of the people affected, my hon. Friend has mentioned the prison officers and people living near the prisons, but there are also people such as the family of my constituent Christie Harnett, who was the victim of knife crime and sadly murdered by a gang. The protagonists are now locked away, but they recently put something out on social media. The distress that that causes to the family is just off the scale. My understanding is that this Bill should help to prevent those sorts of things, which cause distress to families who have already suffered unimaginably.

[Katherine Fletcher]

My hon. Friend—very good friend —is absolutely correct. I thank him for the work he does on behalf of his constituents day in, day out. Sedgefield, I dare say, has never had a better Member of Parliament, or certainly not a more community-engaged one.

My hon. Friend is quite right, and that is exactly why we are bringing forward these measures: to make sure that the victims of crime and their families do not see content made with nefarious intentions coming out of prisons and—I will come to this—to make it absolutely clear to social media companies that this stuff is illegal and that, as part of their terms of service, their teams can get it taken down.

May I also pass my regards to my hon. Friend’s constituent’s family? It does sound like a difficult time, and I hope that they can see that we are taking action to prevent such distress in future.

Let me turn to clause 1—unauthorised photograph or sound-recording of the inside of a prison—and amendments 1 and 2. The clause makes minor modifications to the wording of section 40D of the Prison Act 1952 to put beyond doubt the illegality of creating unauthorised media of the inside of a prison from the outside, including via drones. As drafted, the Prison Act 1952 could be interpreted as not applying to media created by drones from above prisons. Such videos quite clearly present a security risk, showing both the lay-out of the prison buildings in detail and staff and prisoner movements, and could facilitate criminals in smuggling in drugs or weapons, or even in planning or facilitating an escape.

To ensure consistency between fines for offences under the existing and new wording, clause 1 also removes the statutory minimum limit for fines on summary conviction—fines are an important point that we will return to later. That change ensures that these offences, as previously, can be punished by a fine of any amount, as well as a prison sentence of up to two years, to reflect the seriousness of recording this content and the harm that it poses.

Ahead of today’s sitting, I tabled two amendments to clause 1 to avoid criminalising behaviour that it is not necessary or appropriate to criminalise, and to ensure consistency within the existing offences. Amendment 1 will exclude sound recordings from the offence in section 40D(1) of the 1952 Act of creating and uploading content of the inside of a prison from the outside. This change is important to avoid criminalising people who live close to a prison capturing sounds from the prison that can be overheard from their properties.

For example, my community of Ulnes Walton is adjacent to HMP Garth and HMP Wymott. We cannot criminalise people videoing a fun family event—perhaps a barbecue in the garden—who happen to record sounds from the prison. This is an important protection, as it would not be appropriate to include that type of situation in the offence. Such sound recordings do not present the same security risks as videos and photographs taken of the inside of a prison from the outside.

Amendment 2 specifies that a sound recording made of sounds transmitted from inside the prison, or a photograph taken of images transmitted from inside the prison, will be treated as one made or taken inside the prison. This will ensure that the recording of a prison audio or video call made by individuals receiving them on the outside will still be an offence under section 40D(1)(a) of the 1952 Act. These recordings can cause harm by being used to threaten or harass victims or people in the community.

Amendment 2 will also provide a defence for someone to show that they did not know, and had no reasonable cause to believe, that a photograph or video taken from outside a prison was of the inside of a prison. The purpose of amendment 2 is to avoid criminalising people who unintentionally create or upload photographs or videos of the inside of a prison taken from the outside. Real-world examples could be dashcam footage from a car driving past the Ulnes Walton road that inadvertently captures the inside of an open prison or a person taking a photo from a plane and inadvertently capturing the inside of a prison from above. We do not want to criminalise non-problematic behaviour. Like amendment 1, amendment 2 will make the scope of the new offences narrower and ensure that legitimate behaviour outside the policy intention of the offences is not unintentionally criminalised.

I turn now to clause 2 and amendments 3 to 10, which relate to unauthorised photographs and sound recordings of prisons and prison workers. Clause 2 will introduce a new offence of creating unauthorised media of prison workers on prison land. This is intended to crack down on so-called audit videos and the threats they pose to prison staff and security. The threat of targeting and harassment is present for everyone working in prisons, so clause 2 will apply to recordings of prison officers, custody officers in private prisons, legal visitors, inspectors, delivery drivers, building contractors, providers of healthcare and education and, importantly, volunteers, who do fantastic work in our communities and who I want to personally thank on the record.

Clause 2 defines prison land as any area connected with the provision, running or management of a prison. That includes land immediately surrounding the prison walls and land used for car parking, storage or accommodating staff. The clause also specifies that the new offence of creating unauthorised media of prison workers on prison land must be intentional. This would exclude instances of filming from a property near to a prison or filming the exterior of a prison and unintentionally capturing media of prison workers.

Clause 2 will make the unauthorised uploading of photos or videos from inside of a prison, or of prison workers on prison land, an offence, regardless of whether the media was uploaded from—this is the crucial bit—within the prison or within the community. This will close the loophole whereby it is not currently an offence for someone outside a prison to upload media they have been sent by someone in prison that was created unlawfully. This measure is designed to provide social media companies with helpful clarity about this content being illegally uploaded, and they will be required to remove it under their terms of service.

[Paul Howell]

Just before I get to the point of my intervention, I have made an awful error and would like to correct the record. I came into this Bill Committee thinking about Christie Harnett, a girl who died from suicide because of the Tees Valley mental health trust problems. I inadvertently used her name, when the constituent I actually wanted to refer to earlier was Jack Woodley and his mother Zoey McGill.

To the point of my intervention, will these measures clarify for people—such as those at the Northern Echo, who are running a great campaign against knife crime, which is the cause of this issue—what they can and cannot put into the media, while still enabling them to get at those committing knife crime?

[Katherine Fletcher]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I think that his needing to correct the record due to his campaigning for multiple constituents shows the type of MP he is, and I am sure Hansard will be able to make that correction.

To my hon. Friend’s point, yes, if any media outlet is inadvertently amplifying videos that have been created illegally within the prison estate, the Bill will make it very clear to them that that is not legal, and His Majesty’s Prison Service will have the opportunity to intervene—although I hope that they will hear about the Bill being passed and self-police in that area. All major social media companies state in their terms of service that their platforms cannot be used for illegal or unlawful purposes.

Clause 2 also includes a defence for someone uploading content that they did not know, or had no reasonable cause to believe, was filmed or created illegally. This could include reasonably believing content to be a fictitious depiction of prisons or prison workers on a film set or from a historic, decommissioned prison. Both those new offences will be punishable solely by a fine for individuals creating and uploading media. In line with existing fines, that fine would be unlimited. That reflects the difference in severity between the offence of creating or uploading content from outside a prison and the offence of doing so from inside a prison, where possessing a mobile phone without authorisation is illegal and could be punished by a prison sentence of up to two years.

Clause 2 also provides, for both offences, a defence of reasonable belief that media was created with authorisation. That would include, for example, an honest and reasonable mistake as to whether a prison governor had permitted a news outlet to record interviews with its workers outside the prison.