Prison Safety

Richard Arkless Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

That is entirely correct. Heavens, one would have thought we had learned that lesson from the failures of the old Victorian silent and solitary system. Rehabilitation can only ever work when people are out of their cells and in workshops and education classes. Unless they do that, they will not get anywhere, and the regime has to be safe for the officers to get them out of their cells. That is why we have to tackle this problem at root.

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Huq]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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[Robert Neill]

The hon. Lady is right. I am probably so old in politics that I can remember a constituency configured that way in the past. She is quite right—it comes back to this same circle.

People who say that the only answer is more and more imprisonment and more and more lockdown perhaps ought to go into prisons more. There are an awful lot of people—even people who, frankly, deserve to be in there for some time—who are none the less interested in engaging in purposeful activity. That makes them less inclined to behave in a way that threatens safety and gets them involved in gangs or other forms of violence. It is a win-win at every level. Whatever the level of the sentence, providing such activity is a good and, basically, a morally right thing to do. However, we cannot put prison officers or instructors into environments where it is not safe for people to be out of their cells to get that education and personal activity. That is why getting the regime safe is critical to everything.

[Richard Arkless]

I add my voice to those of others on the sterling work that the hon. Gentleman has done in leading the Justice Committee since my election in May last year.

I reiterate the point about the vicious cycle that the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) touched on. The lack of resources means that prisoners are locked in their cells for 23 hours a day and cannot get purposeful activity—there are not enough prison officers to construct it. The lack of purposeful activity then means they are predisposed to violence and to not being rehabilitated through the system. Clearly, the hon. Gentleman will agree that it is a vicious cycle. The key, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) said, is to grasp the nettle by either reducing the prison population or resourcing prisons properly, so that prisoners come out into society rehabilitated.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. I am grateful for his support for all our work on the Justice Committee, because although justice and prison matters are devolved to Scotland, we can learn lessons from each other about how things work across the whole of the United Kingdom. We do have to break that vicious circle. Resource is important, and to be fair, when our report was published, the Government did put in extra resource, which is welcome and to be commended. We are now saying that we have to see the detail of how we can monitor the use of that resource, so that it is used to the very best advantage. That is the most important thing that we need to be saying as we go forward.

I know many Members wish to speak, so I will conclude. I am glad that there is going to be a prison safety and reform plan in the autumn, and I gather that legislation is likely to be brought forward. I understand that the shape of it is not always possible to commit to greatly in advance, but it is really important that we maintain the pledge made in the Queen’s Speech that prison reform would be a key part of the Government’s agenda. I hope the Minister will bear that in mind. I am not going to press him now to say what the shape of the legislation will be, but he could give us commitments to provide more details following the Government response.

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[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I think that it is the first time I have done so, but hopefully it will not be the last. I have something of a dual role in today’s proceedings, in that I am a member of the Justice Committee, but I am also the Front-Bench Member summing up for the Scottish National party. I shall take the latter of those roles first because, inevitably, such has been the detail in today’s contributions, much of what I was originally going to say may have been superseded. I will go through some of those speeches before I make any points on matters that may have been missing from the debate.

Ms Vaz, you were not in the Chair when the debate was kicked off by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee. He captured the mood of the Committee and the report succinctly when he said that it was time to be blunt. The situation is “terrible”—to use the word chosen not by him but by the former Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst also touched on the fact that, to put it even more bluntly, things are at crisis stage. The report clearly indicates that and the Chair has clearly said it. I only hope that the message sinks in with the Government.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) gave an extremely eloquent address and provided a useful snapshot of evidence showing how much and how rapidly the situation has deteriorated. He put forward an excellent case to demonstrate that, as most people have said, the Government’s reply was thin at best. He encapsulated the frustration: on one hand the new Secretary of State says that safety in prisons and prison reform is her No. 1 priority; on the other the Government response to the report appears extremely thin, which casts doubt on her assertion about priorities.

I listened with interest, as I always do, to the speech given by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) in his typically robust and charismatically dissenting style. I must stress that I would like to distance myself from much of what he said. I am not sure that a holiday home in Shipley is for me, given some of his comments; but of course I assume that his constituents want the best for everyone, as I do. I do not think that we solve any problems by locking people up if, otherwise, they have a chance of rehabilitation. I accept the point that 69% of people who go to prison on short sentences reoffend, but I cannot understand the logic of saying that 100% of people with community sentences go to prison. Not all of them do. Of the people on short sentences, 100% had had community sentences; but that does not mean that 100% of those who served community sentences ended up on short prison sentences. I make that distinction, but I stand to be corrected if I have picked it up incorrectly.

I of course would distance myself from the views of the hon. Member for Shipley on foreign aid and on short sentences. I ask the Minister seriously to consider the example we have set in Scotland, by reducing short sentences as much as possible and recognising that placing someone in jail for the relevant types of offences dramatically reduces their life chances thereafter, with respect to re-employment and other prospects. Those things might be open to them if they had not been incarcerated, but once they have it seems difficult to pedal back. However, I dissent with respect, as always. I was both extremely perturbed and pleased, in the same breath, to have an email from the hon. Member for Shipley yesterday evening saying “I agree with Richard on all counts.” I thank him for his constructive approach.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who is not on the Justice Committee, nevertheless has, I understand, a keen interest in the matters in question, on account of the prison in his constituency. I was interested to hear him make a point that we had not focused on in particular detail—the importance of good governance. The hon. Gentleman was right to raise that. It is an important part of the picture.

The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who has left the Chamber for more pressing constituency boundary issues, was right to say that the spotlight has never shone so brightly on the prison estate as it does now. She has a wealth of experience in dealing with stakeholders from the prison estate, and when she says something in such clear words, people should prick up their ears and listen. She made a poignant point: to say that reducing prison numbers is being soft on criminals gets things upside down. It shows the opposite. If we could manage the prison population and turn prisons into rehabilitative centres we would be giving more protection to wider society; because we would reduce the prospect of criminals leaving prison and reoffending. That is very important.

The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) gave us an excellent perspective on the continuation of themes from one Justice Committee to the next. I was not fortunate enough to be a member of the previous Committee, and I gained perspective from hearing that the current issues are not arising for the first time. There has been continuity of concern and it is excellent that we had the hon. Gentleman’s experience in the debate.

The former Minister, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), was right to express, as most of us, embarrassingly, failed to do, his appreciation for the public service given by prison officers. I completely agree. He said that he was sad when he spoke to them, and I completely concur. We visited HMP Wandsworth a number of months ago, and when I saw the ashen-faced appearance of the prison officers, I was sad—very sad. They want to do a good job, rehabilitate prisoners and do good in society, but they simply do not have the resource support. The reason why people are being locked up for 22 and 23 hours is that there are not the staff to provide support so that they can be let out to do purposeful activity. Unless we break that vicious cycle, as the Committee Chair discussed, we will, in the colloquial phrase, be banging our heads on a brick wall.

To turn to the remarks that I had planned, I wanted to give a statistical analysis of the situation. I know that the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said that statistics do not necessarily add anything to the overview; and the right hon. Member for Delyn was very succinct in giving a snapshot of the statistics. However, I beg to differ; I think they are important, because they are the evidence that demonstrates the extent of the problem, which needs to be stated clearly. I will deal with three categories. For deaths in custody, in the 12 months to March 2015 there were 79 self-inflicted deaths in custody. In the 12 months to June 2016 there were 105. In a two-year period there was a jump from 79 to 105; that is no spike. It is a systemic failing.

For assaults, in the 12 months to December 2014 there were a grand total of just over 16,000 assaults in the prison estate. Just over 2,000 were serious. Jumping forward less than two years, in the 12 months to March 2016 the number was up from 16,000 to more than 22,000 assaults in the prison estate, of which 3,000 were serious. Again, I submit that that is not a spike but that it indicates a systemic failing.

In the third category, self-harm, there were 25,000 incidents in the 12 months to December 2014. In the 12 months to March 2016, there were almost 35,000 incidents. Again, that is not indicative of a spike, but is evidence of a systematic failing, and it is not only the Justice Committee that says so. I am very new to the Justice Committee and Committee procedure, but I am a lawyer and have listened to evidence in court cases of who is right and who is wrong. Never have I been involved in a process where the evidence is so catastrophically one-sided. In my view—I stand to be corrected—we did not hear any evidence of the positive outcomes of what the prison estate achieves for our criminals and for wider society. It was an avalanche; everybody seems to agree. After the report was published, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons’ annual report stated in its main conclusions that, as I have just demonstrated,

“There were continuing high and rising levels of self-inflicted deaths…Violence had once again increased in almost every men’s prison reported on. Support for the victims of bullying and violence was generally weak, and resulted in long periods of isolation for many prisoners.”

As we have heard, new synthetic drugs have also become an increasing problem.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the figures are out of control. There is a proposal in the Committee report to which I would like to draw hon. Members’ attention. That is the nature and frequency of the statistics that the Committee receives, which allow us to assess the situation and react accordingly to the developing challenges. We requested quarterly statistics on a range of outcomes and the Government proposed six-monthly statistics. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst made clear, this is not some kind of statistical pedantry—it is to coincide information with other statistical releases, so it can be properly collated. At the moment, the statistics are bad, but they might even be worse—we do not know. If the Justice Committee could get the information in a more co-ordinated, consistent and frequent manner, it would allow us to do the work that we are here for—scrutinising the Ministry of Justice—so that it can then, in turn, make sure the problems in the prison estate are fixed. With that, I conclude my remarks and welcome the views of the shadow Front-Bench spokesperson and the Minister on this important issue.

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[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady makes absolutely the right point. We want prisoners to have time out of their cells to engage in work, education and training. I want us to have a mature debate, so let us not try to say that staffing is the only response to the challenges in our prisons. I have acknowledged that it must be part of our response, but we need a comprehensive response.

[Richard Arkless]

I must admit to being concerned by the phrase “part of”. Of course staffing is part of the problem, but that could mean that it is 1% or 99% of the problem. The key thing is how big a part of the problem staff numbers are, and I think the Justice Committee would agree that it is the critical part. People cannot be rehabilitated, because staff are not available to conduct that rehabilitation. The Minister can give prisons all the new education powers, but if there are no staff to teach people, that simply will not happen. Will the Minister reassure us that he considers staffing to be critical, not just part of the problem?

[Mr Gyimah]

We in the Ministry of Justice must ensure that we are in a position to deliver the orders of the courts. That means ensuring that there are not only sufficient prison places but adequate staffing. Of course, we cannot run a prison system without adequate staffing, but we face complex challenges and threats in our prison system and there is no simple answer.