Prisons and Probation

Robert Neill Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure and a privilege to speak in this very important debate. I recognise the serious tone that has been adopted by hon. Members thus far.

I particularly commend the Lord Chancellor for his immensely impressive analysis. He was spot on both about the cause of offending and about the way forward. I commend his analysis to my hon. Friends not just as thorough and thoughtful, but, from my point of view, as profoundly Conservative. As he rightly observed, none of us has a monopoly on understanding the need for prison reform.

The issues are intractable. When I started to make prison visits as a young barrister some 30—nearer 40—years ago, institutions or facilities such as Wandsworth, Holloway and Wormwood Scrubs were already unsatisfactory and not fit for purpose. They have not got better since, and the pressures have become greater. The pressures of overcrowding and of contraband entering prisons existed then—contraband has long been an issue; what has changed is simply the nature of the technology of the contraband and the means by which it is brought in—so these are long-standing issues.

The Lord Chancellor and his team deserve credit for addressing such issues, and particularly for having the imagination to replace our ageing Victorian prison estate when it is virtually impossible to carry out serious rehabilitative work, and given that dealing with the very real mental health and psychological issues of many prisoners is and should also be a top priority. Now that he has set out a vision, I hope that the Lord Chancellor will very swiftly give the House detailed proposals on how we can move forward.

The Justice Committee is currently carrying out an inquiry concentrating on young adult offenders, which is a particularly difficult subset of the prison population. The inquiry is influenced by the excellent review by Lord Harris of Haringey; in fairness, I should say that his work was done at the request of the previous Lord Chancellor in the coalition Government. The Government have responded to Lord Harris’s review, but I would argue that its detail—it goes beyond purely the specifics of young offenders to draw many other lessons—deserves a more detailed and substantive response than has been made so far. Much that is of general application can be taken from the review.

Safety in prisons is a critical issue. I do not doubt the quality of our prison staff. In the course of our inquiry, the Select Committee has visited Holloway prison and the young offenders institution at Aylesbury, where excellent people are working. My concern is that the senior management of NOMS do not always give the impression that, in their operations on the ground, they have worked through in practice the assurances they have given us in the Select Committee or elsewhere. It is important that NOMS has a genuinely flexible and responsive management system. There is scope for further review of the way in which NOMS delivers its laudable objectives in practice. I am sure that the new chief inspector, whom we look forward to having back before the Select Committee in about three months’ time, will have a strategy on that matter that he will want to discuss with the Lord Chancellor.

The Select Committee was particularly struck during the inquiry by the evidence we took from the families of young people who had died in custody. It was profoundly moving and demonstrated that there have been repeated and needless failings in some areas, such as sharing information and acting swiftly and decisively on information that could have been addressed. Those things can be put right through fairly basic measures.

There are successes and failings in the prison estate, but neither the successes nor the failings are unique to either privatised or publicly run prisons. We need to be realistic and not simplistic about that. We welcome the evidence that the prisons Minister and the chief executive of NOMS have given to us, but we think that there needs to be a specific programme, with action plans, to tackle violence and self-harm in prisons. I agree that there must certainly be more of an emphasis on rehabilitation.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) was right to refer to the pointlessness of continuing with the so-called indeterminate public protection sentences. Yesterday, I was at the same event as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), where that point, among others, was made powerfully. We could start work on that swiftly.

We should recognise that a structured life and meaningful work are important in prison. Perhaps we should see whether we can remove some of the legal constraints that prevent meaningful and paid employment. Perhaps it would be right for prisoners to do work that is taxable. The money that they earned could be set aside for them and their families upon release. The Lord Chancellor’s vision points in that direction and I hope that he will give us more detail on how that might be achieved.

Finally, it is important that we have a robust inspectorate to ensure compliance. I wish the new inspector well. I hope that the protocol that was referred to when the permanent secretary and the outgoing chief inspector gave evidence to us recently will be put in place swiftly to ensure that resourcing and independence are not an issue in the ability of the inspectorate to deliver its important work.

All in all, this is an important and thoughtful debate. Those who believe in genuine reform and not in simplistic sloganising, and those who have spent much of their working lives in the system will welcome it.