Arts Council England: Funding

Debate between Robert Neill and James Morris

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am sorry to say that is true. I do not object, in truth, to the idea that we should spend more arts funding across the rest of the country. I am not an opponent of levelling up as such, but I have always taken the view that that should not be at the expense of London. Decimating London is counter-productive, because much of the talent that performs in the rest of the country is London-based and London-trained, because that is where the critical mass of the arts world is. It is where the conservatoires and colleges are.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

One of the critical issues is defining what we mean by “levelling up the arts”. In relation to opera, this is not just about physical location. As a west midlands MP, I want more of my constituents to enjoy opera, but does that not mean that we need to define more clearly what levelling up opera might mean? That is what we lack in relation to the funding decisions: there is no overarching strategic view.

[Sir Robert Neill]

That neatly brings me to the next point, which is perhaps the most important. We have mentioned that the funding cut to the ENO would have been a woeful and destructive action. It still might happen: had Dr Harry Brünjes and Stuart Murphy, the chair and chief executive, all their team at the ENO and all the great artists—people such as Bryn Terfel and others, who started the petitions—rolled over to Arts Council England’s decisions, there would be redundancy notices at the London Coliseum this week, and 600 professional people would have been out of a job thanks to Arts Council England’s incompetence. That is no way to run an organisation, and Arts Council England should be ashamed of the way it went about it all.

It is significant that the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), went public on social media, saying that the way Arts Council England has carried out her intended policy of levelling up arts funding was not as she intended, and has the effect of undermining it. That is the view of the former Secretary of State, who ought to know because it was her policy. The ineptitude of Arts Council England has undermined and discredited the Government’s policy intention, which the Minister and I could probably quite happily sign up to in principle. That is another reason why the Minister ought not to simply say, “I can stand back from this,” because the Government’s own policy is being failed by an arm’s length body. That is really important, which is why we need a proper strategy.

We need a proper strategy for opera. Opera is a major part of the British music scene. Some people think it is a bit of a foreign thing, rather like John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” in the 18th century and Handel. It is not. It is fundamental.

Prisons: Planning and Policies

Debate between Robert Neill and James Morris

Thursday 15th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

That is absolutely right. I remember going to Swansea some years ago, where there was overcrowding even then, and that continues to be the case. That variation is really not desirable. There is a raft of constraints, and that is why, again, the new-for-old policy is hugely important. HMP Thameside, for example, was almost specifically built with the intention that it should be crowded. It was almost designed on the basis of a lack of capacity—before this Government’s watch, I hasten to add. However, we do need to address some real issues in that regard.

The Government are right to say that there are constraints on reducing overcrowding, because this is a demand-driven activity. We rightly cannot seek to influence directly how the courts sentence individual offenders. There will come a time, inevitably, when it is necessary for judges to pass custodial sentences. I know, as does any practitioner, that they do not do that lightly but, at the end of the day, the Government have to provide the necessary capacity to deal with that sentencing regime. At the moment—the Minister may have more up-to-date figures than me—the National Audit Office puts the cost of eliminating overcrowding at about £900 million. I accept that it is not possible to afford that in the immediate term, but it is important to have a programme that, over time, through capital investment, will bring on the new estate that will make dealing with the issue much easier.

Overcrowding is going to be an issue, but we need to manage and deal with that. That is why the Committee was anxious to see more attention given to overcrowding than has perhaps been the case. I think that the current Secretary of State recognised that in several comments; he certainly did so in the evidence that he gave in the first session of the new Committee in this Parliament.

The recommendation was to develop a broad range of measures to reflect the realities of prison conditions. Frankly, the Government were not willing to take that recommendation on board. I hope that they will think about that. The measurement at the moment may not be realistic in terms of capturing the actuality on the ground. We need not be wedded to any particular formula. There is no magic about the way the measurement is done. It is a question of what the most efficient measure is. I hope simply that the Minister and his colleagues will reflect again on our recommendation, particularly in the light of the Government’s new commitment to rehabilitation. Perhaps that is something we can do, because it is important that we have a measure that is measurable. One piece of evidence that we were given in the previous Committee was that the current system of measurement makes it very hard to measure the improvements and the outputs and inputs.

The other matters on which we concentrated were benchmarking and staffing levels. The inspectorate of prisons uses a four-stage healthy prison test in relation to its benchmarking. The four key figures are safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement. I do not think that anyone would disagree with those. Sadly, there has been, according to the evidence that the Select Committee received, a fall in those standards in the past couple of years. Each year, the inspector of prisons makes their report and provides a percentage figure for the inspected adult prisons and young offenders institutes that have been rated as good or reasonably good. Regrettably, the percentage of prisons so rated has fallen on each of those criteria, particularly in the past year.

Our report, comparing the figures for 2013-14 with those for 2014-15, showed that there had been a number of falls, which it is worth putting on the record. In relation to prisons inspected, the safety rating had fallen from 69% to 42%. The respect rating had fallen from 67% to 58%. For purposeful activity, it had fallen from 61% to 42%, and for resettlement it had fallen from 75% to 53%. It is fair to say that there has been an updating in the latest annual report, which I think was not available to the Select Committee at the time. It now shows safety at 52%, respect at 64%, but very worryingly from my point of view, purposeful activity at 39% and then resettlement at 57%. The linkage between purposeful activity and resettlement is, many of us would suggest, very significant. Although there are improvements on some scores, there is clearly more work to do. The Minister may have to hand yet more up-to-date figures, which I am sure he will share with us.

There is some improvement, therefore, but it does leave, overall—on the information that we have—the proportion achieving good or reasonably good ratings at about 40%. That means that 60% of prisons are not getting into that proper category. That is obviously a matter of concern. I know that the Government share that concern; I am very conscious that the Government are not complacent about the issue, but it is important that we put it on the record and see what is proposed to deal with it to take it forward.

Let me deal in particular with rehabilitative outcomes. I referred to the visit to Holloway by the current Committee. A number of my hon. Friends were on that visit. We were particularly interested to see how the restrictions on release on temporary licence sometimes denied mothers the chance to engage with childcare on ROTL and opportunities to work in the community before release. That is not, I think, for want of will among the staff involved, but it seems that we are not yet there in getting that delivered on the ground. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what more can be done on that.

The previous Committee called witnesses to find out as best they could what might have caused the fall in standards. The suggestion was that there was an issue about the incentives and earned privileges scheme—that, of course, allows prisoners to access benefits in exchange for responsible behaviour—and about staffing levels. That was the view put by the witnesses. It has to be said in fairness that the Government took a converse view, saying that essentially this is a demand-led matter involving unexpected and more challenging prison population levels and a cultural increase in suicide rates, which I think is accepted and is a matter that we have to deal with. There is no simple, one-size-fits-all answer to all this, but it does warrant our continuing attention and concern.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

The report alludes to some evidence of increased suicide rates in the prison population and other aspects in relation to mental health in prisons. Does my hon. Friend agree that one way of addressing demand and some of the issues that he has raised about rehabilitation is to look wholesale at how mental health is tackled in prisons? As he will know, there is a very high prevalence of mental health problems in the prison population.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend’s intervention is very important. That issue concerned me when I was a practitioner. All too often I saw people with mental health issues, and frankly the estate and the arrangements were not geared up to deal with that adequately. On several occasions, one would find that the case had to be adjourned because the prison psychiatric service was not able to produce some of the necessary reports, never mind the ongoing care that was required. Often, particularly with short sentences, people are released, there are mental health issues, and there is not the follow-up. Everyone accepts that there is a need to do more about this. As I said, I am conscious that the will is not lacking; the issue is finding the best means of achieving our aim. I think that that is a most important point. Again, the age of the estate and the lack of activity contribute to the pressures on what are often quite fragile people. My experience always was that some people end up in prison because they are very bad people, but a lot of people end up in prison because they are vulnerable and fragile and their circumstances have worked out badly. They need some help to be rehabilitated. They are the people whom we can best rehabilitate, but often the facilities are not there to help them in the way that all of us would wish, so it is a very powerful point.

Understaffing of course contributes to those problems. We have seen that it affects the regime. The Government are of course doing their best in relation to restricted regimes and deploying staff on detached duty, but that is obviously not a long-term solution. We need to find a better way around the problem. It cannot be sensible in the long term that, for example, a laundry at Wormwood Scrubs, representing about £1.3 million of investment, was in effect inoperable for a period because there were not the staff there to deal with it. We have seen, for example, the inspection report on Her Majesty’s young offenders institution at Cookham Wood: 36% of boys are locked up during the core day. As the report by Lord Harris of Haringey legitimately and properly highlights, these are young and often vulnerable people. They have to be punished; they have to be detained. That is right to reflect what they have done, but it is very hard to do the rehabilitative work with lock-up for that amount of time. We ought to address that as a matter of urgency.

Detached duty of course involves a degree of movement of staff. That places pressures on the staff themselves. It is necessary sometimes—I do not think that anyone would have an issue with the principle of it—but it is not desirable in the long term, because of the element of disruption for the staff themselves, but also for the prisoners. It is very difficult to build up the relationships that one would wish if one is having to detach staff and send them away from their normal arrangements. Also, of course, other staff have to work harder to compensate. It is actually a rather costly way to deal with the issue in the long term.

We have, however, seen improvements in staff turnover. We were concerned about staff morale and turnover. It is a credit to NOMS that staff turnover appears to have decreased from 15% in 2014 to 8% in 2015—credit where it is due for the work that has been done on that. There is also a recruitment drive to remedy the shortfalls. I understand that the number of officer vacancies has fallen to about 3% below the benchmarking levels. Again, that is welcome, but it is important that we sustain it, and I am sure that the Minister will update us on the work that is being done in that area.

The Committee’s conclusion in its report was that the key explanation for many of the deteriorating performance levels was, in addition to the age of the estate, understaffing. That seems to be being taken on board, but I would like to know what is proposed to ensure that that is further borne down on and that we sustain the reduction in understaffing.

The Committee recommended that the Government should alter staffing benchmarks upwards to ensure that prisons returned to former levels of operational performance. The Government rejected that recommendation, and I would like to know more from the Minister about why they felt that it was not appropriate. I am sure we all agree that we ought to update and improve our statistics and benchmarking, and I would be interested to know the Government’s current view and their proposals for the future. Do they anticipate further upward calibrations in the staffing benchmark, and how do they propose to deal with the problem of restricted regimes?

I will leave my hon. Friends to deal with the question of self-harm. I am conscious that I have already taken 20 minutes to open the debate, and others wish to speak. I hope that the Minister will help us on current self-harm figures. According to the figures that we have at the moment, some 2% of prisoners are on the basic regime, 52% are on the standard regime and 45% are on the enhanced regime, which indicates levels of vulnerability that need to be addressed as a matter of some urgency.

Evidence from the Prison Reform Trust highlighted the risks surrounding the first period of custody. I would be interested to hear the Government’s response to that evidence and their view on how we should deal with it as well as with the number of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, which remain a concern. Those have risen, as have the number of assaults on staff.

The previous Select Committee quite properly flagged up a number of issues in this report. There is a broader resources problem, in both capital and revenue terms, which needs to be addressed. The Committee concluded that we need to re-evaluate how we use custody, and alternatives to custody, in a cost-effective way that best promotes the safety of the public and reduces crime. That is entirely in line with what the Lord Chancellor said in his evidence to the Select Committee in this Session. I look forward to hearing from the Government precisely how we should take that entirely legitimate and deserving objective forward.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and James Morris

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

With respect to the hon. Lady, it is seldom persons in that category who are the interveners; they are much more likely to be the bringers of the review. I will come to the role of interveners in a moment, but let me finish the point about the way in which there has been mission creep in judicial review and the sometimes damaging effect that that has on the decision-making process.

The situation is a little like what we found with local government finance at one time, when officials tended to play tick the box so that someone qualified for the right number of grants. There is an element of that sometimes in the decision-making process, where decisions are always taken with an eye over the shoulder at the risk of judicial review rather than getting to the merits of the matter. If these clauses help, as I think they will, to move away from that culture, that is a good thing, as it will then encourage imaginative and radical, but always fact-based, decision making. It will always have to be fact-based because, after all, the Wednesbury reasonableness test is unchanged; it remains in any event. There will always be scope for challenge of irrational decisions, or of decisions that are genuinely not based on evidence. But removing the threat of judicial review to the extent that it now hangs over decision makers is sensible and proportionate.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the impact of the threat of judicial review on local authority decision making. It has almost become the expectation before a decision is taken that it is liable to be judicially reviewed, adding a layer of bureaucracy and a length of time to decisions that sometimes need to be taken in a more timely fashion.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who leads me neatly on to the next point I wanted to make. It is suggested somehow that this is the state seeking to prevent challenge. Very often, those on the receiving end of unmerited judicial reviews are local authorities—democratically elected bodies who find their decision challenged by some vested interests. Very often, that vested interest is propped up by an intervener. That is why the proposed changes are legitimate and proportionate. My hon. Friend is quite right. That is an impediment not only in areas such as development and planning matters, but in relation to other forms of decision making such as housing and other types of policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Morris]

Nobody is arguing that there is not an important balance to be struck, taking into account, as others have pointed out, the importance of democratic accountability for decisions taken. Nobody is arguing that judicial review has no role to play in this context, but there is a strong argument to be made about where the culture that has developed is leading. I speak regularly to local authority chief executives, and it is having a very detrimental impact on local authorities’ ability to make long-term decisions.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point. Does he agree that the concern about the growth of judicial review, rather than the concept, is shared by all parties in local government—I have spoken to local authority leaders, of all parties—and by many experienced chief executives and senior officers?

[James Morris]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We need to take measures such as those in the Bill, which I support, to get the balance right in respect of the culture that has developed over the past few years.

As has been mentioned, there is the question of the public perception of what judicial review actually is. As a result of the culture that has built up, there is a public perception that if a judicial review goes ahead, the decision will somehow be overturned. It is felt that the review is to do with the decision rather than with a discussion about the process. For example, a group of residents in my constituency approached me about a judicial review of a fire authority’s decision, which I did not think had been great, to close a local fire station. They raised funds to take the matter to the first stage, but even if they had successfully demonstrated that the authority had not followed due process—I am not a lawyer, but on the face of it there were some grounds for saying so—the likely outcome of their spending something north of £100,000 on a judicial review would have been the authority simply re-presenting the same proposal. That example shows that we must be careful about raising public expectations about what a judicial review can achieve.

Fire Service (Metropolitan Areas)

Debate between Robert Neill and James Morris

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

I will make sure that those meetings take place. The right hon. Gentleman knows that we are now moving to a new system.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Neill]

I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend, but I want to get this point on the record, along with other important points that need to be made for the sake of balance.

I assure the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne that when we design the new system, we wish to ensure that there is fairness. That is why, in setting the baseline under the new system, the risks element will be taken into account. We have decided that, under the new system, fire and rescue authorities will be designated as top-up authorities, so that they will have the confidence of having a significant proportion of their funding protected and will not be subject to volatility by business rate growth. They will have that protection, plus the protection of uprating annually by the retail prices index.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and James Morris

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

The West Midlands fire service is proposing to merge two fire stations in my constituency, which will significantly reduce the level of fire cover, reducing the number of fire engines from two to one. Will the Minister responsible commit to meet me and the chief of the West Midlands fire service to review those proposals and to ensure that the same level of fire cover is retained in my constituency?

[Robert Neill]

Of course I am happy to discuss the matter with my hon. Friend, but I must point out that these are local decisions for the fire authority, which must at all times act in accordance with its integrated risk management plan and its statutory obligations under fire services legislation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and James Morris

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the great failures of the previous Government was to wrap local authorities up in a bureaucratic top-down performance-management regime from which local government needs to be liberated?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why we have indicated our intention to get rid of the CAA regime, which has been estimated to cost the sector in the region of £2 billion. That is why we are committed to abolishing the Standards Board and why we want to give genuine power back to local authorities.