Prison Safety

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered in the Sixth Report from the Justice Committee of Session 2015-16, on Prison Safety, HC 625, and the Government response, HC 647.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to welcome the Minister to his place. I think this is the first time he has had the chance to reply to a Westminster Hall debate on this topic.

I am grateful to the House for this opportunity to debate the Justice Committee’s report; I thank all my Committee colleagues for their work, and other hon. Members from across the House who have a long-standing and informed interest in justice. I am particularly pleased to see the former prisons Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), to whom I pay tribute for his work in an always difficult and intractable area of public policy.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

There are two former Ministers here!

[Robert Neill]

Indeed. I was referring to the immediate former prisons Minister with whom the Committee worked. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) graces us on the Select Committee and we have had the benefit of his input.

Let us be blunt. Prison safety is terrible. Those are not my words, but those of the former Secretary of State, my Friend the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), in a prompt and frank response to our inquiry. He is entitled to credit for that.

The difficulty, which the current Minister will recognise and accept, is that prison safety was terrible when our report came out and it has got worse. I have hesitated until now to talk about a crisis in prison safety, but I think we are now at that stage. I say that because on every measure, safety has deteriorated and has continued to do so over a long time. That cannot be regarded as a one-off blip and we see no sign yet, despite considerable Government endeavour and intervention—which I do not dispute—of the situation or the underlying reasons being turned around. The situation has become grave and our report is particularly timely. That is important for two reasons.

First, whatever one’s view about the purpose of prison and how much emphasis we place on rehabilitation on the one hand and retribution or prevention of danger to the public on the other—all legitimate considerations to put in the mix—when the state legitimately takes it upon itself through proper process to incarcerate someone for their wrongs against society, there is an element of punishment in doing that properly, but we also take on board responsibility for ensuring that they are treated not only humanely, but safely. If the state fails in that, it fails in one of its primary obligations.

Secondly, in respect of broader policy, the current Secretary of State, like her predecessor, and the Minister, like his predecessor, are committed to a policy of prison reform. I hope that all of us in Westminster Hall today are committed to a policy of prison reform. The reality is that the less safe the prisons are, the harder it is to achieve reform. If we want real rehabilitation, real change and to reduce reoffending, a raft of interventions in prison is required, which can be properly delivered only if prisons are safe to start with.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Huq]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Neill]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush first.

[Dr Huq]

That is not yet the redrawn boundary—my constituency is Ealing Central and Acton at present, although it may be changed.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and pay tribute to him for his sterling work chairing our Select Committee. He mentioned how things are interlinked with education. That point has been vividly brought home to us on the many visits we have made, in particular to Aylesbury and Wandsworth, where we heard that prisoners sometimes want to go on educational courses but there are not the staff available to relieve others so that they can do it. It seems to be a Catch-22 situation, and people are locked into a cycle. They want to get education, but there are not enough staff to supervise the groups travelling across the courses. That means that courses are often cancelled, which is an unacceptable situation.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

My right hon. Friend is painting a very compelling picture and giving a timeline. Does he agree that the logical consequence of the bleak picture he paints is more incidents such as the walkout in May at Wormwood Scrubs prison by staff, who felt so unsafe that they downed tools? That prison is on the border of my constituency—it is next door, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). The situation has been described as “Dickensian squalor” by the current chief inspector, Peter Clarke, whom the Committee interviewed. I know this lot—the Government—are into Victorian values, but this is the wrong value to go for.

[Mr Hanson]

Self-evidently, if prison officers feel so unsafe in their place of work that they walk out, it is for them to express that concern. I hope they find mechanisms other than walking out because not being there does not make the prisoners any safer.

The key thing—this is linked to the previous point—is that six years ago there were 1.73 prisoners for each prison officer. Now, there are more than 2.015 prisoners for each prison officer, which affects the amount of investment and time they can put in. The Government’s response shows that a lot of people are walking away from the Prison Service. We have appointed 3,100 new prison officers in the past year but, overall, there has only been a rise of 300 officers. As well as the Government dealing with the issue of having sufficient prison officers, I would welcome their view on retention. Ultimately, we face a situation whereby some prisons have experienced prisoners and inexperienced prison officers, which is not a good mix if the system is to be managed effectively.

If we are losing the number of prison officers that the Minister’s report says we are in just one year—we have a net increase of only 300 prison officers after recruiting 3,100—what steps is he taking to incentivise people to stay, to ensure we retain recruitment and to keep experienced officers in place? Given the age profile of prison officers, will the trend be such that the Minister really has to ramp up recruitment because people will want to retire as they approach natural retirement age? What profiling has he done and will he confirm to the Justice Committee that his recruitment numbers will have a real impact given the number of prison officers we have lost?

The Government’s response puts in a word about mobile phones, which is a perennial problem that we have all dealt with during our times in the Ministry of Justice. They also make points about drugs in prison and about detection, which is equally important. They then come to the next issue, which is:

“Building five new prisons by 2020 to modernise the prison estate and close the most inefficient out of date jails.”

Perhaps the Minister will tell us, apart from Her Majesty’s Prison Berwyn, which is 10 miles down the road from my constituency, which are the other four prisons? When will he put bricks on the ground and which are the inefficient and out-of-date jails? At what stage will those predominantly Victorian prisons, possibly even some that have been mentioned today, be closed and what is the transition period for that? What measures, including staffing numbers, design, education and input, is he building into the new prisons, such as HMP Berwyn, to make them safer?

We can all sit here and pontificate on what should be done, but it is clear from the tone of the debate and the information to date that there has been serious deterioration over a range of measures and indices over the past five—and particularly the past two to three—years. A range of things can be done regarding staffing ratios, retention, drugs, mobile phones, education, mental health and the cohort of prisoner numbers, but it comes down to points made by my fellow Justice Committee members, the hon. Members for Cheltenham, for Henley and for Bromley and Chislehurst. If we are going to continue to imprison people at the rate that we are, sufficient resources must be put in to manage that in an effective way to provide rehabilitation.

Looking into ways of taking people out of the Prison Service and into short-term community sentences might take some of the pressure off prison numbers. We cannot have a situation whereby there is an increased cohort of difficult, challenging prisoners with mental health, drug and alcohol problems, who are in for violent offences, and for longer sentences for a range of offences, when the way in which prison operates is dealt with by an ever-diminishing number of staff who are more poorly trained than and not as experienced as the people they are replacing, and whose safety, along with those who are in prison, is paramount.

Will the Minister put a bit more meat on the response now or indicate to the Justice Committee at what stage a bit more meat will be put on it? I look forward to the Committee being able to assess indices of success so that we have clear measurements of where improvements will be made.

With due respect to the document, rather than blind assurances that the Government will produce a plan, monitor effectiveness, look into increasing the number of prison officers, deal with drugs and phones, and build some new prisons, I would like a bit more detail. If the Minister is not able to give that today, will he commit to reporting back to our Committee at a time of his convenience with a detailed plan, including detailed indices for improvement and detailed financing for those indices, so that we can measure what happens in the future, rather than just take assurances, which, while well meant, may not actually meet the objectives we have set?