Prison Reform and Safety

Sam Gyimah Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), who talked about his experiences of his local prison, and I am pleased to be part of today’s debate. I believe there is general consensus in the Chamber about the fact that our prison system is not perfect, but I acknowledge that the Government have an ambitious programme for reform that will benefit not only offenders, but communities across the country. In particular, I welcome the 2,500 new prison officers who will be appointed and the provision of 5,600 body cameras, not just for prison officers, but for the police—that issue has been raised with me in particular.

I wish to focus my speech on gardening and the environment in the prison system, and I make no excuses for that, because it has a lot of potential to be helpful. We know that imprisoning somebody does not in itself reduce reoffending rates. As a number of Members have said, to do that we must try to give these people skills to increase their employability chances and help them to reintegrate back into the community. That is where environmental and gardening schemes can really help. As I have said before in the Chamber, many prisons are old and outdated, with little green space. There is definite data to show that when people are not in contact with green space and nature, it has a real impact on their mental health. I want to talk about a couple of good schemes that can show how this is useful.

The Eden Project has teamed up with Dartmoor prison to transform a disused exercise yard into a gardening project within the resettlement unit, from which local residents can buy vegetables, flowers and eggs. Such schemes are starting to crop up in many prisons across the country. When I was a television reporter, I went to Leyhill prison, near Bristol, which had a fabulous gardening project. It had state-of-the-art greenhouses and its gardening projects won gold medals at Chelsea. Lots of those projects need to be either reinstated—some have dropped away—or regenerated. The Conservation Foundation is about to start a “Gardening against the odds” project in Wandsworth prison. The project will extend across three exercise yards that are currently just tarmac, and will bring together prisoners, staff, members of the community, leading horticulturists and environmentalists.

Such schemes can stimulate mental and physical health. As I said, they also teach skills and disciplines that can improve employability. I recently met the British Association of Landscape Industries, which represents a £6 billion industry that is crying out for people to work for it, so there are opportunities if we can skill people up in these areas before they get back into the working world. Lots of these projects are not costly—they are cost-effective and highly beneficial—so I hope that the Minister will make reference to them. Earlier in the year, he replied to one of my oral questions by mentioning a prison gardening competition and inviting me to be a judge. I hope he is going to stick to the offer, because I would very much like to do that.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I confirm the invitation to my hon. Friend to be a judge in the prison gardening competition, at her convenience—the invitation is open.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the Minister for that. I am of course hoping that I will be allowed out by the Whips, as this is a very important initiative. Once it gets more attention, more people will enter the competition.

The Forestry Commission runs an interesting offenders and nature scheme, with offenders typically working as volunteers on nature conservation and woodland sites. They get out to do tasks such as building footpaths, creating boardwalks and establishing ponds, and learn about conservation and the environment. That, too, is very cost-effective, and at the same time it addresses several of the underlying factors that contribute to reoffending.

The Phoenix Futures recovery charity works with people, both in and out of prison, who struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. We have heard a lot about the drug problem in our prisons today. The charity is supported by the National Lottery, and it runs a recovery through nature programme, which aims to connect those who use the charity’s services with nature to assist their recovery. It has been shown that those who participate in the project have an incredible 41% higher chance of recovery than the national average, so I can tell the Minister that there is mileage in it.

Many of the ideas I have mentioned are included in a Conservative Environment Network pamphlet, to which many Members contributed, which calls for a more holistic and cross-departmental approach to environmental policy. This Government are doing great work on the environment and bringing it into many areas, but let us add an environmental strand to our prison reform.

I do not know how many Members have seen the film “Paddington 2”. Perhaps you have, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Oh, well you should see it; it is fantastic. Paddington used cooking to improve the lives of prisoners, and I am saying, “Let’s use gardening.”

We have a great opportunity. We need change. The situation is challenging. I am not saying that this is the answer to everything, but it is one small tool to add to the box—or the greenhouse—that might help us to address the problem. Ultimately, it will improve the lives of so many people who deserve it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and the Justice Committee on securing the debate. I thank Members for their contributions, and I say genuinely that almost every one of today’s contributions was constructive, made in good faith and had some merit to it. My hon. Friend set out with characteristic clarity many of the issues that our prisons face. As we all know, and as the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) mentioned, nearly all prisoners will one day be released, and our prisons should therefore be places that put offenders on a path that will enable them to turn away from crime after release. That means providing a safe and secure environment, and providing the right interventions and support to help them to turn their lives around.

No one doubts the challenge that we face with prisons or expects the situation to be quick or easy to turn around. I do not shy away from conceding that our prison system faces unprecedented challenges, but I am confident that we have a clear and coherent plan to face them. That plan will secure the safety and security of our estate and staff, empower governors to make decisions that are right for their prisons and ensure that we have the right tools in place to support offenders to rejoin society as productive citizens.

The hon. Members for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) and for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands)—the hon. Gentleman is no longer in his place—referred to the motion, and specifically to its mention of our “historically high prison population”. We can all agree that the prison population is too high, and we want it to fall. We have, however, made a considered judgment deliberately not to set an arbitrary target for reduction, because we will not compromise on our responsibility either to the victims of offences or to the safety of the wider public.

We will always hold in prison criminals whose offences are so grave that no other penalty will suffice, or who would pose a genuine threat to the public if they were released. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North mentioned that the Government should have a presumption against prison sentences of less than 12 months. Indeed, in England and Wales there is a presumption against custody at all, and a judge will send someone to prison only if they deem it right to do so.

It is important to remember that our current prison population reflects the number of serious offences—including sexual offences—that are coming before the courts. That has changed the nature of sentencing, with fewer people being sent to prison on short sentences but more people in prison for serious crimes on longer sentences. To give the House one example, there are now 4,000 more sex offenders in prison in England and Wales than there were in 2010.

I can assure the House that we will always have enough prison places for offenders who are sentenced to custody by our courts, and that protection of the public and providing justice to victims will remain our principal concern. Our latest statistics show that we have operational capacity of 87,370, and a current headroom of 1,241 places. The current population is 86,129, which includes 4,048 women prisoners. Of course, we cannot simply build our way out of the situation, but we have a plan for bringing in new capacity to the estate to provide modern, cost-effective, fit-for-purpose accommodation that will deal with the concerns that have been raised about overcrowding in the estate. HMP Berwyn currently has 800 places in use and will, when fully operational, provide 2,100 places. In addition, we have announced plans to build four more modern prisons.

[Robert Neill]

The Minister has talked about capacity, and I understand the work that is being done. A specific point that has been raised with the Select Committee is the slowness of repatriation of foreign national prisoners who are serving sentences in the UK. Repatriation of such prisoners would certainly take some pressure off capacity. Can he help on that point?

[Mr Gyimah]

The Chair of the Select Committee makes an important point about the repatriation of foreign national offenders. He will be aware that the most effective scheme to repatriate foreign offenders is the early release scheme, under which 40,000 foreign national offenders have been moved out of the UK since 2010. Prisoner transfer agreements are also in place but they are a lot more challenging because they require the co-operation of the receiving Government, who do not always seem that keen to receive their own criminals back. A cross-governmental task force is focused on that very point.

To realise our vision for prisons, we must first make sure that they are secure environments that are free from drugs, violence and intimidation. Again, I do not shy away from acknowledging that the use and availability of drugs in our prisons is too high. The House has often discussed how the rise of psychoactive substances in our prisons was a game-changer, but it was when organised criminal groups moved in to take control of supply routes into prisons that the rules changed. Those groups have embedded themselves throughout the prison estate, becoming ever more sophisticated in driving the drug market and making enormous profits from peddling misery to those around them. Their activities have been facilitated by the rise of new technologies, such as phones and drones, which they have used to try to overcome our security. Those things represent an unprecedented threat that we have not faced before.

As our prison officers and law enforcement partners across the country regularly prove, however, we are more than up to that challenge, and our investment in security is bearing fruit. Last year alone, HMPPS officers recovered more than 225 kg of drugs from the prison estate. Our new team of specialist drone investigators has already helped to secure over 50 years of jail time for those involved, and the team is supporting ongoing investigations across the country.

We are providing officers with the tools that they need. We have already introduced drug tests for psychoactive substances across all prisons, provided every prison with signal detection equipment and trained more than 300 sniffer dogs specifically to detect new psychoactive substances. The right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) asked about the availability of sniffer dogs to prisons. The dogs operate on a regional basis and are therefore available for prisons to call on as and when they are needed.

We are investing heavily in security and counter-terror measures, including £25 million to create the new security directorate in HMPPS. This year we will also invest more than £14 million in transforming our intelligence, search and disruption capability at local, national and regional level, to enable us better to identify and root out those who seek to supply drugs to our prisons. That investment includes more than £3 million to establish our serious organised crime units, which will relentlessly disrupt our most subversive offenders.

We are already seeing early successes from the new capability. A recent joint Prison Service and police operation at HMP Hewell, involving our specialist search teams and dogs, recovered 323 items, including 79 mobile phones, 29 improvised weapons, 50 litres of alcohol and a large quantity of drugs.

[David Hanson]

The Minister is indicating that those things are all intelligence-led. They should be routine.

[Mr Gyimah]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but we need to know what we are looking for, and we need to identify the prisoners who are most likely to have links with organised crime. We now know that about 6,000 prisoners have links with organised crime on the outside and are conduits for drugs into our prisons, and that allows us to be far more effective in what we are doing to combat those operations. It is still very early days, but the point I am making is that we are beginning to see success. As we go forward, we intend to build on these successes, through our new drugs plan, which he mentioned, and our work on corruption, where it exists—even if it be only among a very few officers. He will be hearing more from me about that shortly.

Of course, this is not just about seizing or intercepting drugs. We should never forget that we have a duty of care to our prisoners—we want to help offenders with drug problems—and more of our prisons now have specialist wings to support them in overcoming their dependencies. We are also working closely with health partners to provide information, guidance and support to prisoners, visitors and staff on the impact and damaging consequences of drugs.

Hon. Members have mentioned the safety of our prisons. Ensuring safety is partly about having the right staffing levels to deliver safe and consistent regimes, and we are making swift progress in recruiting the additional 2,500 staff in the adult estate we promised in 2016: 1,255 extra prison officers have been recruited in the last year, and officer numbers are now at their highest levels since August 2013. In the youth estate, we have likewise expanded frontline staff capacity in public sector youth offender institutions by about 20%.

Preventing suicide and self-harm is also a focus of mine. We are taking decisive action to reduce the levels of self-harm by strengthening the frontline. Each individual incident of suicide or self-harm is one too many and a source of deep tragedy. We have introduced new suicide and self-harm prevention training to give everyone working in prisons, whether officers or staff from other organisations, the confidence and skills they need to support those in their care. So far, more than 10,000 prison staff have started the training, and all new prison officer and prison custody officer recruits now complete the programme as part of their initial training. I am glad to say that the number of self-inflicted deaths in custody is significantly down from last year, although I will be the first to admit that there is still a lot of work to be done.

The Chair of the Select Committee referred to the architecture of the prison system and how we can hold ourselves to account. We are strengthening the ability of the inspectorate to hold the Government and the Prison Service to account and have introduced a new urgent notification process, which had formed part of the original Prisons and Courts Bill, to enable the Secretary of State to be alerted directly where the chief inspector has a significant and urgent concern about the performance of an institution. We launched that process last month. The Secretary of State will be directly alerted by the chief inspector if an urgent issue needs addressing to ensure that recommendations are acted upon immediately. A new team of specialists accountable to Ministers will ensure that immediate action is taken and will respond within 28 days with a more in-depth plan to ensure sustained, long-term improvement for the prison.

[Andy Slaughter]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but a lot of it sounds like firefighting. I quoted from a report on the Scrubs earlier, but tomorrow we have Her Majesty’s inspectorate’s report on the Scrubs—I do not know if he has seen it yet. I have not quoted from it because it is under embargo still, but it shows endemic, long-term problems that need powerful solutions, and I just do not hear that vision coming from the Government.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman is being unfair. Recruiting more staff, investing in intelligence and technology, rolling out a drugs strategy, introducing an urgent notification process, giving more power to the inspectorate—all these things will solve the issues in our prison. I hear him on the Scrubs—I admit that there are deep-seated challenges there—but prisons are, always have been and always will be difficult places to manage. That said, we are making significant investment in tackling the problems in our prisons. As I have always said, it will not happen overnight, but the actions I am outlining show our determination and will to overcome the problems and make sure that our prisons are places of safety and reform.

Hon. Members have touched on employment and education. We have recently announced the new futures network, which will be a broker between prisons and the employment sector so as to help prisoners to find work on release and get better purposeful activity in prisons. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) mentioned that sometimes drug habits develop because prisoners are bored. Having more and better purposeful activity is important to ensuring that prisoners are purposefully occupied in prison and can gain new skills and improve their chances of finding a job on release.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) rightly mentioned the estate. Yes, the plan is to create 10,000 additional places. Of course, there have been issues with maintenance, but those are issues for facilities managers, and I am in direct contact with them to ensure that, whatever the future plans for a prison further down the line, we maintain standards of decency in that prison.

In conclusion, reducing reoffending, protecting the public, reforming offenders and ensuring the safety and security of our staff and those in our custody remain my Department’s top priorities.

[Robert Neill]

I appreciate the Minister’s remarks and the spirit of them. Will he confirm that the Government remain committed, when a legislative opportunity occurs, to placing the powers of the inspectorate, the prisons and probation ombudsman and the national prevention mechanism on a statutory basis?

[Mr Gyimah]

I can confirm that we are very alive in looking for legislative opportunities to do exactly what my hon. Friend says. He will be aware that where there are other avenues, such as private Members’ Bills—one to enable us to switch off mobile phones is going through the House now—to make practical progress, we are doing so.

We must break the ongoing cycle of reoffending that has for too long blighted communities the length of our country by helping offenders to turn their lives around and prepare them for a productive and law-abiding life on release. I will end by reiterating some of the remarks I made at the start of the debate. Reforming our prisons to be places of safety and reform will not be easy, but the House should be in no doubt about the energy and resolve with which we will continue to tackle head on the challenges that we face. I welcome many of the points made today. They were constructive. I disagree on a number of issues with the Opposition spokesperson, but I know that we all share the same intention: to make our prisons places of safety and to ensure that when people come out of prison, they do not reoffend.