Prisons

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I think the whole House will sympathise with and support the right hon. Lady’s comments on the morale of prison officers. When the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) and I were prison officers together in Dartmoor prison, it was evident to us that prison officers felt that they were out of sight and out of mind. They felt that nobody had any interest in their work until something went catastrophically wrong. Does she agree that it would be an excellent idea for right hon. and hon. Members not just to contact the Prison Officers Association, but occasionally to visit prisons to show that we do care and that they are not out of sight nor out of mind?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I am delighted to hear that he is a former prison officer. Perhaps he could be a shining beacon of the scheme to bring former prison officers into service.

[Stephen Pound]

I am so reluctant to disabuse and disappoint the right hon. Lady, but the hon. Member for Aldershot and I were only temporarily in Dartmoor as part of a television programme called “At the Sharp End”.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I thank Mr Mackay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). He, like me, is one of a number of exes in the Chamber who have had responsibility for the prison service; we know how difficult it is to deal with these issues in the post of Secretary of State or prisons Minister.

The right hon. Gentleman made extremely important points about who we imprison, how we use imprisonment and how we use alternative sentences. Those points should be listened to. However, even he will recognise that there are many challenges in the current system. Judging from the current Secretary of State’s contribution, she knows that as well, as does the Labour Front-Bench spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), who moved the motion. I speak today as a member of the Justice Committee, supported by the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), in the absence of our Chair, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I want to set out some of the challenges as we on the Justice Committee see them.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) told us some of the statistics, and the situation is extremely challenging. We have had six major incidents. We have also had an escape—such occurrences have been unusual over the past 13 to 14 years. Sadly, we have the very high level of 107 self- inflicted deaths, which is an increase of 13% over the previous year, and I expect that number to rise still further in the figures that will be announced tomorrow.

[Stephen Pound]

I do not want to interrupt my right hon. Friend’s flow, but he will be aware, as we all are, that on 16 December last year, Jenny Swift tragically killed herself in HMP Doncaster. The position of transgender prisoners is one that has agonising implications, and we simply have to recognise that. Does he agree that we need to do more for transgender prisoners in view of the horrendous record of self-harm and suicide that has afflicted them?

[Mr Hanson]

I agree. I think the first question at yesterday’s Justice questions was about that very issue and the Secretary of State indicated that it is a priority for the Government. We do have a number of vulnerable people in prison, and the situation regarding those self-inflicted deaths, as well as the homicides that have occurred, is extremely difficult. As we have heard, there has been a 26% increase in reported incidents of self-harm and we have a massive 35% increase in hospital attendances. We also, sadly, have a massive 34% increase in the number of assaults on prison officers. There are also increases in attacks with bladed weapons, spitting and the use of blunt instruments, which means that the situation is very challenging.

I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has to some extent made a U-turn on the staffing cuts put in place by her predecessors. She will know that it is a real challenge to achieve an increase of 4,000 posts over the next two years to get a net increase of 2,500 officers. I know that the Committee welcomes that on the whole, but we have seen a 26% cut in staffing numbers since 2010, so we will not be anywhere near getting back to the number of prisoner officers who were in post in May 2010. The Secretary of State needs to look at how we will achieve that.

That is not the only concern we have today, however, and, in the absence of the Chair, I want to highlight some of the things that we in the Justice Committee are currently considering. I hope that the prisons Minister will respond to these key issues. As a Labour MP, I would like to be in a position to be able to implement policies now, but Labour Members will not be able to do that for some years, so we need to offer strong scrutiny to what the Government are doing. That is the key thing for the Justice Committee in the next few weeks and months.

We have now established a prisons sub-committee to look at a range of issues to do with governor empowerment and the challenges faced by the Minister. I am pleased to share a role on that sub-committee with the hon. Member for Banbury. However, we are still a little short of some of the detail about the Government’s programme. It would be helpful for the Minister and the Government, not only in the winding-up speech but in the forthcoming debates, to look at putting the meat on the current extent of their activities so that we can judge what will be taking place in whatever time they have left in office.

We can talk about what the Opposition’s alternative policy would be, but the election could be almost three and a half years away, and the Government have a key role to play before then. We have heard today that governor empowerment will take place in April—just over two months’ time. One third of prison governors will be given greater power and autonomy, but I am genuinely not yet clear about how that will work in practice, what the benchmarks will be, how Ministers will monitor those governors, what the outcomes will be for those governors, and what freedoms they will have to make a difference. I am not sure that the speed of bringing in those changes has yet been thought through by the Government. As the Minister will know, six reform prisons were piloted only in the last six months, and we do not yet know the outcomes of those reforms. It is incumbent on the Minister to indicate the current outcomes for those six reform prisons.

I am not clear about the accountability either. I used to have the prisons Minister’s job, so I know that when something goes wrong in a prison, it will end up on the prisons Minister’s desk, and almost certainly on the front of the Daily Mail or The Sun. I am not clear about how accountability will work in relation to prison governors, so I would like some clarity today from the Minister about what a decision in a prison 200 miles from his office in the Ministry of Justice will mean for accountability when it ultimately lands on his desk.

I want some clarity today about what the commissioning process will be for prison governors. Do they have the skills and training to be able to commission services for employment, health or procurement? Those things have previously been done centrally. I am not sure whether all that local commissioning will mean that we lose some of the Ministry’s economies of scale.

In a fractured, localised system, what is the role of the MOJ when setting out directions? I am not sure how governors will recruit local prison officers. I would welcome some clarification, on behalf of our Committee, as to whether terms and conditions of service, training and delivery will be devolved. Those issues go to the heart of the Government amendment, and to the heart of the work of the sub-committee, which will be looking at them on a cross-party basis in the near future.

I am not sure whether there is discretion. When we heard evidence from Peter Dawson of the Prison Reform Trust last week, he said that this would

“unleash competition between governors, prisons and probation and between prison, probation and the police. It is a competitive environment. There are pros and cons to that, but it is likely to drive up cost overall.”

We need some real vision and clarity from Ministers, not on the direction of travel—we know what that is—but on what the bones of that travel will be.

It is also important that we have an indication of what the performance measurements and league tables will look like. Ultimately, as the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East have said, we are caring for people through the gate. Most prisoners will leave prison and return to society, and our duty as the state is to ensure that they return in a way that does not lead them to reoffend, and that they contribute positively to society. We need more facts and more direction from the Government.