Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of trends in staff sickness rates on safety in prisons.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The safety of staff and prisoners is a key priority. Staff sickness can impact our ability to provide a full regime to prisoners and properly manage those at risk of self-harm and violence. This is why action to ensure prisons are sufficiently resourced is a priority.
We are constantly monitoring a wide range of staff resource data across the estate, including Target Staffing Figures and Staff in Post, and making interventions where necessary. Where staffing levels are being impacted by rates of sickness above that which a prison is profiled for, and establishments feel that sickness rates or other factors will impact on stability and safety in a prison, additional support is available for the prison. This can include National Detached Duty, where staff are deployed to other prisons to manage temporary staffing shortfalls, and Operational Stability Payment (incentivised Payment Plus).
We continue to deliver services to support staff, both to prevent staff absences due to sickness and to enable staff to return to work. These include referrals to HMPPS’ independent third-party provider Occupational Health, access to Care Teams, 24-hour assistance counselling through the PAM Assist helpline and TRiM (Trauma Risk Management), which is a trauma-focused peer support system.
Information on the average working days lost due to sickness per prison staff member is publicly available, and can be found at HM Prison and Probation Service workforce quarterly: September 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), in the document named HMPPS workforce statistics bulletin: September 2022 tables.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the impact of safer custody teams on (a) mental health support in prisons and (b) the welfare of prisoners.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
We have a continued commitment to ensure that the safety of staff and prisoners is a priority. Each prison has a safer custody team that takes the lead on implementing safer custody policy and plays a major role in positively promoting the welfare of prisoners, but this is also the responsibility of every member of staff within the prison. Safer custody teams vary between prisons according to the function, population and size of the prison. The teams have responsibilities including analysing data on violence and self-harm, responding to investigations into deaths in custody and implementing or disseminating learning from them, and supervising peer support schemes. They also have oversight of the key systems for managing safety risks, including the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork process for those at risk of self-harm and suicide and the Challenge, Support and Intervention Plan for those at risk of violence.
Mental health is a priority for this Government and we recognise that providing the right support and treatment at the right time is vital to improving outcomes for people in the criminal justice system. All prisoners have access to a range of mental health services which are commissioned by NHS England. Together, we are committed to ensuring that people in prison have access to an equivalent standard of health care as is available for people in the community.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 17 November 2022 to Question 88986 on Prisons, what limitations are put in place when a privately operated prison is not fully staffed.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
There is no contractual requirement for privately managed prisons to have Regime Management Plans. The terms of each privately managed prison contract require the provider to support the rehabilitation of offenders through a safe, decent and secure regime. HMPPS contract management teams provide assurance that the prison provides safe, decent and secure services in accordance with the contract.
Regimes must include, but are not limited to: education, training and work; interventions and offending behaviour programmes; resettlement activities; and peer support roles
Each privately managed prison will determine regime delivery based upon available resources, and risk assessment.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 17 November 2022 to Question 88986 on Prisons, what activities must be provided under a full regime in privately operated prisons.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
There is no contractual requirement for privately managed prisons to have Regime Management Plans. The terms of each privately managed prison contract require the provider to support the rehabilitation of offenders through a safe, decent and secure regime. HMPPS contract management teams provide assurance that the prison provides safe, decent and secure services in accordance with the contract.
Regimes must include, but are not limited to: education, training and work; interventions and offending behaviour programmes; resettlement activities; and peer support roles
Each privately managed prison will determine regime delivery based upon available resources, and risk assessment.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 17 November 2022 to Question 88986 on Prisons, whether privately operated prisons are required to have a Regime Management Plan.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
There is no contractual requirement for privately managed prisons to have Regime Management Plans. The terms of each privately managed prison contract require the provider to support the rehabilitation of offenders through a safe, decent and secure regime. HMPPS contract management teams provide assurance that the prison provides safe, decent and secure services in accordance with the contract.
Regimes must include, but are not limited to: education, training and work; interventions and offending behaviour programmes; resettlement activities; and peer support roles
Each privately managed prison will determine regime delivery based upon available resources, and risk assessment.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 21 November 2022 to Question 88986 on Prisons, whether a Regime Management Plan is required by health and safety policies for (a) staff and (b) prisoners.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
All prisons must have in place a robust and workable Regime Management Plan (RMP), which has been consulted upon and agreed via the local Health and Safety Committee. This will define the capacity of the prison to run various aspects of its regime, based on staffing, the prison population profile and operational capacity. It allows for early and effective planning of the regime, taking into account the likely or actual staffing level.
Where absence, recruitment issues or other problems cause staffing to drop below locally defined ranges, the plan allows the prison’s management to make quick, guided decisions, based on an assessment of the risk associated with running particular aspects of the regime, as to how the regime should be adapted to continue to allow safe operation.
Asked by: Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester, Gorton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of racial disproportionality in prisons.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Racial and ethnic disparities are closely monitored across the justice system, and we continue to develop a wider, and deeper, range of factors that we monitor. The data, including analysis of relative differences between groups, helps give a detailed picture of where over-representation and disproportionality may be occurring. A comprehensive statistical assessment of these issues from across the system, including in prisons, can be found in Ethnicity and the Criminal Justice system.
We are committed to understanding and tackling disparities that emerge in the outcomes for, and treatment of, ethnic minorities in prison. This is why in December 2020 we launched the Race Action Programme, which is focused on creating long-term change through increasing the diversity of our workforce, addressing the risk of bias in our policies, and their implementation to tackle disparity in outcomes for ethnic minorities throughout the prison and probation service.
However, last week’s thematic report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons is a sobering read and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service will announce details early next year on the wide-ranging action we will deliver to bring about necessary changes.
Asked by: Lord Hylton (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many prisoners are currently being confined to their cells for 23 hours a day; what assessment they have made of the impact of this practice on prisoner (1) self-harm, (2) assaults, and (3) suicides; and what plans they have to reduce the current level of confinement to address any such impacts.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
No prisons are routinely operating a 23 hour per day or similar lockdown and I refer the noble Lord to the answer I gave to question HL3355 on 29 November 2022.
Maintaining safety continues to be a priority, and where regimes are limited, we continue to prioritise the implementation of key safety interventions. This includes our case management approaches to manage the risk of self-harm and suicide (Assessment, Care in Custody, and Teamwork) and of violent behaviour (Challenge, Support and Intervention Plan), and the delivery of key work, through which prison officers provide one-to-one support for prisoners.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the impact of staff absences as a result of work-related stress in the (a) prison service and (b) probation service.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The management of, and support for, His Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) staff absent due to stress at work and other mental health related absences is a priority for the Prison & Probation Service.
The quarterly HMPPS workforce statistics publication covers staffing information, including the working days lost due to sickness absence.
Working days lost due to work-related stress within the Prison and Probation Service is shown in table 1 below.
Table 1: Staff absences due to work-related stress in the Prison Service1 and Probation Service, 12 months to 30 June 2022.
| Total working days lost due to work-related stress | Average staff in post | Average working days lost per person2 |
Prison Service1 | 2,270 | 35,867 | 0.1 |
Probation Service3,4 | 1,373 | 17,460 | 0.1 |
Stress accounted for 13.2% of all sicknesses in the 12 months to 30 June 2022
1. Includes the Youth Custody Service (YCS) which was created in April 2017 to oversee day-to-day management of the under 18s young people’s estate. The Youth Custody Estate includes the following young offender institutions: Cookham Wood, Feltham, Werrington, and Wetherby. The YCS also initially included the Medway Secure Training Centre which closed in March 2020.
2. Average working days lost per member of staff is calculated as number of working days lost to sickness divided by the average number of full-time equivalent staff for a year.
3. In the quarter to Dec 2019, over 300 staff in Wales were transferred from privately run Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC) to HMPPS, into the new ‘NPS Wales UM Transition’ and new Approved Premises teams created.
4. In late June 2021, more than 7,000 staff from private sector Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC) came together with probation staff already in the public sector to form the new Probation Service.
HMPPS works hard to support workforce mental health and wellbeing. This includes a comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), that provides the workforce access to confidential support & counselling services. This is in addition to the organisation’s Occupational Health Service that supports staff with medical advice and signposting, and part of HMPPS’ commitment to ensuring our staff feel supported in their roles.
Furthermore, Mental Health Allies (MHAs) have been put in place across HMPPS to support workforce mental health. MHAs provide confidential support to staff, provide reassurance and signposting, as well as raising awareness of mental health & challenge stigma surrounding mental ill health. The allies aim to signpost and increase awareness of various support routes for staff (i.e. EAP/Charity for Civil Servants etc).
HMPPS also recognise that our workforce undertake roles on the frontline and are have to deal with situations that can be traumatic. The Trauma Risk Management Service (TRiM) is a focused peer-to-peer support system operated by Prisons that aims provides support to staff who have experienced a traumatic incident.
HMPPS continuously manages its overall staffing level resources across the business taking into account a number of factors including staff sickness, as well as absence created for other reasons such as staff attendance at training.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the infection control protocols of all Home Office private contractors running immigration centres.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The safety and health of people in the immigration detention estate is of the utmost importance. The Home Office has robust contingency plans in place and follows national guidance issued by UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), Public Health Scotland (PHS) and the National Health Service, including advice on preventing and controlling infectious disease outbreaks in prisons and other prescribed places of detention.
In addition, all immigration removal centres (IRCs), residential short-term holding facilities (RSTHF) and holding rooms operated by private contractors have communicable disease contingency plans, based on UKHSA advice. The detail of these contingency plans varies depending on the size, nature and infrastructure of the facility and will include guidance on sharing data with relevant partners such as IRC contractors, healthcare providers and UKHSA.
All IRCs have dedicated health facilities run by doctors and nurses which are managed by the NHS or appropriate providers. All receptions into IRCs receive an assessment within two hours by a nurse and are offered a doctor’s appointment within 24 hours. In line with UKHSA guidance, measures such as protective isolation are considered on a case by case basis to minimise the risk of infectious diseases spreading to vulnerable groups in the immigration detention estate or into the community if the individual is released. In RSTHFs and holding rooms operated by private contractors where there is a healthcare presence, any communicable diseases identified are notified to UKHSA or PHS by medical professionals, as appropriate, and wherever possible the individual is temporarily isolated from the main population.