Privately Financed Prisons Statement 3.34 pm The
Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con) My
Lords, with the leave of the House, I would like to repeat the
Answer to an Urgent Question given by my honourable friend the
Minister for Prisons and Probation in the other place earlier
today. The Statement is as follows: “Mr Speaker,...Request free trial
Privately Financed Prisons
Statement
3.34 pm
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The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie)
(Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I would like to
repeat the Answer to an Urgent Question given by my
honourable friend the Minister for Prisons and Probation in
the other place earlier today. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, yesterday I attended the Justice Select
Committee hearing on prison populations and confirmed that,
in line with the 2016 White Paper and the 2017 manifesto,
we remain committed to delivering 10,000 new prison places
in order to replace the places in prisons which at the
moment often have old, unsuitable and expensive
accommodation.
During the committee testimony, I confirmed two things.
First, we will be proceeding at Wellingborough with a
publicly capital financed prison, with work to begin at the
end of this year or the beginning of next year, subject to
the usual test of affordability and planning. I also
confirmed that at the Glen Parva site we will be continuing
with the current demolition and proceeding, again subject
to the normal tests of affordability and planning, to a
competition for a private finance initiative for the
construction of the Glen Parva prison. We will then
continue to push ahead with the four subsequent prisons,
bringing us to the total of 10,000 places.
In addition, we are investing £16 million in further
investment and repairs in the existing estate. All of this
is absolutely essential because, as the shadow Lord
Chancellor is very aware, much of our estate remains old,
expensive and unsuitable for prisoners, and we must move to
regenerate it”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement. But before I sit
down, perhaps I may come back to the question posed by the
noble Lord, . I gave the figure
of 93,000; it should have been 83,000.
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(Lab)
It was in the newspapers.
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I am very pleased that the noble Lord knew it was 83,000,
and now I can reassure him that I, too, know it is 83,000
and not 93,000.
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(Con)
My Lords, I respectfully remind noble Lords that this is an
opportunity to question the Minister. Therefore, questions
rather than long statements would be appreciated.
3.37 pm
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(Lab)
My Lords, of course I will follow the noble Baroness’s
advice—up to a point. We have one of the highest
incarceration rates in Europe, exceeded only by those in
some of the less advanced countries in the east of Europe.
Yesterday, the Prisons Minister, , said that prison
numbers would rise from the current 83,000 to 93,000—the
figure inadvertently quoted by the Minister—by 2022. The
state of our prisons is a national disgrace as the
Government struggle to recruit and retain staff, yet the
Minister in the other place feebly states that he would
like the prison population to go down but that it is not
very likely to happen because he is not sure that there is
a will among the people or Parliament to take measures to
reduce the population. Given this craven approach to a
critically serious problem, should not that Minister
resign?
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My Lords, there is nothing craven about the approach that
has been taken to the very real and challenging issues
relating to our prison population. We are concerned that we
should look more carefully at alternative forms of
sentence, such as community orders, that would in
themselves replace the requirement for sentences
particularly of less than 12 months’ imprisonment. That is
a matter for consideration. In addition, I remind the noble
Lord that we are in the course of taking active steps to
provide not only additional but new and refurbished prison
accommodation in order to improve the standard of our
prisons across England and Wales.
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(LD)
My Lords, new, modern prison places are sorely needed, but
do not the failed Carillion maintenance contract, the CRC
contracts that we have just discussed and other MoJ
contracts show how far the ministry needs to take a serious
look at its contracting procedures, just as accepted when he was
before the Justice Committee yesterday, assessing tenders
in a realistic and much more rigorous way? How does the
department propose to improve its contracting procedures
for these new prisons? Furthermore, Mr Gauke’s effort to
get prisoner numbers down by cutting the number of short
sentences, saving money in the process, is welcome. What
proposals do the Government have to ensure that their
prison building programme seeks to combine cutting numbers
with transforming prisons, in both public and private
sectors, to focus on rehabilitation and training rather
than just containment and punishment?
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My Lords, the model of having both private and public
custodial services and privately funded and publicly funded
prisons has been in place for many years and has distinct
advantages. On the maintenance of existing prisons, we have
agreed an additional £16 million to start to improve
conditions across the estate and not just to address the
provision of new prison accommodation. On sentencing, as I
indicated earlier, we are concerned to see a development
with regard to community and non-custodial sentences. On
the matter of contracts, we are pursuing and putting in
place robust means of ensuring that contracts are analysed
correctly and not simply on the basis of the lowest tender.
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(Con)
My Lords, I welcome what my noble friend said about
contracts. Will he ensure that contracts make explicit and
enforceable provision for useful out-of-cell activities?
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My Lords, individual terms of contract make provision for
appropriate facilities to be made available to those
prisoners who are in private facilities. There is a system
of management oversight by the Ministry with regard to the
discharge of those obligations by private providers.
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The
My Lords, I began my ministry as a prison chaplain in a
young offender institution, Latchmere House, where every
day some 60 to 70 young men arrived. As a chaplain you had
to see them, but sometimes you did not succeed in seeing
them because the place was overcrowded. In those days, the
prisons were put there by Her Majesty and run with
taxpayers’ money. Is the Minister confident that this
private finance partnership will not create the same
indebtedness from which the National Health Service is
suffering? We owe a lot of money to private companies for
our new hospitals. Are we walking into the same trap?
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I thank the most reverend Primate for his question.
Competition for custodial services in England and Wales is
well established and has been in place since the early
1990s. On the funding of new prison facilities, there are
now 14 privately operated prisons in England and Wales.
Some of them have been funded by PFI, but not all. We
consider that the mix of public and private financing has
worked and does work.
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(Lab)
My Lords, I would like to place on record my thanks to the
Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for giving me a
private briefing yesterday on what he proposes for the
women’s prison estate. His announcement that there will be
five women’s centres rather than five women’s prisons was
very welcome. Will the Minister confirm that these, too,
are to be privately run—and, if so, whether they could be
run by charitable or not-for-profit organisations?
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My Lords, we are committed to working with local and
national partners to develop the residential women’s
centres pilot on at least five sites, as indicated by my
right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor. I understand
that these residential women’s centres pilots will be
publicly funded.
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(Con)
My Lords, with the abandonment of the five community
prisons for women in England and Wales, the trial
residential centres to help offenders with issues of
finding work and drug rehabilitation is welcome. Are the
proposed residential centres for women all to be privately
financed?
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My Lords, as I hope I indicated earlier, the intention is
that the five residential centres should be publicly
financed.
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(Lab)
My Lords, is it not the case that you can achieve
considerable savings in a prison system if prisons are
designed and built from the start with a view to the
maximally efficient use of staff, bearing in mind the need to
achieve targeted levels of out-of-cell time and community
time for inmates? Is it not the case that you do not get
those savings unless the same organisation, be it private or
public sector, is responsible for managing the prison—at
least for the payout period for the necessary financing—as
well as for the design and construction? Otherwise, there
will be no incentive to build a prison to maximally efficient
levels.
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My Lords, I do not accept that there is such a necessary link
between the construction of the infrastructure and the
operation of the prison. Nevertheless, we are committed to
replacing our present prison estate with modern facilities to
achieve the very outcome referred to by the noble Lord.
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(Con)
My Lords, I welcome the various initiatives taken by the
Government in relation to the prison population—one of which
was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston—and the
reduction of the prison population from what it was a couple
of years ago: 85,000. Does the Minister agree that it is
important when thinking about building 10,000 prison places
not to become too ideological? HM Inspectorate of Prisons has
found examples of good practice in both the private and
public sectors. As a Government, we should be looking for
examples of good and satisfactory proposals from either
source.
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My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend’s
observations. One of the reasons why we benefit from the
competition between private and public provision of custodial
services is that we can identify and take the best from each
sector.
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(Con)
My Lords, as one who has always believed that it is the
state’s duty to incarcerate and rehabilitate, could my noble
and learned friend remind the House of the percentage
breakdown between public and private prisons?
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My Lords, I do not have to hand the figures for the breakdown
between the number of inmates who are subject to custodial
sentence in privately run prisons as against those in the
public sector. I can indicate that there are now 14 privately
operated prisons—13 in England and one in Wales—which
currently provide approximately 16,000 prisoner spaces. That
is just under 20% of all prisoner spaces. As to the level of
occupation between those spaces and the spaces in the public
sector, I cannot give a precise figure.
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