(Leeds East) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if
he will make a statement on his Government’s plans for HMP
Birmingham.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
I would like to begin by paying tribute to the work of the chief
inspector, in particular in relation to Birmingham, and indeed
his entire inspection team.
The situation in HMP Birmingham was simply unacceptable. It was
shocking in terms of the levels of violence, in terms of the
response to those levels of violence, in terms of the drugs, and
in terms of basic decency. The situation in Birmingham has of
course been of considerable concern for some time; I visited
personally in the week before the inspector issued the report for
that reason. The Secretary of State for Justice, the Lord
Chancellor, also made a personal visit to Birmingham, and the
chief executive of the Prison Service also visited Birmingham.
The reason for this is that over the last few weeks and months we
have been increasingly concerned about G4S’s inability to turn
around the situation. The steps we took were initially to issue a
notice to improve, followed by a second notice to improve. I then
held meetings with G4S in London at which it replaced its
governor—who had been in place for 18 months—and brought in a new
governor. It then brought in a new team; we came up with a new
action plan and a new team was brought in by the Ministry to work
alongside it.
Notwithstanding all the steps that Birmingham and G4S took over
those months, the conclusion that we reluctantly reached in the
week before the inspector published his urgent notification was
that G4S would not be able on its own to turn around the
significant problems of Birmingham. Therefore the decision was
made to take the unprecedented step of the Government stepping in
and taking over control. That means in effect three things.
First, we have brought in a highly experienced governor from the
public sector, Mr Paul Newton, who has taken over as the governor
of the prison. Secondly, we have reduced the number of prisoners
in Birmingham prison by 300, which has allowed us to take key
cells out of operation and renovate them. Thirdly, we have
brought in an additional 32 highly experienced public sector
prison staff in order to support the team on the ground.
All of this will be done with no cost to the taxpayer, and I want
to take this opportunity also to say that, notwithstanding the
very significant problems at Birmingham, there are dedicated,
serious professional staff on the ground who have been facing a
very difficult situation. There have been real challenges around
drugs and leadership. We are confident that, with Paul Newton and
the new team and the reduction in numbers, we can stabilise that
prison, address the drugs and the violence, and turn it around
and restore the confidence to the team.
I anticipate that this could rapidly become a debate over the
merits or otherwise of privatisation, and I am expecting that the
shadow Secretary of State will almost certainly go in that
direction. For what it is worth, we on this side of the House do
not believe that this is primarily an ideological battle. The
situation in Birmingham has been serious for some time. It was a
Labour Secretary of State for Justice who initially decided to
proceed with the privatisation of Birmingham in 2010, although it
was a Conservative Secretary of State who finally let the
contract. The company concerned, G4S, has clearly significantly
failed in Birmingham, but at the same time, as hon. Members such
as the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) can confirm, it is
running an impressive prison in Parc and at Altcourse in
Liverpool, which is performing well particularly in education and
work, while Parc is doing well on family services. The BBC has
just produced a very positive report on its performance at
Oakwood as well.
So this is not primarily about the difference between the public
and the private sector. Sadly, there have been significant
challenges also within the public sector, at Nottingham prison,
at Liverpool and at Exeter most recently. Indeed the chief
inspector of prisons himself underlined that this is not
primarily about public against private, but is about basic issues
primarily around drugs, violence and management. We will be
focusing on those three things above all through this step-in,
and, as I have said, at no cost to the taxpayer.
I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I
thank the Minister for his reply. It is clear from the damning
report into HMP Birmingham, as well as from the failings in the
probation system, that the costly privatisation experiment in our
justice system should be ended. Costs aside, one of the great
failings of privatisation is that we in this House struggle to
hold mega-corporations such as G4S to account. They use the cloak
of commercial confidentiality until it is all too late, and then
they need rescuing by the state. Despite that, I hope that we
will get some straight answers to straight questions today.
Will the Ministry of Justice be imposing a financial penalty on
G4S for its failures at HMP Birmingham? What additional funding
will be provided to HMP Birmingham to remedy the current
failings? Will any public funding be used to do that? If so, will
this come from the current MOJ budget? Thirty additional officers
are to be sent to Birmingham Prison. Will the Minister commit to
giving all other failing prisons—including public prisons—the
same percentage increase in staffing above current levels?
Why did the Government decide that HMP Birmingham would not be
permanently returned to the public sector? Will the Minister
today commit to an independent commission to look at the merits
of doing so before handing the prison back to G4S? Will the
Government now halt their plans to build new private prisons? If
not, will the Minister at least rule out G4S bidding for them?
And will the Government now commit to a wider independent review
of the involvement of private companies in the justice system?
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for Justice for his
questions. They are serious questions, and this was a serious
failing in that prison. I shall try to answer them one by one.
The financial cost to G4S of us stepping in will be very
considerable. G4S already estimates that it is losing on this
contract. It is to a great extent paid according to the number of
prison places. Specifically, therefore, the removal of 300
prisoners from that prison will impose a direct financial penalty
on G4S, which will be covered by G4S itself. I can also confirm
that the entire cost of this step-in will be covered not by the
taxpayer but by G4S, because we will withhold the payment we
would normally make in line with the contract with G4S to cover
those costs.
The shadow Secretary of State also asked whether we would put
exactly 32 officers into the other challenged prisons. We are not
in a position to specify the exact numbers, but the broad
approach that we would take to Birmingham is the same as the
approach that we would take to the other public sector prisons.
That approach involves focusing first on the inflow of drugs into
those prisons, through the use of intelligence disruption for
organised criminal groups as well as through the use of scanners.
We are putting nearly £6 million-worth of investment into drug
interdiction and scanners.
Secondly, our approach involves focusing on basic decency, and
nearly £30 million-worth of extra investment is going into living
conditions in our prisons. Thirdly, there is a focus on
education, and the Secretary of State’s education and employment
strategy is central to this, giving prisoners purposeful activity
within the prison walls and ensuring that they get jobs on
release, thereby reducing reoffending and protecting the public.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, we are focusing on
supporting our hard-working prison officers with the right
training in leadership and management skills. They are doing an
incredibly tough job outside prison doors. They are facing
unprecedented levels of challenges with the new psychoactive
substances coming in, and we really need to support them. We are
doing that through the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences)
Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)
which will double the sentences for people who assault prison
officers and other emergency workers. We are also doing it
through additional training for prison officers before they go on
the wings and supporting them through training as they continue.
The shadow Secretary of State asked about an independent
commission. Respectfully, I would argue that we already
understand very well what happened at Birmingham Prison, without
the need for an additional independent report. The independent
monitoring board has produced a full report on Birmingham Prison.
The chief inspector of prisons has also produced a full report,
and we have looked closely at Birmingham Prison over the past few
weeks and months. Unfortunately, the story at Birmingham Prison
is a relatively familiar one. It is about drugs, about violence
and about management and training. There is no great secret
there. The question of G4S bidding for future prison contracts is
a hypothetical one, and no such contracts will be let for a
number of years. However, we will of course, in accordance with
all our rules, look seriously at the past record and performance
of the companies involved, including G4S, before considering it
for a tender.
(Bromley and Chislehurst)
(Con)
The Minister and the Secretary of State are to be commended on
their prompt action. The Minister should be commended on his
swift involvement, and I thank him for contacting me, as the
Chair of the Justice Committee, so quickly. Does he agree that no
pattern emerges in the evidence to show that there is any
distinction between the problems that arise in our prisons that
relates to the public or private nature of their ownership and
management? Two patterns do emerge, however. One is a consistent
history of failure in our old Victorian local prisons, be they
run by the public or private sector, and the second is a
persistent failure by the Prison Service, whether acting directly
or through contract, to act upon the recommendations of Her
Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons—a litany that has been picked
up by the chief inspector. What are the Government going to do to
address those two clear patterns of failure?
I will take those two matters separately. As for responding to
the inspector’s recommendations, we have changed—the Secretary of
State for Justice has driven this through—how our management
systems work to put the inspector’s recommendations and reports
at the heart of the way we set objectives for the Prison Service.
We had our own independent assessment under the previous system,
but we expect the House to see that how we manage prisons much
more closely reflects inspection reports in the future.
On the question of old Victorian buildings, there clearly is a
pattern, but it is not an absolute pattern. There are old
buildings, such as Stafford, that are well run, good prisons, and
there are new prisons, such as Nottingham, that have managed to
get themselves into trouble despite the new buildings. However,
generally speaking, running an old Victorian prison adds to the
problems, and we should ensure that our investment in 10,000 new
places endeavours to remove the worst-affected prisons from our
system.
(Edinburgh South West)
(SNP)
It is clear that prisons in England and Wales are suffering from
excessive budget pressures, inconsistent policy and a lack of
direction. The Minister recently visited the prisons system in
Scotland, and while prison staffing levels in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland have fallen by around a third since 2010, in
Scotland they have increased by 14%, and we have minimised cuts
to our justice system, resulting in a 43-year crime low.
Overcrowding has been addressed by the Scottish Government’s
successful presumption against short-term custodial sentences,
which has been increased today to 12 months in the Scottish
Government’s programme for government. Having visited Scotland
recently, will the Minister tell the House what lessons from the
experience of successful prison reform in Scotland does he intend
to apply to the system in England and Wales?
I genuinely pay tribute to some of the things that are happening
in Scotland in relation to prisons, and I was privileged to visit
HMP Perth, which is a good example of a busy, challenged local
prison that is being run well. Prison officers in Scotland would
also say that there have been significant cuts to their numbers
since the early 2000s, and they, too, have had to make serious
efficiency savings, which they have done well, and they are
running good prisons.
We are watching closely what is happening on short sentences in
Scotland. Like the Scottish Government, our priority is to
protect the public, but the evidence on what could be done to
reduce reoffending by not overusing short prison sentences
inappropriately is a good lesson from Scotland from, which we
wish to learn.
Sir (New Forest West) (Con)
Prisoners who are at leisure to consume and trade Spice would
benefit from penal servitude with hard labour. Will the Minister
bring it back?
No.
Mr (Birmingham, Perry Barr)
(Lab)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will first provide some
information about my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham,
Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). The prison is in her constituency,
but she is unfortunately in a meeting and I am unsure whether she
has received notice of this urgent question, so I apologise on
her behalf that she is not here.
My question to the Minister is simple. He has made a huge
commitment to clean up our prisons, but the real issues are with
staff, training and allowing drugs and other things into prisons.
Tackling all that will require resources, so how will he ensure
that it happens?
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is about staff. We
now have 3,000 more prison officers than we had when we made the
announcement, and having more staff will make a difference. The
next stage is getting the training right, particularly the
training for the band 5 and band 4 uniformed staff who are out
there on the landings day in, day out. It is about getting the
staff college right for governors, and it is also about making
sure that, in places like our Newbold Revel training college, we
have the right support for our prison officers. It is an amazing
profession, but it needs support and training.
Mr (Wantage) (Con)
I agree with the Minister that this is not a debate about
privatised versus publicly-run prisons; obviously it is about how
we work to ensure that we do not have such trouble again. I echo
what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst
(Robert Neill), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Justice,
said about the need to carry on the vision of reinvigorating the
prison estate.
I also echo the Minister’s comments about education. The great
opportunity in our prisons is to work with prisoners and to use,
for example, culture and sport to give them opportunities.
Prisons are often dealing with people who have mental health
issues and, sometimes, a lack of education, and it has been shown
that the arts and sport can do a great deal to help rehabilitate
prisoners, as opposed to, say, penal servitude.
My right hon. Friend encourages me to reflect on our sport
strategy, which is coming through. Broadly speaking, there is
also the key point about how education changes lives. By changing
lives and helping people to get employment when they leave
prison, education reduces reoffending and protects the public.
Stabilising our prisons and delivering high-quality education in
prisons is good not just for prisoners but for the rest of
society.
(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab)
A month ago my constituent was beaten within an inch of his life
at HMP Birmingham not once but twice, and not in a dark corner
but in the full glare of a video that was then posted on social
media. The chaos over which G4S presided at HMP Birmingham was
dark, dangerous and violent. It is very hard to square a future
in which this prison is returned to G4S with the level of
investment and staffing that is needed to ensure it is a safe
prison. Will the Minister reflect again on what the shadow
Secretary of State said about the need for an independent
commission to stand as a gateway, a test, before any decision is
made to put this prison back into the private sector that so
desperately failed the people of Birmingham?
That is a very shocking, very immediate illustration of just how
horrifying what was happening at Birmingham was. The right hon.
Gentleman is right that, when something like that happens, not
only should we take back control from G4S but we should think
very seriously before returning the prison to it. That is why,
for exactly the reasons he raises, we are giving the House the
assurance that we will be taking over for a minimum of six
months—that is a minimum of six months—and we will be very tough
and clear in the decisions we reach at the end of those six
months on whether we believe the prison is stable enough to be
handed back to G4S.
(Banbury) (Con)
Following on from the previous question, does my hon. Friend
agree that this debate is not about public or private management
of prisons but is, in fact, about when it is appropriate for the
Government to step in when prisons are failing? If I may say so,
this debate is also about when it is appropriate for a Minister
to take responsibility for the Prison Service, as I was pleased
to read over the summer that he is willing to do.
Without getting dragged into an ideological discussion about
public versus private, hopefully both sides of the House can
agree that, if we are to have privatised systems, the best way
for them to operate is by having the right degree of Government
regulation and intervention when things go wrong. Whether we are
talking about water, utilities or, indeed, prisons, we cannot
have a system in which the Government do not have a clear grip. I
hope stepping in at Birmingham demonstrates that the Government
are prepared to do that when we reach this situation.
Sir (Kingston and Surbiton)
(LD)
The Minister has rightly decided to solve the shocking problems
at HMP Birmingham by reducing its prison population and
increasing staff numbers. I congratulate him on this radical
policy and on the huge brain power that must have gone into this
ingenious solution. When will the rest of Britain’s crisis
prisons benefit from more staff and reduced overcrowding?
The rebuke is taken; of course it is true that, as with any
institution, it is easier to run this with more staff and fewer
people. But the answer in practice is that we take this remedy to
stabilise a prison that has reached a situation that Birmingham
has reached. Once the prison is stabilised and functioning well,
it is possible to run it with the full population. We can see
that being done at Altcourse and Thameside, and at a busy,
challenged local prison such as HMP Hull at the moment. But it is
necessary to take these steps at Birmingham, and the right hon.
Gentleman is right to say that it does not take a massive brain
to work out that this is the first thing we need to do.
(Henley) (Con)
How will the Minister ensure that the new governor has both the
powers and the support to carry out the reform of the prison?
Again, this is a good challenge. It comes down to reasserting, in
every way, both here in the House and through the management
chain, that the governor is in charge, that we will give them the
resources to get behind them and that we will support them in
what they are doing. It is absolutely right to say that only with
a properly empowered governor are we going to achieve that
change.
(Lewisham West and Penge)
(Lab)
The Minister suggested during the summer that if he does not
achieve a reduction in drugs in prisons by next year he will
resign. The letter to the Secretary of State from the chief
inspector of prisons stated that the conditions at HMP Birmingham
were among the worst that inspectors had ever seen, with many
prisoners under the influence of drugs. In April, five prisoners
died within the space of seven weeks—that was widely reported.
Why did Ministers not intervene then in a prison that was clearly
falling apart and not fit for purpose?
This is a good challenge. Birmingham was challenged, and we were
focused on that situation. That is why we had put in notices to
improve, why we had negotiated to bring in a new governor and why
we had put in a new team. A judgment had to be made as to the
point at which we decided that G4S did not have the capacity to
turn things around on its own and we had to step in. I think we
were correct in taking a number of steps before we formally
stepped in, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right to challenge
whether we could have done this a little earlier or a little
later. That, in the end, was the judgment call we had to make.
(Dudley South) (Con)
How many prisons have triggered urgent notifications since the
system was introduced at the end of last year? How does that
number break down between privately managed prisons and those run
by the public sector?
The inspector has clarified that so far this year the prisons
that have triggered urgent notification have been Exeter and
Nottingham, and that he would have triggered a UN on Liverpool.
Birmingham is the fourth, so the answer is: three out of the four
since the beginning of this year have been from the public
sector.
Mr (Nottingham East)
(Lab/Co-op)
The Minister has already made reference to the situation at
Nottingham Prison, in my constituency. For at least the past
year, it has been going through considerable challenges, not only
with deaths in custody, but with endemic psychoactive substance
misuse. Will he explain and put a timeline on the interventions
that he is making and on when we will be able to see some
improvements in performance?
The situation at Nottingham Prison has been very concerning, with
deaths at the prison of particular concern. We now have a new
governor; a very highly respected, professional governor has come
in. Tom Wheatley, the previous governor, is moving on to another
role. We would expect to see the beginning of a turnaround there
within the next six months, with the things to look at in
particular being the statistics on drugs and violence.
(Sittingbourne and
Sheppey) (Con)
Paul Newton is an excellent governor. He was transferred from
Swaleside prison, in my constituency—a prison that has its own
problems. What assurances can the Minister give me that the
transfer of Mr Newton will not be detrimental to my local prison?
We have to be cognisant of that, but the Prison Service is a
large system. We have more than 20,000 prison officers, so
although moving 32 staff will challenge some of the prisons from
which they are removed, this should be accommodated within our
prisons system. We have a lot of other talented governors, and we
remain confident that the need in Birmingham is greater than that
at Swaleside. We will make sure that Paul Newton is replaced with
a highly effective governor.
(Wolverhampton North East)
(Lab)
How on earth did G4S’s management of HMP Birmingham lose control
of the prison so dramatically? What is the Minister going to do
about the poor level of retention of experienced officers, with
the number of those leaving their jobs having doubled in the past
two years?
The fundamental factor that triggered the change at Birmingham
was that in December 2016 one of the prison officers managed to
lose their keys, which led to nearly 200 prisoners being unlocked
and a riot in the prison. G4S had been improving the prison over
the previous three years, but that event really knocked the
bottom out of it. It had a devastating effect on morale, and as
the hon. Lady implied, it led to a lot of experienced staff
leaving the prison. Looking back over that period, we can see
that, although the chief inspector of prisons and the Government
had hoped that things were beginning to improve during 2017, that
turned out in the end to be a false promise, and we are still
recovering from the blow of that December 2016 event.
(South Dorset) (Con)
I have huge confidence in my hon. Friend the Minister, but I do
not have confidence that the prison officers that the Government
employ will stay on. The facts speak for themselves. I agree
entirely with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); many of
my local prison officers, along with, I am sure, many across the
prison estate, are concerned that the proper discipline,
protection and all the other things are not in place to look
after them. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that he will
look into the matter and make sure that if, for example, a prison
officer is assaulted, the assaulter is jailed for a much longer
period?
That is absolutely the right challenge. The hon. Member for
Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has introduced a private Member’s Bill
that will double the maximum sentence available for assaulting
prison officers. But it is not enough just to double the maximum
sentence. We need to make sure that the police and the Crown
Prosecution Service work together to bring prosecutions forward.
There are still today too many incidents of prison officers being
assaulted. They are hard-working, serious and professional public
servants with a very challenging working life. We owe them a duty
of care, and we must prosecute people who assault them.
(Rhondda) (Lab)
Of course I fully agree with the points that have just been made,
but I wish to ask about brain injury in Birmingham Prison. The
work that has been done in Leeds Prison shows that there is a
very high incidence of traumatic brain injury in the prison
population, and the work done in a pilot in Cardiff Prison shows
that we can make dramatic differences to reoffending if we screen
everybody who comes on to the secure estate and provide full
neuro-rehabilitation to those who require it. Will that be
available in Her Majesty’s prison in Birmingham?
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work on this issue. In
fact, I would like to offer to sit down with him immediately to
discuss the findings he mentioned and how we can apply them to
Birmingham Prison.
(Chelmsford) (Con)
Like Birmingham Prison, the prison in Chelmsford has some ancient
Victorian wings and the staff numbers had become very low, but
those numbers have now increased. Does my hon. Friend agree that
new staff need support in the form of training, ongoing mentoring
and tutoring? Will he ensure that they get that support?
Absolutely. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has made seven
visits to Chelmsford Prison and has worked closely with the
acting governor there on the steps that are being taken to turn
it around. [Interruption.] I hasten to add that she made those
visits as a visitor. The key point that she raises is the one on
mentoring, particularly the role that more experienced prison
officers at band 4 can play in providing the day-to-day model for
and partnership with the staff on the ground, to teach them the
jail craft that is essential for everybody’s safety, and
ultimately for turning around lives.
(Nottingham North)
(Lab/Co-op)
It is clear that drugs have played a significant role in the
problems in Birmingham; similarly, drugs have played a
significant role in the challenges in Nottingham Prison, and I
suspect across the prison estate. What is the Minister’s latest
assessment of the use of body scanners, and what is the latest
legal advice he has been given about how widely they can be used?
There have been historical challenges with the use of body
scanners. We have now gone through the legal advice very
carefully, and I am clear that they can be and ought to be used
much more frequently, so we have invested almost £6 million in
additional scanning. That will allow us to detect, as we already
do at Belmarsh, drugs carried by people inside their body, as
well as drugs carried on their person. That will go along with
the new scanners that we are bringing in to detect mail infused
with Spice and all the work that we are doing to combat drones
and other ways of getting drugs into prison. Protective security
measures must work alongside demand reduction and therapy, but
without protective security we cannot get on top of the drugs
epidemic.
Mr (Kettering) (Con)
Violent offences are committed in prison. If drugs are peddled in
prison, appropriate punishment needs to be meted out to those who
are responsible and the ringleaders removed. If the Minister will
not bring back hard labour, will he at least look at the
punishment regime so that prison officers and inmates who obey
the rules can regard prison as a safe place to be, because at the
moment it sounds to me as though the Government are losing
control?
This is a very good challenge. There are two fundamental issues.
One is the nature of the punishment that we impose. Somebody who
is dealing drugs in prison is committing a criminal offence, so
we would expect that person to proceed to court and receive extra
days, or extra years, of sentence for importing drugs into a
prison—that should be a consecutive, not concurrent, sentence.
The second and most important issue is consistency. We need to
ensure that any punishments that are inflicted are predictable
and consistent, and we need not only to do that with drugs, but
to challenge low-level disruptive behaviour consistently if we
are to turn around the culture in our most troubled prisons.
(Garston and Halewood)
(Lab)
Given that the Minister has accepted that, in the short-term at
least, increasing the number of staff and cutting the number of
prisoners is a way to stabilise the situation, will he make sure
that if he does hand this prison back to G4S, which I do not
think that he should do, that it does not then immediately cut
the staffing levels again, because that is how it makes its
money?
That is a very good point. If the prison is stabilised as a
result of this action, we need to make sure that the plan that
takes it forward respects those ratios and that, if those ratios
are reduced, it is done on an evidence base. The hon. Lady is
absolutely right to point to the danger of doing that suddenly
after the takeover.
(Mid Dorset and North
Poole) (Con)
The Minister has reduced the number of prisoners at HMP
Birmingham. Will he look seriously at reducing the number of
prisoners right across the prison estate and relentlessly focus
on rehabilitation? For victims and for those serving sentences of
under 12 months, prison is not working.
I thank my hon. Friend very much for his question. It is of
course true that we have evidence that shows clearly that there
is a higher incidence of reoffending from people in short prison
sentences than from people who serve community sentences. That is
why the example from the Government of Scotland is very relevant.
The best way to protect the public is by reducing reoffending.
Putting people unnecessarily into prison in a way that damages
them, does not change their lives and leads to reoffending when
they leave is not in the prisoners’ interests, is not in the
public purse’s interest and, ultimately, is not in the interests
of public safety.
(Taunton Deane) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that tackling the problems in prison is
important, but that it is very important to reduce the number of
those ending up in prison? Recent data shows that two thirds of
all young offenders have speech, language and communication
disorders. Surely, if we can focus more on that in the early
years, we can reduce the number of young people ever finding
their way to prison.
That is absolutely right. A lot of people who are offending and
ending up in prison come from very difficult backgrounds. We have
a situation at the moment in our prisons where nearly half our
prisoners have been excluded from school at some time compared
with only 2% of the general population. We have a situation where
almost 40% of the people in prison currently have a reading age
of under 11 and a very significant number have a reading age of
under six. Addressing those problems in early years is vital if
we are to reduce offending.
(North Tyneside) (Lab)
Birmingham is one of the four most violent prisons in England and
Wales, and all those prisons are privately operated. Does the
Minister agree that, logically, this level of violence is a
consequence of running prisons for profit where costs are cut to
the bone to maximise returns for shareholders?
I say very respectfully that the chief inspector of prisons
argues that the steepest increase in violence has taken place at
Exeter Prison, which, sadly, is a public sector prison. Yes, it
is true that we have very significant problems in Birmingham,
which is a private prison, but we also have significant problems
in Exeter, which is a public prison. The driver of this issue is
not public against private; it is drugs, violence and,
ultimately, the management leadership culture and the support for
the staff on the ground. These problems can happen whatever the
particular model.
(Walsall North) (Con)
I understand that Altcourse Prison, to which the Minister
referred, was inspected in November 2017. In the report published
in March this year, the chief inspector of prisons described an
excellent staff culture and said that almost all interactions
between staff and inmates were positive. Does this show that the
private sector does have a role to play in running prisons?
Altcourse Prison is a G4S prison; it is run by the same company
that is being criticised in Birmingham. As my hon. Friend has
pointed out, that prison—as I saw directly—has incredibly good
education facilities and workshops, and it had a good inspection
report. It is showing how to run a safe, clean and orderly regime
that is genuinely changing lives, and how to do so through the
private sector.
(South Suffolk) (Con)
May I pay tribute to the way in which my hon. Friend is handling
this very difficult and sensitive matter? The tendering process
is critical wherever the private sector is involved in the
provision of public services. Will he ensure that anyone bidding
in any future tenders for prisons, including this one, will have
to show that they have the capacity to avoid losing control of
the prisons in their charge?
This is a fundamental challenge, and of course it is central to
anything that happens when the Government work with the private
sector. We must make sure that the tender process ensures that
the people bidding for any of these contracts have the
credibility, legitimacy and capacity to run the contracts
effectively.
