Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) This report
results from what was described by Her Majesty’s chief inspector of
prisons as one of the worst inspection reports of a prison that he
had ever seen. It was certainly the worst inspection report that
our Committee had ever seen and, because of the gravity of the
situation, we took the unique step of holding a specific evidence
session on that individual inquiry. It...Request free trial
-
(Bromley and Chislehurst)
(Con)
This report results from what was described by Her Majesty’s
chief inspector of prisons as one of the worst inspection
reports of a prison that he had ever seen. It was certainly
the worst inspection report that our Committee had ever seen
and, because of the gravity of the situation, we took the
unique step of holding a specific evidence session on that
individual inquiry. It highlighted conditions at Liverpool
prison that the chief inspector described as “squalid”, a
history of deterioration over a two-year period, and a
history of management failure at local, national and regional
level over time. It also highlighted a number of systemic
problems that we believe need to be addressed by the Ministry
of Justice and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service,
and the need for approaching afresh the way in which we deal
with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons itself.
I pay tribute to my Committee colleagues, a number of whom
are present today, for their work on this report, and I also
welcome the Minister to his place. I particularly appreciated
that he came to give evidence to our inquiry so early on
after being appointed to the post in which he now serves.
I will briefly give an outline of the report against that
grave background. Liverpool prison was inspected in 2015, and
it was failing then. It was re-inspected in 2017, and it had
got worse. Some of the conditions—a man with mental health
problems was in a cell that was not fit for habitation; there
was a serious maintenance backlog, which had doubled from
1,000 to 2,000 over that period; and the prison’s markings
against various tests had gone backwards—indicate that there
was not only a gross failure of management locally and of
regional and national oversight, but that the detailed
recommendations of Her Majesty’s inspectorate that were made
in 2015 had not properly been addressed. That is the first
systemic matter that we deal with.
It is pretty clear that the national leadership was not alert
to the situation on the ground. The head of the Prison
Service, Mr Spurr, told us that he had been informed by the
local management that some 60% of the recommendations in 2015
were on track to be met. That was wrong. In fact, only 25% or
so were met, and 60% were not met. The leadership nationally
was out of touch. What was the role of the deputy director of
corrections, who is supposed to have oversight of 12 prisons
in that region? Clearly, there was not just a failure of
communication, but a breakdown in how the system operates
there.
This is not unique. Her Majesty’s chief inspectorate
indicated to us that it is a regular occurrence for its
recommendations not to be acted on. The Minister rightly said
to us that much greater use should be made of the
inspectorate’s recommendations to drive changes in behaviour.
He is right. We recommend therefore two specific matters to
effect that.
First, at the moment, the Prison Service marks its own
homework. That is not satisfactory and it can breed
complacency. We therefore recommend that HM inspectorate of
prisons be given additional resource so that it can follow up
on the implementation of its recommendations and hold the
prisons to account. This is not a large sum in the overall
scheme of things; perhaps one inspection team would be
sufficient to do that task and probably the overall saving
would mean that that would be offset. Secondly, Ministers
should take personal responsibility for seeing that
inspections reports are acted on and should account to the
House for that, perhaps through a letter to the Justice
Committee. That is the first of our practical
recommendations, which we believe would offer a way forward.
There is also the whole question of the oversight itself.
Given that there were these failings, we believe that greater
work should be done to ensure the transparency and
accountability of the above-establishment teams in the
Department. There was also a clear problem with the
facilities management contract. Not only had the backlog got
worse, but it is pretty clear that basic issues that should
have been picked up in the contract were not. The fact that
there were rat and cockroach infestations shows the level of
the problem. We are not satisfied with the explanations we
were given for the failures in that contract and we therefore
believe that there is a need for greater transparency, so we
recommend that major contracts—this is a national contract
with Amey—should be subject to a public framework outlining
the expectations, performance and penalties levied against a
provider for failure. If there are penalties, there should be
a system of naming and shaming, frankly. There should be a
public notification of where failures occur and how much of a
penalty is levied against the provider as a percentage of the
contract. That is the whole point of outsourcing—to drive
changes in behaviour—but we need transparency and openness to
do that.
We also noted that part of the problem derives from
persistent overcrowding. Liverpool prison was not
understaffed—it was up to establishment—but it was
nevertheless pressed for numbers. We therefore recommend that
the Ministry and the Prison Service publish a plan to resolve
the persistent overcrowding of the estate to take some of the
pressure off governors. The new governor at Liverpool is
clearly doing a very good job under difficult circumstances,
but we need an overall plan to deal with overcrowding and
that must aim to reduce the prison population and/or increase
safe and decent capacity. We cannot have it both ways.
We were also concerned about the poor situation with
healthcare that was discovered. We were glad to see
commitments from the Prison Service and NHS England to
publish a partnership agreement on how they are working
together. However, the last partnership agreement expired in
April 2017 and the new one will not be in place until 2018.
The gap of a year is not satisfactory in that regard and we
need steps to be taken to ensure that that does not happen
again.
Finally, we need a commitment to ensuring that there is
decent healthcare. It was explained to us that the
overcrowding and the nature of the regime meant frequently
that prisoners could not be brought from their cells to
healthcare appointments. We need a much more joined-up
approach to that.
Those are the principal recommendations of our report, which
I commend to the House. At the end of the day, the decency of
a society is judged by how it treats those who offend against
it as much as by how it treats those who do well by it.
Liverpool failed in that regard. We did not house prisoners
in the decent conditions that common humanity and our
international and domestic legal obligations order that we
should. That failure cannot be allowed to happen again.
Making greater use of the inspectorate and its tools and
adopting our recommendations will, I hope, be a constructive
way forward in assisting the Minister in what I entirely
believe is his intention to get back to getting the basics
right and improving the Prison Service. It is in that spirit
that we put the report before the House and commend it to the
Minister.
-
(Liverpool, Walton)
(Lab)
I welcome the Committee’s report and thank the Chair for his
quick decision to hold an evidence session specifically on
HMP Liverpool following the publication of the original
inspectorate report. I further welcome his commitment, as
stated here, to hold the Government to account when prisons
fail. We have lost another life inside the prison this week.
Anthony Paine, 35, who suffered with mental health problems,
was found in his cell and died in hospital on Monday.
The report does not mention in detail the failure to invest
in infrastructure and renovate wings or the loss and
replacement of experienced prison officers and, critically,
resources. Having seen the prison with my own eyes, I have no
doubt that these are basic but expensive requirements, but in
a written answer to me the Minister says that there is no
plan to publish the costs or programme of urgent works at HMP
Liverpool. Does the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst
(Robert Neill) agree that it is vital that we have
transparency across our prison network and the improvements
that are necessary if we are to see real change?
-
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I know that he knows
Liverpool Walton jail, as it is often called locally, very
well. I entirely understand the point of his remarks and I
hope that the Ministry will reflect on that. The whole thrust
of our report is that we need to shine the light of
transparency and publicity on these matters. We also, in a
separate piece of work, have in hand an inquiry into the
shape of the prison population by 2020. Part of that, again,
is this need to deal with overcrowding. Our recommendation on
persistent overcrowding is part of that. Getting the fabric
right is necessary. Walton jail—Liverpool prison—is one of
the old Victorian prisons and there is a real need for work
to be done there. If we are publishing the public framework
on facilities maintenance, I do not see why we should not be
able to have similar publicity about the capital works that
are required.
-
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory
Stewart)
This is an historic opportunity. I think that this is the
first time in more than 200 years of our Prison Service that
we have had an individual prison debated on the Floor of the
House. I pay tribute to the Justice Committee for bringing
the matter forward.
The situation in Liverpool prison was, as the Chairman of the
Select Committee has pointed out, genuinely shocking. It is
very disturbing and it is unbelievably important that Select
Committees, inspectors and Members of Parliament hold us
accountable for prisoners. These are closed communities. They
are often hidden away from the public. In many areas, they
can be forgotten, and without scrutiny standards can drop.
They dropped very seriously in Liverpool prison.
The condition in the cells was unacceptable, how prisoners
were treated was unacceptable, and the lack of purposeful
activity was unacceptable. We are now addressing this hard
and quickly, but there are still huge lessons to be learned
through the system. I pay tribute to the new governor, Pia
Sinha, who has come in, taken cells out of commission and
made it clear that she has cleaned the prison and that her
objective over the next six months is to get those cells into
a smart, good condition. We now have the money in place to
put in the new windows and she is focused on ensuring that
the education and employment activity is good.
More generally, there are lessons right the way through the
prison system. We need to get the basics right. There is no
point talking about rehabilitation or dealing with
reoffending unless we have clean, decent and safe spaces for
all prisoners. We want our prisons to be smart and
well-functioning. We are bringing in more than 2,000 more
prison officers, and that will relieve some of the pressures
on the prison estate, but these are new prison officers and
will need training and support until they have the
prisoncraft to deliver what we require. We also need to
invest a lot more in training. Because prisons are
unbelievably complex environments, the governor needs the
support and training—this could mean months of training—to
ensure that they are in a position to turn around the prison.
That training should also apply to the uniformed staff.
Finally, the role of the inspector and the Select Committee
will be vital in improving performance.
-
I am grateful to the Minister for that response. He is very
much on the case in recognising that we must get basic
things: cleanliness, decency, the maintenance of the
establishment, and the ability to run a regime where people
can get out to healthcare appointments and rehabilitative
work. All that is critical. Unless we turn the existing
problems around, we will face a real crisis in our prisons.
I look forward to working with the Minister on those matters.
In particular, I hope that he will take up our
recommendations on the inspectorate and the constructive role
that it can play. I can honestly say that this is a case of a
small investment being likely to pay off in the long term.
-
(Dwyfor
Meirionnydd) (PC)
As co-chair of the justice unions and family courts
parliamentary group, I welcome the report, but it is amiss
that the Justice Committee did not take evidence from unions
representing frontline professionals. I understand from the
Professional Trades Union for Prison, Correctional and Secure
Psychiatric Workers that the maintenance contractor, Amey,
refused to undertake pest control at HMP Liverpool, and the
previous governor—who was also not called to give
evidence—had to use his already hard-pressed budget. I wonder
whether the Chair would agree that governors’ autonomy is
convenient cover for the Government’s failure to be
accountable for the dire condition of the prison estate.
-
Let me say first that the Committee engaged with the POA on a
number of occasions, and on an ongoing basis. Secondly, the
issues relating to facilities maintenance were examined in
some detail. We said in our report that we were not satisfied
with the outcomes, and intended to return to the issue.
Thirdly, it was specifically not our role to examine the
position of the previous governor in terms of the future. We
heard evidence from the inspectorate about the position at
that stage, and we heard evidence from the current governor
about what is happening now, which is an improvement, but we
did not think that going into further past history would be
constructive. Our recommendations are for ways to try and
ensure that this state of affairs does not occur again.
-
(Henley) (Con)
One of the most distressing aspects of the report relates to
healthcare. My hon. Friend has already spoken briefly about
that. Does he feel, as I do, that we can have no confidence
in the partnership agreement? One thing that it will not do
is get prisoners out of their cells to attend appointments.
-
I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for his work in
the Committee on this and many other reports. He is
absolutely right. We are calling for the partnership
agreement to be published so that we can examine it, because
we cannot be satisfied that it is yet fit for purpose.
Previous partnership agreements have broken down, so we need
to know how this will be different—in terms of both its
structure and the way in which it will operate—in order to be
reassured that there will be no repetition of what went wrong
in the past.
-
(Rochdale) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and the Committee on an
excellent, timely and important report. However, while it
does move us forward, if we are to change our prisons from
being simply places of detention in various outrageous
conditions to being places where rehabilitation is
central—which is what they ought to be—we still have an
awfully long journey to travel. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of
prisons should be given the resources that it needs for
re-inspection, but we also need to be able to establish
whether we are delivering the quality of healthcare,
education and all the other things that are necessary in
prisons that will allow—mainly—our young men to come out and
become acceptable citizens.
-
I know how closely the hon. Gentleman followed this issue
during his time as a police and crime commissioner, and as
the interim mayor in his part of the world. He is absolutely
right. The report is a useful step forward, but I do not
pretend it can be more than that. It has to be part of a
systemic change, and I hope that it will help to drive that,
but we must think about the systems and about a long-term
strategy that relates to the real purpose of our prisons.
-
Mr (Kettering)
(Con)
I commend my hon. Friend for his statement and his Committee
for its report.
When the Care Quality Commission investigates local hospitals
and makes recommendations, it returns to those hospitals at a
later date to see whether they have been implemented. I do
not understand why the same system cannot be introduced for
Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons.
Is it not extremely alarming that the information given by
Liverpool prison to the head of the Prison Service was so
inaccurate? Given the speed with which the Committee’s report
was produced, will my hon. Friend encourage the Minister to
be equally quick in responding to its findings?
-
The quick answers are yes, yes, yes and yes. My hon. Friend
is right on those points, and I am sure that the Minister
will respond quickly. It would be bizarre if recommendations
from the Care Quality Commission or Ofsted were ignored in
the wholesale way in which those of Her Majesty’s
inspectorate of prisons have been ignored in the past, and
that absolutely needs to change.
-
Ms (St Helens South and
Whiston) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the Chair of the Justice Committee, which I
have recently rejoined. I also pay tribute to the Minister
for the quick actions that he has reported. However, we must
not forget why we find ourselves in this situation.
I am pleased about the announcement—made some time ago—of the
recruitment of an extra 2,500 prison officers, but we must
bear in mind that we lost 7,000, so there is still a gap of
4,500. The prison population figures are falling now, but
they did go up. The nature of the inmates changed somewhat.
The health needs of those imprisoned for historical sexual
abuse, for instance, were obviously different from those of
the other, existing prisoners, but the budget was not
increased to deal with such differences. There has been a
drain on resources. At the same time as the loss of the 7,000
prison officers, the drug Spice appeared, and became big
business. There were fewer resources with which to manage the
inmates, and morale went down with the loss of those prison
officers. When recruitment did begin, a baggage handler could
be paid more than one of the new recruits. It is important
that when we do recruit—and we are recruiting now—those
people are trained properly, not for a week but for months.
Resources are what is needed. Of course money is important,
but there is also the issue of how that money is used. As far
as I can see, there has been absolutely no contract
management. When I initiated a debate on mental health in
prisons, I noted that there appeared to be no communication
between the prisons and the health service. Contracts were
awarded and money was given, but there was no monitoring of
those contracts.
As the Justice Committee said, and as its Chair has said
today, this is about systems and about getting them right.
However, it is also about resources. It is about recruiting
the right people, training and valuing them.
-
I welcome the hon. Lady—in fact, I will call her my hon.
Friend, because that is what she is—back to the Committee. I
am very glad that she is with us once more.
It is true that we must look at all the issues. There is no
single silver bullet. We need a comprehensive plan, and I
urge the Government to work on that. I take the Minister’s
assurances at face value, because I believe that he does have
a desire to achieve what is needed. I look forward to working
with him, on behalf of the Committee, to ensure that that
happens. Staffing, resources, training, morale, the fabric of
the establishment, facilities management and proper contract
management are all part of the mix that we need to address.
|
