House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Apr 1990

Mr. Ivan Lawrence (Burton) : May I commend my right hon. and learned Friend for his clear indication this afternoon that he will take immediate, positive and constructive action on the lessons that have already been learnt about this deplorable incident? Does he agree that, if the prison officers had gone in too early in the well-defended position that he has described and serious injuries and deaths had resulted, the copycat results would have been nothing short of horrific?

Mr. Waddington : My hon. and learned Friend is so obviously right ; I made that point earlier. I have no doubt that, if anybody had been seriously injured or even killed, I should not be standing here today being criticised for not taking tough enough action. I should be standing here accused of having imperilled people's lives without any justification.

Mr. Tony Lloyd (Stretford) : I join the Home Secretary in giving due praise and credit to the governor and his staff at Strangeways. However, I want to ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman about his own role and that of senior management in the prison service. Can he deny that there were requests for specialist equipment or for specialist personnel which were not made available to the governor of Strangeways and which could have resulted in the siege being ended more quickly without any loss of life or serious injury to those involved? I should like the Home Secretary to be very precise in his answer.

Mr. Waddington : I know that new equipment was obtained and that there were allegations that there was not enough equipment. I know that a further order for more equipment was placed to the tune of £750,000, to which I have already referred. I went to Strangeways last night and I saw some of the control and restraint teams. I questioned them on whether they had been properly equipped to carry out their operation. They said that they were properly equipped, although there was a case for smaller shields for working in confined spaces.

Sir Peter Emery (Honiton) : Will my right hon. and learned Friend accept that we are grateful for his extensive statement, which must be closely studied, and that the House must recognise the need of Ministers to support local governors and local control? Will he also accept that there is a strong view among many people that one cannot treat prisoners in mutiny with kid gloves and that the message must be clearly understood that the maximum force will be used as soon as possible to overcome riot and mutiny, even if it carries the risk of physical harm to prisoners? Unless it is understood that people who riot and

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mutiny stand physical risk to themselves, there is a great chance of copycat mutinies and riots to attract the media, including television. A strong stance is urged by many.

Mr. Waddington : My hon. Friend will recall that, as I said in my statement, what happened at Pucklechurch, Bristol and Dartmoor makes it plain that the prison department is perfectly prepared to take tough action when tough action is appropriate. Yesterday I heard a prison governor being quoted as saying that the difficulty in these situations is that unless control of the prison is regained in--I think he said--the first few minutes or the first hour or two, almost insuperable difficulties are involved.

As I said earlier, what happened has been frustrating beyond measure for those of us who have had to carry the responsibility, and it has been infuriating for the public. Indeed, some members of the public have found it humiliating and I do not blame them for that. However, the public's attitude would have been very different if substantial loss of life had been entailed, and if the place had been stormed on the first day, I believe that the prison could have been retaken only with the risk of substantial injury and substantial loss of life.

Mr. Derek Fatchett (Leeds, Central) : The Home Secretary and other hon. Members have made it clear that we owe a debt to the prison officers. However, from all that we have heard during the events at Strangeways, it is also clear that the morale of prison officers is low, with a number of criticisms of the prison service. Does the Home Secretary intend to meet the Prison Officers Association to discuss the possibility of renegotiating fresh start and the additional manning implications that follow from what happened at Strangeways? From the right hon. and learned Gentleman's earlier comments, it is clear that the number of jobs that he has promised were already in the pipeline for this financial year and that all that he is promising is to bring those jobs forward.

Is it not clear that in a prison such as Leeds, which is already overcrowded and has the worst conditions of any prison in this country, the Home Secretary is asking the prison staff to face yet more days of intolerable strain and bad working conditions?

Mr. Waddington : I do not detect the low morale of which the hon. Gentleman has spoken. Indeed, the prison officers to whom I spoke last night were proud to have taken part in a successful operation. It is not true to say that prison officers are poorly paid. The average remuneration of a prison officer is now £16,000 per year, and £18,000 per year in London. The difference today as compared with a few years ago is that then prison officers had to work 56 hours a week to earn their remuneration, whereas they now work little more than an ordinary working week. Therefore, there has been a vast improvement in their position.

Obviously there will be opportunities for fresh start to be discussed and perhaps staffing levels will be thought a matter of importance by Lord Justice Woolf. However, I repeat what I said a short time ago. Fresh start came about as a result of an agreement with the POA and as a result of the general recognition that we could not continue with prison officers having to work absurd overtime hours to receive a decent remuneration.

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Mr. John Browne (Winchester) : Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that curbing the large concentrations of prisoners could have a major effect on prisoners' cell time and on staffing levels? If he adopts such curbs, will he please ensure that they are properly financed?

Mr. Waddington : I put the matter in the way that I did because it needs careful study. On the one hand, if one cuts the size of large assemblies, one reduces the immediate risk, but, on the other hand, the more restrictive the regime, the more pressures there are to build up. We must examine that matter logically and sensibly and come to a conclusion about the best way to proceed. I am sure that no hon. Member would say that that is not something that we should study carefully ; after all, this all began because there were 300 such people all together in the chapel.

Dr. John Reid (Motherwell, North) : Although I welcome many of the things that the Home Secretary has said, may I offer one or two observations arising from the experiences at Shotts prison in my constituency which is, as he knows, one of the most modern prisons in Britain? First, good design and a full complement of officers are no guarantee that there will not be trouble. Secondly, that is especially true when the prisoners can watch every night on television a long-running siege at another outdated prison. Thirdly, while minimising the risk of danger to prisoners and/or officers, we should also weigh in the balance the fact that such a long-running siege might encourage activity at other prisons and put officers' lives at risk, as was the case at Shotts. Finally--

Mr. Speaker : That is the fourth point.

Dr. Reid : I said "one or two", Mr. Speaker, but that is a generic Scottish legal term for "four".

Finally, as the effect that a small number of disruptive prisoners can have must now have been brought to the attention of the Home Secretary, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman bring that point to the attention of Ministers at the Scottish Office and ask them to abandon their crazy plans to centralise all Scotland's disruptive prisoners at Shotts prison in my constituency, as that could only lead to further heartache and problems?

Mr. Waddington : I shall certainly draw the hon. Gentleman's remarks to the attention of my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Scottish Office. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his opening remarks, which show the simplistic nature of some of the propositions that have been advanced over the past three or four weeks. Shotts is a new prison which is not overcrowded and where nobody suggests that there are not enough prison staff. We should bear that in mind when we hear all the stories to the effect that none of this would have happened if only fresh start had never come into existence and there is more prison officers. What has happened is a classic example of the way in which trouble can brew up other great trouble for no apparent reason.

On the point about copycat action--I am sorry that I did not reply to the point made about this by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), but I had mentioned it earlier--if people had been killed, I believe that there would have been far worse copycat action. The choice that had to be made was between taking a more cautious approach and ensuring that there would not be an unacceptable loss of life, in which case there was time for

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copycat action, and going in hard, risking life and probably causing loss of life, in which case there would certainly have been copycat action.

Mr. Richard Alexander (Newark) : Is not one of the most distasteful features of the whole business the attitude of some of the tabloid press, with some suggesting that 12 prisoners had been killed and that people had been castrated during the riot? Without making this a party political matter, to coin a phrase, is it not pertinent to ask, which side do they cheer for?

Mr. Waddington : It is certainly not a party political matter, but I was disgusted by the headlines in some of the press. The Sun stated :

"12 dead in jail drug riot".

Other headlines included that in the Daily Star which stated : "10 die in jail riot horror".

The Daily Express reported :

"12 murdered in jail riot" ;

Today had the headline :

"Prison mob hanged cop".

The Daily Telegraph wrote :

"Prisoners die as rioters burn jail" ;

and the Daily Mail referred to

"Twelve dead in jail riot",

with The Sun stating :

"Bodies cut up and dumped in sewer".

As I have already said, even ITN stated incorrectly and without any justification that three people had been killed.

That will not do. I do not want to incur even more bad publicity than I have had in the national press by being so critical, but the general public would feel that I would be failing in my duty if I did not emphasise how disgraceful such reporting has been. It has not helped a solution to be arrived at in any way.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Is the Home Secretary aware that the episode lasted nearly as long as the Falklands war? Why should the British taxpayer have to fork out £200 million to finance the shambles just because we have a lousy Home Secretary who cannot handle the job? If anybody should be paying the bill, it should be the Home Secretary and other members of the Government. If a local authority had been in charge, it would have been surcharged.

Mr. Waddington : This was not a war. A war always costs lives. Those who decide to engage in war make up their minds before doing so that there will be what is called acceptable loss of life. It is ridiculous for the hon. Gentleman to draw an analogy between the events at Strangeways and a war. All reasonable people would say that in conducting such an operation one should start with the proposition that no one should be put at unacceptable risk, let alone danger, to his life.

Mr. Tim Devlin (Stockton, South) : Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that late last year, before the Strangeways riot, there was a similiar riot at Kirklevington prison in my constituency? It seems clear from what has happened during the past two weeks that, whatever public opinion might have been--that has given rise to great pleasure this afternoon--the public would approve of an immediate and, if necessary, violent reaction to this sort of activity in our prisons and the demolition of our Victorian prisons. Therefore, will my right hon. and learned Friend immediately set up a centrally directed riot squad, armed

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if necessary, to deal with such events, and will he take advantage of the situation at Strangeways to demolish the prison and build a new one on the rubble?

Mr. Waddington : As I have pointed out, there was a pretty violent reaction at Bristol, Dartmoor and Pucklechurch, so the prison department is clearly not afraid to take violent action. The question is, what is it sensible to do when 135 people are still at loose in the prison and up in the rafters? How many prison officers could one allow to be killed in order to put them through the doors downstairs, making them climb on to gangways which had been rendered unsafe by the removal of bannisters and through an area which we already know had been booby-trapped? I should like to see some of our Victorian prisons demolished, but one must take a common-sense view. We must accommodate those whom it is proper to send to prison. As I have already pointed out, we have done a great deal to introduce the possibility of more punishment in the community and there has been a reduction in the prison population, but it will be a long while before we can get rid of all our Victorian prisons.

I am glad to be able to tell my hon. Friend that during the past year more than 3,000 prison officers have been specially trained in the control and restraint technique to deal with the sort of situation which has occurred recently in our prisons. It is now proposed to train even more, but it is a good thing that over a year ago that special training programme was embarked upon.

Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) : What guarantees are there that the Woolf report will not join other riot and disaster reports gathering dust on the shelf while the Government proceed in their own ideological and dogmatic way? Which of the lessons learned from the riots at Saughton and Peterhead in Scotland were applied to the riot at Strangeways?

Mr. Waddington : The lessons of Peterhead were not thought relevant. That is a classic example of how unrealistic it is to talk of bringing in the Army. If someone is a hostage in a prison in imminent danger of death, there may be a case for putting in the Army ; there is certainly no

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case for putting in the Army when seven scruffy layabouts are holed up in a prison and there is a way of getting them out without the loss of a single life. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we shall look swiftly at the conclusions reached by Lord Justice Woolf. I thought that we had done rather well with reports recently. We certainly acted quickly when Lord Justice Taylor produced his report.

Mr. James Kilfedder (North Down) : What is the present estimate of the damage caused to Strangeways prison? Was not most of the damage caused after the first couple of days?

Mr. Waddington : I do not know. We shall have to make an estimate, and when that has been done the House will be told. I do not know how much damage was done in the first two days and how much was done thereafter, but I do know that a lot was done in the first day or two. There is no doubt that a great deal of damage was done then, including the burning of an old chapel. A whole building was destroyed.

Dr. Michael Clark (Rochford) : How would my right hon. and learned Friend advise me to reply to those of my constituents who write saying that the goings on in Strangeways during the past three and a half weeks have brought shame on the governor, derision on the Home Office and ridicule on the country?

Mr. Waddington : I would say that it is easy to see why people became so thoroughly frustrated and why, seeing the scenes on their televisions, they were upset for Britain's reputation. But at the end of the day those responsible have to make rational plans and execute them. I hope that my hon. Friend will make it clear to any constituents who talks nonsense about bringing in the SAS and taking the place by storm that in such a situation a Home Secretary who wilfully imperils the lives of prison officers, let alone the lives of prisoners, would be severely criticised, and rightly so. Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Speaker : Order. I shall give precedence to the three hon. Members whom I have been unable to call on today's statement the next time that we return to the matter.

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BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS FOR MONDAY 14 MAY Members successful in the ballot were :

Mr. Bowen Wells

Sir Hugh Rossi

Mr. David Shaw

BILL PRESENTED

Toxic and Hazardous Substances (Miscellaneous Provisions) (No. 2) Bill

Mr. Ian McCartney, supported by Mr. Mike Watson, Mr. Frank Doran, Mr. Eric Martlew, Mr. Martyn Jones, Mr. Keith Bradley, Mrs. Alice Mahon, Mr. David Hinchliffe, Mr. Thomas McAvoy, Mr. John Battle, Mr. Gerry Steinberg and Mr. Lawrence Cunliffe, presented a Bill to protect the general public in the purchase and application of toxic and hazardous substances within the home environment ; to provide for the labelling of such products ; to provide for the licensing of manufacturers in respect of hazardous substances, products and processes ; to improve safety standards and to require testing of substances, products and processes ; to provide codes of practice for consumers and contractors ; to set up a register of toxic and hazardous substances ; and for connected purposes : And the same was read the First time ; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 4 May and to be printed. [Bill 135.]

GREENWICH HOSPITAL BILL [Lords]

Ordered,

That the Greenwich Hospital Bill [Lords] be referred to a Second Reading Committee.-- [Mr. Greg Knight.]

Royal Assent

Mr. Speaker : I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts :

Education (Student Loans) Act 1990

Greater Manchester (Light Rapid Transit System) Act 1990 Happisburgh Lighthouse Act 1990

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Orders of the Day

Enterprise and New Towns (Scotland) Bill

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

New Clause 9

Winding up and dissolution of new town development corporations For sections 36 and 36A of the New Towns (Scotland) Act 1968 there shall be substituted the following sections--

"Winding up of development corporation. 36.--(1) Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the purposes for which a development corporation were established under this Act have been substantially achieved he may by order (a "winding up order") provide for the winding up of the corporation.

(2) Before making a winding up order the Secretary of State shall consult--

(a) the development corporation to which the order will relate. (

(b) the council--

(i) of the region or islands area, and

(ii) of each district,

in which any part of the new town is situated, and

(c) such other person or body as he thinks appropriate. (3) A winding up order shall name the day on which the winding up of the corporation is to commence and the day by which it is to be completed and may--

(a) stipulate a timetable for the winding up,

(b) require the corporation to make interim reports to the Secretary of State,

(d) impose such duties, or confer such additional powers, in relation to the winding up as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate,

(e) revoke any order relating to the development corporation, (

(f) contain such incidental, consequential, supplementary, transitional or ancillary provisions (including provision modifying the effect of any enactment as it relates to the corporation) as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient.

(4) The Secretary of State may, after such consultation as is mentioned in subsection (2) above, by order vary any of the terms of a winding up order.

(5) An order under this section shall be made by statutory instrument which shall, if it contains provision modifying the effect of any enactment as it relates to the corporation, be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

Application of sections 35 etc. to operators of telcommunication systems 36A. Sections 35, 36B and 36D of this Act shall have effect as if references to statutory undertakers included references to operators of any telecommunications code system and as if for this purpose--

(a) references to a statutory undertaking were references to the running of such a system, and

(b) references to the appropriate Minister were references to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

Additional power to dispose of property etc. 36B.--(1) Subject to the conditions set out in subsection (2) below and without prejudice to the powers contained in section 3, 18, 18AA or 18B of this Act, a development corporation may dispose of any of their property, rights or liabilities on such terms (including by way of gift) as they think fit to any person, including (without prejudice to this generality) Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Development Agency, Scottish Homes, a local authority or a statutory undertaker.

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(2) The conditions relating to the power conferred by subsection (1) above are that the power may be exercised only

(a) with the consent (which may be general or specific) of the Secretary of State, and

(b) during the period from the day of coming into force of the winding up order until the date of dissolution of the corporation. Direction and order making powers of Secretary of State 36C.--(1) Without prejudice to the power contained in section 4(2) of this Act the Secretary of State may, in relation to a development corporation who are subject to a winding up order --

(a) during the period from the date of coming into force of the order until the date named in the order as the date by which the corporation are to be wound up (the "winding up date"), give directions (which may be general or specific) to the corporation in relation to the winding up ; and

(b) during the period from the winding up date until the date of dissolution of the corporation, give directions (which may be general or specific) to the corporation.

(2) In the case of a development corporation who are subject to a winding up order the Secretary of State may exercise the power conferred by section 5(2) of this Act without its having to appear to him that there are exceptional circumstances rendering such exercise expedient.

Transfer orders 36D.--(1) At any time after a winding up order has been made the Secretary of State may by order (a "transfer order"), made by statutory instrument and subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution by either House of Parliament, provide for the transfer of any property, rights and liabilities of a development corporation to any person, including (without prejudice to this generality) Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Development Agency, Scottish Homes, a local authority or a statutory undertaker. (2) A transfer order may--

(a) transfer the property, rights and liabilities on such terms (which may include transfer either with or without consideration) as the Secretary of State may provide in the order,

(b) include provisions amending any enactment relating to Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Development Agency, Scottish Homes, a local authority or a statutory undertaker for the purpose, or in consequence, of any transfer made to any such body by virtue of subsection (1) above, and

(c) contain any such incidental, consequential, supplementary or ancillary provisions as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient for the purposes of the order.

(3) Any property, right or liability transferred to any person by a transfer order shall vest in that person on such date as may be specified in the order.

(4) If a person to whom any land is transferred by a transfer order wishes to complete his title to the land by expeding a notarial instrument or notice of title or otherwise, the order shall be deemed to be and may be used as a general disposition or assignation of the land in his favour.

Reduction of liability of development corporation. 36E.--(1) If the Secretary of State is satisfied that it is expedient, having regard to the provisions of any transfer order or proposed transfer order, that the liability of a development corporation in respect of advances made to them under this Act should be reduced he may, by order with the consent of the Treasury, reduce that liability to such extent as may be specified in the order.

(2) Section 46(6) of this Act applies to orders under this section.

Grants by Secretary of State. 36F.--(1) Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that a disposal of land by a development corporation or any transfer of land under a transfer order imposes or will impose a financial burden on the disponee or transferee he may make grants to the disponee or transferee of amounts to be determined by him with the consent of the Treasury.

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