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Mr. Howard: Conservative voters expect the Government to take a balanced approach to these matters. Indeed, that is what the people of this country expect the Government to do, and that is precisely what we are doing.
During the debate in October, I dealt with the practice of prisoners under escort, and what I said was entirely accurate.
Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax):
Given that the Home Secretary has finally been dragged, kicking and screaming, to reverse the odious practice of shackling prisoners, is it not time now to utter one little word to the women who have been so degraded and to their absolutely innocent babies? Is it not time to say sorry?
Mr. Howard:
I have come to the House as soon as I could following the response of the Prison Service to the discussions that have taken place between it and the royal
Mr. Peter Shore (Bethnal Green and Stepney):
This is a squalid and shameful episode in our penal history, and I do not think that the Secretary of State should be anything other than ashamed of his Department and himself in his conduct of the matter. I ask him directly: who was responsible for the policy of putting pregnant women in shackles when they were in hospital? If it is the responsibility of the Prison Service, it ought not to be; important issues such as this ought to be decided by Ministers. If it is his responsibility--it should be his responsibility--he should own up and apologise to the House and the country.
Mr. Howard:
These detailed matters of security--
[Interruption.] These matters of security--although I accept that they are important--are dealt with entirely by the Prison Service as operational matters. That is how the decision came to be made in the first place and that is how the Prison Service responded to the concerns expressed by the Royal College of Midwives.
Mr. Alan Howarth (Stratford-on-Avon):
Does the Home Secretary recall that, on 19 October at column 518 of Hansard, he gave the House to understand not only that women prisoners were not put in chains, but that in his opinion the shackling of women prisoners was an operational matter and not a policy matter for him? Is he still contending that it is a matter of detail and only an operational matter? Does he still not appreciate how far he and the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe), have failed to understand the conscience of a nation, which not only will not tolerate such degrading barbarities, but insists that Ministers themselves take responsibility for the ways in which prisoners are treated?
Mr. Howard:
I have made it plain throughout the afternoon that these are operational matters for the Prison Service.
Ms Corston:
So why are you here?
Mr. Howard:
In answer to the sedentary intervention from the hon. Lady, I am here because I am accountable to Parliament for the decisions of the Prison Service, as has been explained on countless occasions. I accept that many operational decisions are extremely important and that this is one of them, but, as I pointed out to the hon. Gentleman when he intervened in my speech in October asking whether he should have received an answer to a letter that he had written from me rather than from the director of security of the Prison Service, given what I have said this afternoon, it was entirely appropriate that the director replied.
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South):
Does the Home Secretary not realise that his use of the word "detailed" in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) must be wholly unacceptable to most electors? Does he know whether the relevant
Mr. Howard:
The acting director general is pursuing with those directly responsible exactly what happened on that occasion, and his inquiries are not yet completed. As to the nature of the decisions that were made, I entirely accept that they are important matters, but, as I said a moment ago, many operational matters are important.
Mr. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South):
There is profound disagreement over whether the events under dispute are matters of operational detail or of public policy that should be held to account in the House. Will the Minister return to his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson)? Although I have only limited experience of childbirth, having being involved in the birth of my own children, I do not understand how a governor at the other end of a telephone line can be expected to determine whether labour has started. Surely the point at issue is that, when medical staff say that people should not be manacled, they should not be manacled?
Mr. Howard:
As I understood the question from the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate, she was taking up my point that it has always been the intention of the prison service that when a request was made by a doctor and nurse or a midwife for restraints to be removed because they were detrimental to the medical condition of the patient, they should be removed. That was the hon. Lady's question and that was the context in which I pointed out the distinction between what she described and what the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) had described earlier.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington):
Does the Home Secretary accept that most ordinary people understand that there will be occasions when women prisoners have to be handcuffed, but what ordinary people outside this House found both preposterous and repellent was the Minister of State's proposition that, in the last few hours before labour or when a woman is walking around in the middle of labour, she is likely to make a bid for escape? We also accept that, although those women are criminals--as his hon. Friends have said over and over again--they are also human beings, and there is no reason why they should be degraded in that way at a time which most women would agree is one of the most vulnerable in their lives.
Mr. Howard:
My hon. Friend the Minister said last week that discussions were going to take place between the acting Director General of the Prison Service and the Royal College of Midwives. I am pleased that those discussions have turned out to be so constructive and that the Prison Service has been able to respond so positively to the concerns expressed by the royal college. That was the basis of my statement to the House this afternoon.
Mr. John Hutton (Barrow and Furness):
Although I welcome the changes that the Home Secretary has
Mr. Howard:
I have dealt on a number of occasions with what my hon. Friend the Minister of State said last week. She said that discussions would take place. They have taken place and they have led to the decision of the Prison Service which I announced this afternoon. The only respect in which procedures will be different for remand prisoners is that they are not eligible for temporary release. Save for that distinction, remand prisoners, who are remanded in custody by the courts for particular reasons, will be treated in the same way as convicted prisoners.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North):
Will the Home Secretary acknowledge that there have been concerns for some considerable time about the handcuffing and manacling of prisoners from Holloway who are being taken to the Whittington hospital? Staff on the labour ward at that hospital have registered their concerns about that practice, through the hospital's general manager, to the Prison Service. It is only because of the publicity generated in the past few weeks that the Home Secretary has got round to showing any interest in the subject and making this statement.
Will he now publish all the details of all the complaints made by medical staff to his Department about the manacling of women prisoners and open discussions urgently with the Whittington hospital to take up its offer of allowing the community midwifery service access to the prison, to avoid the necessity of transferring women to the hospital when they could be seen there?
Mr. Howard:
My hon. Friend the Minister of State referred in some detail in her personal statement on Monday to the correspondence that had taken place. On the Whittington's suggestion that discussions should take place with a view to providing more antenatal services in the prison, making it unnecessary for prisoners to visit hospital for those purposes, as the hon. Gentleman said, I can confirm that Holloway prison intends to enter into discussions with the hospital with a view to finding out whether such an arrangement can be put into effect.
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