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1.6 pm
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough and Horncastle): I support my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin). This is a useful Bill that will help to determine whether a prisoner has broken the conditions of his licence. Incidentally, drugs tests were recently introduced in prisons. I understand that they are successful and that there have been few difficulties in implementing them.
One benefit of testing is that it can identify prisoners with a drugs or drink problem, and they can then receive treatment. I am very interested in this subject. In fact, I spent a large part of last Friday in my local prison--Lincoln prison. I was let out without any problem. I received a great deal of local information that I want to share with the House. I have also contacted the Prison Officers Association and other organisations because it is important that we press my right hon. Friend the Minister on several points relating to the Bill, and this is an opportunity so to do.
The Home Office considers that no additional funding will be needed for testing. I want to press my right hon. Friend on that in my few brief remarks. I have seen press reports that an alcometer can cost in excess of £700. Apparently, one was bought by the governor of Hewell Grange, a country house prison in Redditch. That is disclosed in a report by Judge Stephen Tumim, the former chief inspector of prisons. He questioned the legality of making inmates take a test; hence this Bill.
In that report, prisoners are quoted as saying that, if someone is on a four-day leave, the ban on alcohol is virtually unenforceable. They may not drink on the final day, but they will drink as much as they want in the preceding days. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North has a solution to that; he probably does not. It is something that should worry us all.
We could solve some of the problems by taking urine samples, but the POA tells me that, if we insist on them, there could be considerable cost implications. That process also takes much longer. The prisoner has a right of appeal against a breath test. There is a concern that officers would have an additional duty placed on them when they are already under severe pressure. We want more information from my right hon. Friend the Minister about what exactly will be done in the routine procedures when prisoners return to prison and how much additional burden will be placed on prison officers.
There are no data on the number of prisoners found drunk, or on seizures of alcohol in prisons. The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys has found that there is a significantly higher level of drinking among prisoners prior to imprisonment than is the case in the general population. Indeed, it is four times higher.
I have spoken at length to representatives of the Prison Officers Association, and--although they are representatives of a trade union--presumably they know
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In the past 12 months, the number of prison officers has been reduced by 2,200--800 through natural wastage, and 1,400 through voluntary redundancy. New officers are being recruited only when it is vital to make replacements. During the same period, however, the prison population has increased. It has increased by 14,000 since the current Home Secretary assumed his duties, and it is rising by 250 to 300 a week. The effect of the rise on resources should worry us.
We all support what the Home Secretary is doing, and most of our constituents believe very strongly that the only way in which to deal with crime--which is endemic among younger people--is to put people in prison, but we must provide the necessary resources. If the number of prisoners is rising by 250 to 300 a week, that has very severe resource implications for the Home Office and for the Treasury.
Will prisons soon be at crisis point? The POA thinks that they will, although the Minister would undoubtedly deny it. I do not know--but we need some answers. Some people suggest that prisons will be at saturation level by next March or April; others suggest February. Some action is clearly required, and more officers will have to be recruited. Overcrowding does not affect private prisons, because there is a clause in their contracts stating that they cannot be overcrowded.
Is alcohol or drugs the main cause of disturbance in prisons? Are they the main problem affecting good order? Would the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North make a great deal of difference? On 8 September 1996, The Sunday Times quoted Mark Healey, a national executive member of the POA, as stating:
Alcohol in prisons is a real problem, although it is not perhaps so severe as that of drugs. Drugs are used in prison either by those who are addicted to them or by those who use them as currency. As I observed last week during my visit, there is definitely a black market in drink and drugs in Lincoln prison. Prisoners make illicit drink in, perhaps, most prisons, and they can be very cunning in doing so. Last week, I saw some of the contraptions that they use to make drink and drugs in Lincoln prison.
In January 1996, in Wolds prison in east Yorkshire, stills were found behind panels in the television room. In Ashwell prison in Leicestershire, stills were found in the trunking behind a lavatory. In Leyhill open prison in Gloucestershire, six bottles of whisky, 53 bottles of cider and 40 bottles of beer were found. My hon. Friend's Bill will have some impact on dissuading prisoners from going
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There are some very worrying statistics. A 1989 mental health survey found that 8.6 per cent. of prisoners had an alcohol dependency, whereas a 1995 study stated that15 per cent. of prisoners had such a problem. In 1995, drug-testing trials were conducted and, in some gaols, it was discovered that two thirds of inmates tested positive. That percentage is staggering. Prisons are humane places--as I have seen for myself--in which prisoners are not put on a diet of bread and water, but people are supposed to be sent away to prison by society. We should pause for a moment and consider those percentages. The 1995 trial found that, in some gaols, two thirds of inmates tested positive for drugs. By the end of July this year, 34,496 prisoners had been tested, of whom 30 per cent. proved positive--23 per cent. for cannabis and 7 per cent. for heroin.
One hesitates to use a word like "crisis", but I do not think that the public know about these problems. They think that prisoners are locked away out of sight, out of mind, but if the statistics are true they should be a cause of great concern.
The Minister of State will rightly argue that funding for the Prison Service has increased, but I want to question him a little more closely about that. The Home Office recently announced its 1997 prison spending plans in the combined Budget and autumn statement, which said that funding for the Prison Service in 1997-98 will increase by £230 million on 1996-97 plans, with provision for 8,600 new prison places by March 2000.
That sounds like a lot of money and, at first sight, we might think that everything was fine, but when I rang the Prison Officers Association I was told that the increase was only £85 million. I therefore checked with the Library to see whether funding had indeed increased by£230 million, or by only £85 million. The Library told me that the true increase is only £111 million on the estimated expenditure for the last financial year. That is a cause for concern, and we need to be reassured that the necessary resources will be available.
Not only resources, but overcrowding, is the problem. New prisons--private prisons--are being built, and I welcome that, but there may be a need for even more. I am worried that the Home Office will decide to use the former RAF base at Scampton--in fact, it is still an RAF base, as it is used partly for married quarters, although the actual Air Force base has closed--as a prison. It might decide to use the Finningley base.
The rumour mill is working at fever pitch in Lincoln, and I am told that Scampton is off the hot list. I have written to my right hon. Friend the Minister about it. We need to know what is happening as soon as possible because the future of RAF Scampton could be blighted. I want to be reassured that, although the Home Office has use of Scampton, it will not persevere with the proposal to use it as a prison.
"But it must be remembered that a main cause of disturbance in jail is overcrowding."
In October 1995, there was a disturbance at Coldingley prison in Surrey. Prisoners fought pitched battles with officers to defend a still in the kitchens, where more than 20 gallons of hooch were discovered.
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