Examination of witnesses (Questions 58
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 1998
MR FINLAY
SPRATT and MR
JIM SMYTH
Chairman
58. Mr Spratt and Mr Smyth, we are delighted
to see you. Thank you very much indeed for coming to give evidence
before us. You have very kindly furnished us with a memorandum
in advance. I do not know whether there is anything you would
like to say to the Committee before we start asking you questions.
It may be sensible if I indicate one operational pattern of ours
and one other ground rule, which it may be sensible if we indicate
at the beginning. Operationally we try and make questions follow
a logical pattern. Therefore, it may be that questions will come
to you from odd corners of the horseshoe, simply because a particular
person is asking the question which next logically follows. Secondly,
there is the possibility that we might want, after the event,
to send you some written questions on answers which we were not
able to get during the course of the day. Equally, if there was
any occasion, in terms of answers you have given, where you wanted
to give a subsequent written gloss, to add a footnote or a correction
to something you said, please feel absolutely free to do that.
Now let me ask you whether in addition to the welcome there is
anything you would like to say before we embark on our questions.
(Mr Spratt) If I could make a comment about the
report that I have actually received of the last inquiry, from
the last appearance by people from the Northern Ireland Office.
In fact, I just got it last night. I read through it today. It
does not appear from that report that I am working in the same
Prison Service. No doubt you will give me the opportunity to elaborate
on that today. I am just disappointed that I had not got it previous
to yesterday. I thought, in fact, I should have had it to look
at before I came here to prepare. I would like to say that in
reading the report briefly on the plane, I felt I needed to turn
back home again because it does not appear to be the same Prison
Service, but no doubt you will give me the opportunity to comment
on it.
59. My suspicion is that the questions we
may ask you, which will not be a million miles from the questions
we asked witnesses last time, will give you more than an ample
opportunity to comment where you think there is a divergence between
appearance and reality. Thank you very much indeed for those introductory
remarks. Without knowing whether you specifically saw the question
which I am about to ask in terms of last time, (but I did raise
it last time), how successful do you think the Service has been
in communicating to staff the philosophy behind their own strategic
planning, annual business plans, and contracts for each Governor?
(Mr Spratt) As I said in the submission I sent
to you on 5 March, I do not believe that the management of the
Northern Ireland Prison Service, at the moment, have been very
successful in passing that down the line to the staff on the ground.
As I said in the submission I made to you we were led to believe,
by the introduction of Agency status, that prison officers would
feel more that they were part of the Service; they would have
a more valuable contribution to make. That certainly has not been
our experience. We see a bureaucratic machine since the Agency
has been set up in the Northern Ireland Office. They do not come
out too often to talk to people on the ground, and the message
does not get down to the officers on the ground. That is our experience.
60. That really covers each of the things
about which I was asking?
(Mr Spratt) Yes.
61. Would you like in that context, therefore,
having alluded to Agency status, to summarise what you think the
advantages and the disadvantages, or the benefits or the disbenefits,
of Agency status have been, seen from your perspective.
(Mr Spratt) From our perspective we believed that
Agency status was going to make more people feel as part of an
organisation. In fact, we have felt that has divided the organisation.
We have striven for years to remove this attitude of them and
us. If we look at Agency status, in fact this has removed a lot
of the contact where officers—— I will give you one
example in relation to administration of pay, and stuff like that.
That has all been removed. The administration of subsistence paid
to officers, who go out every day on behalf of the Government
to do their job, are having to wait maybe up to two or three months
to receive the subsistence for money which they have spent out
of their own pocket. Agency status removed all that. We now have
to wait two or three months to be paid that money. We have even
a situation where officers, who are going out to take prisoners
to court, are buying the prisoners' lunch out of their own money.
That is a fact. This is what Agency status has done. We all thought
Agency status was pushing down to the ground level decisions of
administration. In fact, the Agency in Northern Ireland has actively
removed all that because they have centralised all the functions
of the Prison Service to headquarters in relation to pay, subsistence,
and everything that goes with it.
62. I can detect from that answer certain
disadvantages about Agency status. Do you think there have been,
to be fair, advances or advantages which have been derived from
the change?
(Mr Spratt) I have to answer, Chairman, that we
have not seen any advantages at this point in time. Maybe in the
future we will see advantages but up to this point in time, since
Agency status has been set up, we have seen no advantages. We
have see people in the Northern Ireland Office who are far removed
from the decisions. We, down on the ground, are the very last
people to hear of them. Decisions are being made in the Northern
Ireland Office with no consideration for the people on the ground
who are not party to those decisions. By the time those decisions
come out there is resentment among prison officers, where before
a lot of those decisions were made at ground level. I know through
the Agency status document, and through the submission made here
by the management team when they appeared in front of you, that
they were giving an impression that those were benefits which
were pushing downwards but this, in fact, has not happened.
63. And your observations which you have
just made, would you apply them likewise to the evidence of the
Prison Service?
(Mr Spratt) I have listed in the submission I
made to you on 5 March that we see many items which could be dealt
with more efficiently but from what we discover from our perspective
as a trade union it would appear—and I notice from the submission
made here in the inquiry—that the POA seems to be the bogeyman
in the Northern Ireland Prison Service. We have also seen from
the submission that the management team are taking the credit
for a lot of things that have happened in the Northern Ireland
Prison Service. I can assure you, Mr Chairman, that the credit
belongs to the Prison Officers' Association. If I can take you
back a bit in time—Chairman, you may have been Secretary
of State at the time—when Fresh Start was introduced in
England and Wales, it was introduced in Northern Ireland and it
failed. The membership at that time turned it down. It was the
initiative of this Association who went back to the Department
and said, "Look, we want it. We have to recognise that we
have to move forward." It was actually our initiative that
was taking the Prison Service forward. It was our initiative which
reduced 500 jobs and reduced the working hours because prison
officers were working tremendous hours. We felt that was unreasonable.
It was through our co-operation and initiative that all those
changes have taken place, but that was not what was projected
here from the management team who appeared in front of the Committee
in the last few weeks.
64. Because of what you said before I started
asking questions, about the fact that you did not recognise yourself
as belonging to the same Service, are there any examples you want
to give where you think the perspective may well differ between
yourselves and the Service?
(Mr Spratt) If I can just take out this report
and refer you to page 11. One example. "We have improved
levels of C&R training." I made a submission to the Committee
on the first of the third, as you can see from that submission,
and I can assure you, Chairman, that what I have submitted to
you is factual. I have the documentation and the evidence. When
I sat down to make my submission I was conscious that I wanted
to make the submission on facts, not fiction. I can assure you
that they have not increased the levels of C&R training in
the Northern Ireland Prison Service. That is one example of the
submission which I referred to on the fifth of the third. Even
as I sit here in front of you today, nothing has changed in respect
of what I wrote to you on 5 March. Page 17 of the report. It would
appear from what has been said, for example: "...that we
have introduced flexible working patterns and we have introduced
part-time work," that sort of thing. I can assure you that
has not happened in respect of prison officers, but it would appear
from this that it applies to prison officers. It applies to civil
servants only within the Agency. It does not apply to prison officers
either male or female. So that is another example. Page 36. These
are just quick things.
65. That is the virtue of your taking this
opportunity.
(Mr Spratt) It talks about providing facilities
and retraining to prison officers in respect of the redundancies.
All the redundancy packages, which have taken place in the Northern
Ireland Prison Service up to this point in time, officers were
not given the opportunity for retraining. Neither were they offered
the opportunity to look for additional employment. The time came
up, they were given their money, and it was goodnight. There was
no programme set up. In fact, when I look at the redundancy package
they had in the Prison Service here in England and Wales, they
included with their package the opportunity for retraining and
counselling. The prison officers in Northern Ireland never, ever
received any counselling as to what they would do with their finances,
investment, retraining programmes. It talks here about the assistance
given by the Employment Agency for retraining: "Provides
facilities for looking for other jobs and the Training and Employment
Agency has offered suitable support in that respect." I can
assure you, Chairman, when I read that I could not believe that,
because that never, ever happened.
66. Thank you very much indeed.
(Mr Spratt) If I could just go on.
67. How many more do you want to give me?
(Mr Spratt) Well, if you go on to page 40——
Mr Livingstone: Why
does he not say what he can finally recognise in the report!
Mr Salter
68. I do not want to stop you in your flow,
Finlay, but I too was slightly aghast at the answers I got to
my questions last time on the same issue. My range of questions
is more round staff morale and whether or not there is, in real
terms, a personnel strategy of work. I have friends in the PR
in Broadway who send their regards, but I was interested in comments
in Gate Lodge, in the regular article that you write in
there, where you made several references to the poor (or lack
of) confidence in the management service within the Prison Service.
Within your evidence you are fairly uncompromising here when you
talk about: "In the 22 years in the Prison Service I have
never seen morale or self-esteem of the prison officers so low."
The point you make about the prison officers who want to know
when the redundancy is coming out and the points you made about
sick leave, I would like to give you the opportunity to expand
on that and perhaps give us your views as to why you feel staff
morale is so low, sickness is so high, and how much of it can
be attributed to poor management as opposed to the circumstances
that you find you have to deal with.
(Mr Spratt) In fact, we negotiated with the Department
quite a number of years ago and Jim will come in on the question
because he was actively involved with the management of absenteeism.
The policy was set up that we would go out and visit people on
sick. We would see what we could do to get them back to work.
In my experience in the Northern Ireland Prison Service, when
the morale goes down the sickness goes up. Therefore, I always
attribute that to the people who manage the Prison Service because
I happen to believe that the morale of staff comes from the standard
of leadership that they get. Therefore, we have many agreements
with the Northern Ireland Office.
69. You talked about a personnel strategy?
(Mr Spratt) I will give you an example of the
personnel strategy of the Northern Ireland Prison Service. Mr
Beggs will know what I am talking about. We have officers who
live in the north-west of the Province. That is about 90 miles
from the Maze prison. We have five officers who were transferred
to the Magilligan prison as a result of the closure of Belfast.
We are now in the process this week of lifting five officers from
the north-west and asking them to travel to the Maze, when the
five people in Belfast travel to Magilligan 80 to 90 miles a day.
So the two pass. This is the personnel strategy. Now, you ask
me about the morale. Do I need to say any more?
70. Please do.
(Mr Spratt) I went to the Northern Ireland Office—in
fact, I was there on Monday—to put forward suggestions.
In our view, to uproot families at this point in time in the Northern
Ireland Prison Service, when in actual fact we have a Peace strategy
and the intention is that prisoners will be released, you are
asking people to uproot who may not have a job in a year. You
are asking people to make a decision about their future and where
they should live who might find in 18 months that they do not
have a job. That is an example. Jim will come in and elaborate
upon the strategy in respect of the management of absenteeism.
We went to the Northern Ireland Office on numerous occasions because
we were concerned. We offered to sign up to an agreement that
would effectively bring into being a sick procedure applicable
to prison officers, only because what has happened is that prison
officers are civil servants. We are applicable to the Pay and
Conditions Code. We have always said that the Pay and Conditions
Code does not address the issue of prison officers, i.e. intimidation,
the threats, and the burning of their homes which goes on. We
said, "Look, we will draw up a policy with you, which will
be applicable to prison officers. We will monitor the sick."
I believe we can get officers back to work by people visiting
them and so forth. Will you believe that they flatly refused to
consider anything we said? It is clearly coming through from this
report that I have read here, that the view of the management
of the Northern Ireland Office is that the POA are the bogeymen,
but I can assure you that this is not the case. I will ask Jim
to elaborate.
(Mr Smyth) On the sick management there is a meeting
supposed to be held every so many months and the personnel governors
are supposed to attend. They are supposed to get a feedback of
what is happening in each station. The Northern Ireland Office
signed the agreement with the Association who put in certain things
what would happen: where the group manager who is a PO, principal
officer, over a group, if a member of staff is out after so many
weeks he will contact them and go and visit them to see how best
he can help them. One of the reasons it was put down to the PO
was that he was in charge of the group, so if the man came back
but needed to be put on light duty away from prisoners, he was
the best one to say he could do that because he was in his group.
What we found was that when we held the meetings the personnel
governors did not turn up. They sent their assistants. Half the
visits were not being carried out. If somebody has no sick after
a year they are supposed to get what you call a "good boy"
letter saying they were good and had good attendance. I was on
a station, maybe two months ago, where a Governor admitted never
having carried this out but the system has been in for two or
three years. No-one is addressing the managers who are not carrying
this out so the whole system breaks down.
71. May I refer you to previous evidence.
I am sure you have read it, Mr Spratt, where we were putting questions
to Mr Shannon, Head of the Service, on what he means by a personnel
strategy. All I got out of a very lengthy answer is that there
is some discussion about medals. They accept that the pay scales
are not appropriate and need rejigging and that Investors in People
will be a major boost to staff morale as a specific initiative.
I will be interested in your reaction to that.
(Mr Spratt) My reaction is quite simple. Yes,
I would accept that the Investors in People programmes, if properly
funded and resourced, should be a benefit to staff but I have
to say that my experience has been in years gone by that it will
never happen. It may happen from the point of view that you get
a certificate from it. I happen to believe that giving prison
officers medals and so on is not a way to improve the morale of
prison officers. Now, when I say "from our experience",
if I can take you back, we had a wonderful programme called the
Hare Report on Training for Prison Officers done some two or three
years ago. In fact, it bore no fruit whatsoever on the lack of
training of Northern Ireland prison officers. So I am sceptical
but we would certainly support the Investors in People initiative,
provided that it delivers at the end of the day. I have yet to
be convinced on that. I do notice from the question that it is
very long-winded answer, but there is no answer. I could not find
one.
72. You have told me that you are dubious
or can find no examples of clearly defined strategy. Would you
go as far as saying that in reality they have not a personnel
strategy, it is day-to-day reaction?
(Mr Spratt) As far as I am concerned they have
no personnel treaty. They are people who are far removed from
reality who are making the decisions. There is, what I call it,
day-to-day crisis management.
Mr Beggs
73. How effective is the Prison Service
Review likely to be in reforming the approach to personnel matters?
(Mr Spratt) I honestly think there is great emphasis
being laid on the Prison Service Review. Our experience, speaking
to our colleagues in Scotland, who carried out a pay and grading
review—on which there has been an attempt to do in the Northern
Ireland Prison Service—has turned out to be a total disaster.
We have said to Mr Shannon that the fact that the Framework Agreement
we actually agreed with the Department last year, we believe we
have done the business on the Framework Agreement. However, the
reason it is failing is because it is not being managed. That
is our opinion. We see from the pay and grading review that they
are talking in here about paying the officers different salaries
for different jobs. They talk here about the officers supporting
the other officer. Our opinion and our experience in the Northern
Ireland Prison Service is that the officer who is supporting the
Service is as important as the officer who is at the coal face
because there are 20 officers supporting to do his job. What that
will effectively do is to come in and divide. We have said to
the Northern Ireland Prison Service that most companies are moving
away from performance related pay. We say: why do we need to go
down this road? We believe that the Framework Agreement is adequate.
We have carried out quite a lot of initiatives. I do not think
it is to the benefit of the Northern Ireland Prison Service and
to the morale.
74. Has the Prison Officers' Association
been consulted about the review or been given an opportunity to
assist with it?
(Mr Spratt) Yes. To be fair we were invited to
participate at the very outset. We refused because we could see
that it was a very divisive way of going about setting up a structure;
that everybody can sing from the same song sheet as a means of
dividing staff rather than gelling them together. We refused to
take part in the review. Although we have not had meetings with
the Northern Ireland Office, now that the review has been completed
we have expressed our opinion. For example, going back many years
in the Prison Service, possibly eight years, we had a rank of
a chief officer. Now we have in the Northern Ireland Prison Service,
senior officer, principal officer, and then you go on to the Governor
grades, what we call "the people who walk about in suits".
We always had a chief officer who was the link man between. They
have done away with that grade and I proposed under the pay and
grading review that if they wanted to boost morale and bring the
Service together they should bring back the rank of the chief
officer. That report has come out and totally ignored that recommendation.
Our experience has been that when they did away with that rank,
the morale and the discipline, which is the most important issue,
the discipline in the Service that we have has completely gone
out of the window. The staff on the ground cannot relate to people
who are running about, (for want of a better word), in civvy clothes.
They are a uniform service and they have nobody, nobody whatsoever,
to relate to.
Mr Donaldson
75. You are very welcome to the Committee.
Is your Association satisfied with the arrangements that are in
place for staff training in the Prison Service in Northern Ireland?
(Mr Spratt) No, we are not satisfied. We do a
very dangerous job, as you will appreciate, right across the Northern
Ireland Prison Service. Many people who might think that Maghaberry,
Magilligan and the Young Offenders Centre are wholesome Boy Scouts
are far removed from reality. Our experience is that most of the
prisoners in the Northern Ireland Prison Service, in total, all
have paramilitary links. That is supposedly hopefully not in the
future but just until this point in time I am talking about. We
receive inadequate training. I give you an example. I am a principal
officer in the Northern Ireland Prison Service. I have been working
with the Association for quite a number of years. Mr Smyth is
an officer and it must be something like many years ago since
you had a training course?
(Mr Smyth) Eight or nine years.
(Mr Spratt) That is the type of training. We do
not receive adequate training. As I mentioned earlier on, the
most important aspect is that we have to control unruly prisoners.
Our officers are finding themselves taken to court by prisoners
for alleged assault during C&R incidents. Our staff are not
trained in C&R techniques. We, in fact, should not be handling
prisoners because we are not trained in the proper techniques.
To answer your question, no, we do not get adequate training.
(Mr Smyth) In actual fact, there is no training
whatsoever in C&R for staff down the landings. There has not
been for the last two or three years. What they are doing is penetrating
all the training on the advanced times, of which there are very
few, but the people who are face-to-face every day down the landings
are getting none. This has been brought up continuously at every
training meeting and there is nothing being done about it.
(Mr Spratt) I can give you an example. We had
an incident in Maghaberry prison last Friday night. There was
a major fire. In fact, one of the wings was unusable. There was
not even adequate breathing apparatus. There were smoke hoods
but they are only provided for you to escape from a fire. Our
staff were lying on their stomachs trying to release prisoners
out of the cell. We have breathing apparatus in the Northern Ireland
Prison Service which was issued three years ago but staff have
never been trained in their use. So the last year they had a fire,
in fact the evacuation procedure in Maghaberry was fully usable.
The POA at Maghaberry have been persistently asking for training
on fire drill. Our officers, the amount of staff who have suffered
from smoke inhalation rescuing prisoners from cells, when we have
breathing apparatus which was agreed over three years ago and
we asked for the staff to be trained, but it never happened——
(Mr Smyth) The programme is actually there and
the Department spent public money to buy the equipment, but the
equipment is locked in cupboards within each establishment and
the training has not been given. One station tried to get it off
the ground and started but it was not taken through. You find
most of them cannot use them because they are not trained.
76. To what extent do you feel the lack
of training is down to staff resources? In other words, take Maghaberry,
for example, where there is a higher than average level of staff
sickness due to the stress and so on that your officers find themselves
working under. To what extent is the shortage of manpower and
the way that manpower is stretched—certainly we found when
we visited Maghaberry—how much does that contribute towards
the fact that if staff are on duty at the coal face it makes it
difficult to find training time for staff, or is that not a factor?
(Mr Spratt) It is a factor because what has normally
been the procedure in the Northern Ireland Prison Service is that
when they are short of staff, (again resources), the first thing
they do is to close down the training programme. In relation to
coming back to sickness, I would say that the sickness at Maghaberry
has a lot to do with the lack of resources. As a trade union we
have always said—and we accept that we are no different
from any other public service but the point that we have always
made—we have, in fact, over the last five or six years removed
500 jobs from the Prison Service. We have cut out complete overtime
working which is another massive thing. We have always said to
the Northern Ireland Office—and they keep coming out on
the media locally, as you will well know—Mr Shannon has
complained about the cost per prisoner. We have said quite simply
that we can provide the same cost per prisoner, providing we produce
a regime that we can afford within the resources that we have.
But when we are continually working under pressure, and when the
Northern Ireland Office continuously expand the regime for prisoners
with no consideration for the staff who have to deliver the service,
their attitude is quite simple. As far as officers are concerned,
they do not seem to be able to see or decide that officers need
to be supporting one another. Therefore, to come back to your
question, yes, the sickness has a lot to do with stress in Maghaberry.
77. In terms of the issues that arose out
of recent events at the Maze prison, the escape of the IRA prisoner,
one of the issues was the security and the equipment that was
in place, but there was a question mark over whether staff had
actually been trained to use that equipment. Also, if they had
been trained, the question arose as to why they were not actually
using some of the search equipment, especially electronic search
equipment. What is your view on that? What is your understanding
in terms of staff training on search procedures and the use of
the high-tech equipment?
(Mr Spratt) As far as I am concerned there is
no question. Our equipment was there. Our staff were never trained
to use it. It has been the lacksidaisical attitude by the Northern
Ireland Office to the staff within the Maze that there is no support
for them and no training. There is no question about it. The equipment
was there. The staff were never trained in the use of it.
78. In your opinion, that lack of training
and therefore the non-use of that equipment, do you feel that
had implications in terms of the level of security that ought
to have been in place at a high security prison like the Maze?
(Mr Spratt) Certainly it should have been in use.
There is no doubt about that. It must have been thought at the
time that there would be a need for it, so people went out and
purchased it. I asked the question when they said it had never
been working: surely the contractor who supplied the equipment
had a responsibility to install it and ensure it was working?
But the Maze is another argument and a whole different ball game.
My opinion is that certainly there were not adequate facilities
there for staff. Some of the decisions made about people actually
visiting prisons in relation to the party and so on and so forth
all lead —— We have had the Narey Report. I have read
this and I will reserve my judgment on it.
(Mr Smyth) There is a percentage within the staff
levels for training. What has happened in the Prison Service,
when I joined myself, as when Finlay joined 20 years ago, there
were really only two courses. One was a redevelopment course and
the other was where one was taught the use of a baton. From that
there is IIP. You can actually list about 15 or 20 but the wastage
there was never upped so it is the same wastage and you are trying
to deliver all these new initiative schemes like IIP. But the
basics are not being delivered. They need to go back to the basics
of the job and start doing the training before they bring in the
new initiative. I think that is what half the problem is.
79. I do not mean to press it, but I was
interested in Mr Spratt's comment about the Narey Report. It is
actually important for our Committee in terms of looking at the
efficiency of the Prison Service. In respect of training you have
indicated there that you had concerns, perhaps about the recommendations
in the Narey Report, in so far as they touched upon security and
training and so on. Is there any way you might expand upon that?
(Mr Spratt) Reading the Narey Report I do not
find anything new in it for someone like myself and Mr Smyth who
have worked in the Northern Ireland Prison Service for 20-odd
years. As far as I can see from the Report, we did not need Mr
Narey to come and tell us what he told us. It was all there. In
correspondence I put to this Committee you will see that I raised
it on many occasions and I said from the outset that there was
no need for Narey. What Narey's Report basically has taught us,
as far as we can see from our perspective, is that we have learnt
nothing from it but he made assumptions. In fact, he congratulated
the Chief Executive and Governor and the work they had done, and
the prison officers just said, "What's the point?" He
certainly did not tell us anything. We have seen it there. We
highlighted it. We see it as a completely wasted exercise.
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