Examination of witnesses (Questions 266
- 279)
WEDNESDAY 15 JULY 1998
MR MARTIN
NAREY and DR
PETER BENNETT
Chairman
266. Mr Narey and Dr Bennett, you are extremely
welcome. It is very good of you to appear before us. We will not
necessarily ask questions in a continuous order round the horse
shoe, but we will try and make the questions follow in a logical
order from each other. If you want to gloss any answer you have
given either during the meeting or in a written submission afterwards,
please do not hesitate to do so. It is possible we might have
some questions which we fail to ask during the meeting which we
might want to follow up on. I do not know whether there is anything
you would like to say of a preparatory nature, though, of course,
we will all have had the benefit of seeing your report.
(Mr Narey) I do not think so, Chairman. My colleague
is Dr Peter Bennett who assisted me in the inquiry. He is the
Governor of Nottingham Prison.
267. Thank you very much indeed. I have
just got one preliminary question before I hand over to the first
of my colleagues. Is there any issue relating to the report and
to the work that you did there about which you might have had
second thoughts thereafter? That is not seeking to find out whether
you have reversed your opinion in the light of reactions to it,
but there are occasions when the passage of time and development
do cause one to think that perhaps one might have reached a different
conclusion.
(Mr Narey) I honestly do not think there are any
matters of detail. I think we got the balance about alright in
trying to suggest what could be realistically and practically
done in such appallingly difficult circumstances.
Mr Hesford
268. I have been asking various witnesses
over the last few weeks about leadership issues and I want to
carry on with that line of questioning. Your report deals with
the question of leadership. To what extent does the present management
structure of the Northern Ireland Prison Service help or hinder
the proper execution of its responsibilities?
(Mr Narey) If I may make a distinction between
the management structure and the current management realities
and in particular the fact that Martin Mogg holds both an office
at headquarters and is the Governor of the Maze, I think that
hinders the effective management of the prison and we made a recommendation
that as soon as possible that should be put right and Mr Mogg
should return to headquarters and a new governor of the Maze be
found.
269. In terms of the Good Friday Agreement,
what changes—for what we all hope to be the new reality
post settlement—to the senior management would you like
to see, if any, in order to bed down the changed circumstances?
(Mr Narey) Bearing in mind we looked exclusively
at the Maze and the circumstances surrounding the escape and the
murder of Billy Wright, clearly things have potentially changed
very much for the better since then and many of the problems of
running the most difficult prison any of us have ever seen may
be removed because the Maze may not be there. While it is there,
I think the recommendations that we made about the need for a
governor dedicated to the Maze and for visible leadership from
the Chief Executive or Director General in leading the staff in
a terribly difficult job still stand.
270. Do you think that there should be greater
opportunities for Northern Ireland Prison Service staff to rise
to the higher management levels in the service instead of keeping
the top jobs for civil servants like Mr Shannon?
(Mr Narey) I think the jobs should be open to
all who have the ability. My estimate from the time we spent in
the Maze, based on meeting certainly half the prison governors
at the Maze, is that there is not the quality which the Northern
Ireland Prison Service would like in its gubernatorial ranks to
produce governors of the Maze and a director general or chief
executives. I am not suggesting that the Prison Service that we
work in is perfect, but be do have a graduate fast-stream which
has produced a lot of high quality middle managers in recent years
and potential managers of the Prisons Board and director generals.
271. Maybe I did not make myself clear.
The top position is currently held by a career civil servant and
my question was aimed at whether or not it might be beneficial
to have a dedicated Prison Service career person in place rather
than a general civil servant.
(Mr Narey) Forgive me, I thought you were asking
me whether there should be someone from the Northern Ireland service
exclusively. If there are two candidates of equal ability, then
the fact that one of them may have had some operational experience
working in the Prison Service either in Northern Ireland, England,
Wales or Scotland is bound to be an advantage.
272. Based on the evidence we have heard
so far and your report, one is puzzled as to why Mr Mogg was ever
given the dual role because it led to a lack of focus on either
function that he had, either as Director of Operations or as Prison
Governor. Were you able to come to any conclusions as to why that
came about?
(Mr Narey) We did not investigate that. My understanding
is that he was put there because it was thought, after the retirement
of the previous governor, the Northern Ireland service did not
have anybody immediately of the right calibre to put into that
post and Mr Mogg was drafted in for what was anticipated would
be a temporary period of three or four months to address some
of the security weaknesses which had been identified following
the tunnel which happened in the April before the escape of Liam
Averill.
273. Whilst it may not have been a good
idea to have Mr Mogg in a dual role, I think everybody accepts
that, what I am absolutely not clear about is what difference
would a different command structure have made at the Maze?
(Mr Narey) I agree that that is very difficult
to say.
274. I cannot see it would have made any
difference.
(Mr Narey) My view was that in Mr Mogg's short
period there he had made some small but significant improvements
to the security of the Maze and certainly in the aftermath of
the escape had introduced a number of very important improvements,
including searching and cell counts. So I think there were some
improvements made. It is very difficult to say whether or not,
particularly by himself, he would have been able to turn around
what had clearly been a gradual deterioration in security at the
prison.
275. Would it be fair to say on balance
that the fact that Mr Mogg had a dual role had absolutely nothing
to do with the causation of the events at the Maze that you investigated?
(Mr Narey) I would agree with that, yes. I do
not think it had anything to do with the events.
Mr Grogan
276. I want to concentrate on the section
of the report on middle management, paragraphs 7.5, 7.6, 7.7,
because you do caution in your report that you were only there
six weeks and you say you do not feel entirely confident with
your impressions about managerial performance below the Governor.
Could you summarise what you think are the weaknesses of that
sort of layer of middle management?
(Mr Narey) I think I said that there was an absence
of visible leadership at middle management level. I think what
we meant by that was that at some fairly crucial places and times
in the Maze, for example on the wings where prison officers are
under the most immense pressure, there was an absence of middle
management presence. Traditionally in a dispersal prison in England
and Wales, at crucial times on the wings, there would be a middle
management presence to support and help staff and to show that
they were backed up. There was a vacuum on the wings at the Maze.
There were Governor's offices on the wings but they were clearly
unoccupied. Some of the middle managers displayed to us some lack
of awareness of the realities of the way that the prison was running.
I gave one or two examples in the report. We were very worried
and troubled by the fact that buses taking prisoners around the
prison were supposed into be going to the secure compounds, before
dropping prisoners off but routinely stopped outside the compounds
and prisoners were able to walk in, frankly, negating the point
of putting them on the bus. Middle managers did not realise that
had happened which suggested to us that they did not spend as
much time as they might have actually walking round the prison
checking what was going on.
277. If you had to weigh the two factors,
the fact of the particular individual doing two jobs and the weaknesses
of middle management, which would be greater in terms of the low
morale amongst staff and so on?
(Mr Narey) I believe very much so the weakness
of middle management. I think that was the area in which officers
felt isolated. They did not enjoy the routine support which they
could rightfully have expected.
278. I wanted to take one other phrase from
the report on a slightly different subject. You touch in paragraph
7.7 on the need for the Northern Ireland Prison Service generally
to examine the need to inject new talent into the governor grades.
Could you just expand on that a bit more? I think you touched
a bit on fast-tracking graduate schemes. How do you think you
would bring that about precisely?
(Mr Narey) By doing one of two things. Firstly,
by trying to have some sort of accelerated promotion scheme where
you bring good quality people in as Prison Service managers. At
the risk of embarrassing Dr Bennett, he has a PhD, he is an anthropologist
who has published extensively and he is a middle manager in the
English Prison Service. Mary Gregory, who helped me on the inquiry,
has a First Class Honours Degree and after a few years in the
Service has been promoted to Head of Security at Wakefield Prison.
If you want to get people of that quality you have got to offer
them an accelerated route to managing large prisons and that is
not available in Northern Ireland. Secondly, I think there has
to be some way of trying to get a more immediate infusion of talent
by trying to attract people from England, Wales and Scotland into
the Northern Ireland service.
Mr Browne
279. Mr Narey, I want to ask you a few questions
about paragraphs 7.5 to 7.7 of your report as well, but the very
specific questions relate to questions that we have heard earlier.
Among other things in your comments about middle management you
say in your report, "We all shared reservations about middle
managers. We sensed a weak, poorly motivated and largely invisible
group", and then you go on in further paragraphs to give
examples of impressions which you had gained which had led to
that conclusion, no doubt. In the evidence that we have heard
from the Prison Governors' Association on the 17th June, a Mr
Pepper of that organisation, in criticising your report, said
that none of the governors who are in the middle management grades,
who were criticised in paragraph—and then he refers to the
paragraphs of the report—was actually interviewed by you.
Is that true?
(Mr Narey) Not all of them were interviewed by
me personally, but I think all the critical players were interviewed
by members of the inquiry team. I think I personally met slightly
less than half of the 17 governor grades at the Maze. Dr Bennett,
I think you interviewed all the key individuals personally.
(Dr Bennett) We saw a number of the middle managers
there and we consulted with them as we were compiling the report.
We saw them on a regular basis. We did not interview in detail
those relevant to the shooting of Billy Wright because we were
very cautious not to compromise the police investigation that
was on-going and so there were a number of issues that we could
not go into too much detail on and I think that is quite understandable.
I did speak with senior RUC officers to ensure that we did not
compromise that investigation. I also understand that the Prison
Governors' Association said that one of the middle managers had
to seek us out and that managers' comments were not reflected
in the report. In fact, that is untrue. I did see that particular
manager and his comments are reflected in the report.
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