Examination of witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
WEDNESDAY 15 JULY 1998
MR MARTIN
NAREY and DR
PETER BENNETT
280. I can understand, Dr Bennett, why you
would not wish to interview persons who may have been witnesses
in the course of a criminal investigation. If I understand the
criticism of your report, it is that those whom you sought to
criticise of middle management level did not really have an appropriate
opportunity to anticipate these accusations before they were printed.
(Dr Bennett) Specifically we were looking into,
for example, the shooting of Billy Wright and in that respect
we did not interview staff formally on that issue. The Prison
Governors' Association I understand were concerned that we had
not approached the duty governor at the time. In fact, at the
time that the duty governor made contact with me we were looking
into certain issues that had been raised about the shooting and
the conspiracy theory and I was intending to see the duty governor
on those issues.
(Mr Narey) May I answer that, Mr Browne? We were
in residence for about——
281. You may, Mr Narey, if you actually
answered the question and I will just remind you of what the question
was. Chapter 7 of your report appears to me to be a chapter which
was written to some degree at your own initiative. In the course
of that chapter you criticise middle management. The Prison Governors'
Association said to us in evidence that the middle managers whom
you criticise did not have an opportunity of answering these criticisms
before you printed them. Is that correct?
(Mr Narey) That is correct.
282. Why?
(Mr Narey) The suggestion that we did not see
middle managers or were not able to draw those conclusions is
incorrect.
283. They also suggested in evidence to
us that you incorporated into your report corroboration of your
view from the Board of Visitors, whereas they said in evidence
to us that when they asked the Board of Visitors about it the
Board of Visitors did not support the criticisms. Can you explain
that?
(Mr Narey) The Board of Visitors at the Maze have
made no attempt to disassociate themselves from the things that
I wrote in this report and I can promise you that they were extremely
frank in their own views about middle management. The Chairman
of the Board of Visitors was supported by four or five colleagues
when we interviewed the Board. There is no possibility that I
misinterpreted those comments and they have not been withdrawn
subsequently.
(Dr Bennett) That was my understanding as well.
284. We may not be able to solve that contradiction
in the evidence. Why did you not give these people an opportunity
to face and answer the criticisms before you printed them?
(Mr Narey) In concluding the report I was trying
to put the context of the Maze and the grave difficulties in running
such an incredibly difficult prison in some sort of context and
I thought the report would have been inadequate if I had not made
some comments on some of those wider issues. I did think that
in terms of trying to gain an understanding of the way the Maze
runs or the difficulties that officers face working on the H Blocks
there needed to be some understanding of the absence of the day-to-day
support which I think it was their right to anticipate.
Mr Beggs
285. You refer in the report to a "sense
of apathy" in the Maze among staff. Please explain, with
reference to the viewpoint of your inquiry and the evidence it
collected. Is the high level of staff sickness a symptom of low
morale?
(Mr Narey) I think it is a symptom of both low
morale and high levels of anxiety about working in the Maze. I
thought it was very significant that 26 officers immediately went
sick after the murder of Billy Wright and although, understandably,
while some of those were closely associated with those events,
and one could understand why they went sick, I think the numbers
that went off sick indicate a more deepseated anxiety about working
in that prison.
286. Is the system of staff sickness being
misused at the Maze?
(Mr Narey) I do not think we could draw that conclusion.
What we suggest in the report is that the levels of staff sickness
were sufficiently high to suggest that management at the Maze
needed to take a very careful look at it to check that it was
not being abused.
287. Did you have an opportunity to interview
any of the 26 who were off sick?
(Mr Narey) No, we did not.
288. Would it not have been relevant, since
they had been so close to that murder, to have interviewed them?
(Mr Narey) Our advice from the police was that
it would have been inappropriate for us to interview those people
who went off sick who were very close to the murder itself. We
tried to cover as comprehensively as we could the circumstances
leading up to the shooting of Billy Wright. We tried very hard
and we took legal advice to make sure that we did not write anything
in the report which would prejudice any future trial. So we did
not interview witnesses about their experience of what happened
in the circumstances surrounding the shooting itself.
Mr Salter
289. I wish to pursue a line of questioning
around personnel policy within the service as a whole but specifically
at the Maze. We have had evidence from Sir David Ramsbottom, the
Inspector of Prisons, and from the POA, amongst others, which
seemed to indicate an almost total absence of any effective personnel
strategy within the service. In your experience of the Maze, would
you say that those conclusions were valid and would that not contribute
to the sense of apathy and low morale that has been referred to
in earlier questions?
(Mr Narey) I am not sure we are competent to answer
that, Mr Salter, other than with our impressions and some of the
things I have already said about middle management and about the
need to have, certainly as part of a personnel policy, a strategy
which brought young bright people in and tried to move them through
management levels very quickly. There is certainly an absence
of that. In terms of a wider personnel policy, unless Dr Bennett
wants to say something, I do not really think we were there long
enough or looked much beyond the circumstances of the escape and
murder to answer that.
(Dr Bennett) Certainly we felt a great empathy
with many of the staff that we interviewed who felt very anxious
about their work insofar as the work they were asked to do was
extremely ambiguous; in order words, that they had been trained
as prison officers to do what would be traditional prison officer
tasks and yet the reality of the Maze was something so different
to what a traditional prisoner officer's work is that they did
not seem to have a clear sense of direction, a clear sense of
what they should be doing and that really would be the foundation
for any kind of personnel policy, i.e. staff should have a clear
idea of their own worth.
290. Do you feel that the amount of apparent
freedom that was given to the prisoners in determining how the
Maze was run, in particular how the blocks were run, contributed
to a lack of self-worth amongst the staff? Did they feel slightly
humiliated by the fact that in many ways their traditional roles
had been certainly turned sideways if not upside down?
(Mr Narey) I think they did to the extent that
people in other prison services, for example, did not understand
the complexities of the Maze. I felt that staff sometimes felt
under a pressure to pretend that the Maze was like a dispersal
prison in England and Wales, for example, when it clearly was
not and the challenges facing them were much more difficult than
in any other prison any of us have seen.
(Dr Bennett) Certainly the experience in the Prison
Service in England and Wales is that governors will encourage
their staff to interact with inmates as much as possible and that
is the best form of encouraging good positive regimes and relationships
with inmates and it is also a good form of security. Of course,
this could not happen in the Maze on the H Blocks because staff
had gradually retreated over several years.
291. What level of intimidation was prevalent,
in your view, within the Maze in terms of what could have happened
to staff members if they had not gone along with some of the prisoners'
wishes, and is that level of threat or that atmosphere something
that helped contribute to a lack of staff morale?
(Mr Narey) I think that is certainly the case.
One cannot but fail to admire anyone who works there, particularly
those who work on the wings under immense pressure all the time.
One of the recommendations we made, which I think has been acted
upon, was that single and isolated officers who work in the grilles
between the so-called circle of the H Blocks and the residential
legs themselves should be removed because we felt that the pressure
on them in trying to control movement was more than you could
expect any single individual to do. I do not think I could do
that job. I would not ask any prison officer to try and do it.
Mr Robinson
292. Mr Narey, I want to ask some questions
of a general character in relation to your inquiry. Before I do
so, could you confirm for me that this report is the extent of
any reporting that you did to the Government as a result of your
inquiry, whether there were indeed any other written or verbal
advices given?
(Mr Narey) I discussed the report a number of
times with officials at both the Northern Ireland Office in Belfast
and at the Northern Ireland Office in London, but that is the
only report that I have given to them.
293. So in discussing it with them you did
not go beyond the scope of your recommendations in this report
by giving any other advice that might have been thought too sensitive
to include?
(Mr Narey) No, I did not.
294. So we are to take it that having carried
out an investigation into escapes, of which there have been several,
in a prison where paramilitaries control the wings and the blocks
and a number of other irregular features are persisting, you managed
not to point the finger really at anybody in particular and that
you did not see the governor as having the overall responsibility
and therefore carrying the can for it?
(Mr Narey) That is correct, Mr Robinson. I think
we tried to stress in the report that there had clearly been a
gradual deterioration in security standards at the Maze which
had led to the regrettable incidents mentioned and we set out
a very large number of recommendations which we thought would
put that right. It was not just a matter of failing to identify
any particular culprit. We quite positively came to the conclusion
that that could not be done, that there had been a very gradual
deterioration. No one we spoke to suggested that at any point
there had been a particular step deterioration in security. Everyone
gave witness to the slow and gradual deterioration.
295. You seem to have come to that conclusion,
if I might say so, very early on in your inquiry. You will recall
meeting a delegation that I led from my party and you commented
during the course of that at that stage you did not see it was
likely that any heads would roll, yet there was a very significant
part of your inquiry still in front of you at that stage. It almost
seemed as if you had determined from a very early stage that no
one was going to be culpable for what had occurred.
(Mr Narey) I am not sure that is completely fair,
Mr Robinson. I was responding to a question from you and your
colleagues as to whether or not we would indicate that Mr Mogg
and/or Mr Shannon should be asked to resign from the Prison Service,
and I indicated that at that time I did not think that was likely.
296. In terms of taking up this task, Mr
Narey, you have the remit contained within the report, presumably
there was some briefing done before you either accepted the poisoned
chalice or before you took up officially the operation, was there
not?
(Mr Narey) There was no briefing whatsoever before
I agreed to do it. It was a matter of the Director General of
my service asking me to do it on request from the Northern Ireland
Office. Upon arrival in Northern Ireland and before visiting the
Maze, yes, there was a briefing from Alan Shannon and other senior
staff in the Northern Ireland Prison Service followed by a briefing
from Mr Mogg when I arrived at the prison.
297. Could we look just for a moment at
Mr Mogg's role in all of this. You said that you had not asked
Mr Mogg or anyone at a higher level how he came to have this dual
role. Can you see that as being an understandable position? Do
you really think that there is no one in Northern Ireland's Prison
Service that could have taken over the governorship of the Maze?
(Mr Narey) I do not think I can say unequivocally
that that is the case, but my understanding is that that was the
view of the Chief Executive and that while a suitable candidate
either within or without the Northern Ireland Service was found,
Mr Mogg, who after all is a very experienced governor himself
and very recently the Governor of Durham Prison in England, was
asked to go into the Maze to effect some short-term and necessary
improvements. I think if that had been of an entirely temporary
nature it might have been deliverable. It has not been temporary
and I think it has made the position and the job for Mr Mogg very
nearly impossible.
298. It would have made it a lot easier
to have central political control over matters going on at the
Maze to have someone from the central pool of the Civil Service,
would it not?
(Mr Narey) It might have done, but as I indicate
in my report, so far as we could ascertain—and clearly we
are relying on the interviews that we had with the key people
there—we did not see any evidence of central political control.
299. In ordinary layman's terms, who would
you expect within the prison hierarchy to be the supervisor of
the governor of the Maze Prison?
(Mr Narey) In normal circumstances the Head of
Operations, a post held by Mr Mogg. Effectively while Mr Mogg
was Governor he was supervised by Mr Shannon.
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