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12.17 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping): It has indeed been a varied, interesting, stimulating and sometimes vigorous debate. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have taken the opportunity to argue for their constituencies, for local interest groups and at times for individuals. In addition, some big themes have been raised. A particular theme that permeated several speeches was the conflicting interests involved in encouraging development, transport and industry and sustaining and enhancing the environment.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) talked about the development of wind farms. I am very keen on the idea and I assure him that the Government will reach their 10 per cent. target on renewables by 2010. However, wind farms have a downside, particularly in an attractive landscape. Those who advocate wind farms need to remember that a wind farm that could produce as much electricity as a conventional coal power station, depending on wind speed and other factors, would have to be the size of Greater Manchester.
Some hard issues were raised by the hon. Members for Hazel Grove and for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), and by my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) and for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar), who talked about the problems of inner cities. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) spoke of the balance between developing and protecting the environment in the context of genetically modified food. That was a key theme in the debate.
The second key theme this morning, which is extremely important, is the conflict in Kosovo. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) will know that there will be yet another statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. It is important that, as the House adjourns for the recess, hon. Members should be kept up to date with developments. He asked what would happen during the vacation. If significant events take place, he can be sure that there will be calls for Parliament to be recalled, and I can assure him that they will be considered seriously. It has been important to keep the House up to date with developments, and there has been a statement or a debate roughly every fortnight.
The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood(Mr. Wilkinson) pointed out that there was a need not just to keep the House involved, but to talk to the wider public about our aims and whether they are being achieved; and about the real difficulties.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow spoke of the dangers of ground troops, and he will know that that matter is being looked at closely. He will know also that the issue of precedents for debates in the House has been considered on a number of occasions and, as the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) said, precedence is with us, not my hon. Friend, on this matter.
I very much enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), and I was pleased that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove, my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon and the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) talked strongly in favour of the benefits of mutuals. We must letmutual building societies speak for themselves and demonstrate--as I think they can--in a market economy that their interest rates are lower than those organisations have converted to banks.
We must get the message across to members of the mutuals, because they must have the right to decide on the future. It may well be that the rules are not right at the moment, and I have raised that issue in the past. However, I know that Treasury Ministers are aware of the issue, and I am sure that they will be prepared to meet the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton and others to talk about mutuals.
The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton referred also to failed income support plans, and she was right to say that there are problems in this area. Financial Services Authority regulators have paid out £69 million in compensation to 4,500 individual claimants, but there is still more to be done. I am confident that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will be prepared to meet the kind of delegation that was asked for this morning.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield spoke out strongly about transport issues to the south of Manchester and in the Cheshire area. I ought to admit that I am perhaps one of the culprits who has despoiled and helped to damage his village. I come from north Nottinghamshire, and I regularly use Manchester airport. The route from north Nottinghamshire to Cheshire is an extremely attractive one, which I have admired. I am sure that people do not admire my own car going there.
I am pleased to note that a multi-modal study of the south-east quadrant of Greater Manchester is now taking place. It is important that such studies report early, as the length of time that planning decisions take is an issue. People can often live with bad news, but they cannot live with uncertainty. It is important to pursue the campaign to try to integrate transport and to put money into rural bus services.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove talked about petrol prices going up, and referred to a lack of communication in the Government. Petrol prices went up as a result of Treasury action, but, as a result of interdepartmental discussions, the rural bus grant--which the hon. Gentleman acknowledged had merits, and some demerits--was introduced at the same time.
I heard what the hon. Member for Macclesfield said about the NHS trust in his area, and it is important that people deliver services in a way that best benefits consumers in the area. My message to those reorganising the health service would be to wait a while and see what happens to primary care groups before moving to trust status.
I understand all too well the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) about housing development. I applaud his action in making sure that the voice of local residents and local councils is heard. We must ensure that brown-field sites are developed before green-field sites. We must ensure that the 60 per cent. target is met, and that sequential development takes place, so that derelict sites are developed before the more profit-rich, green-field sites that developers in his area are clearly looking for. We ought to keep an eye out for the urban task force report, which is due shortly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) talked about the needs in his area and the desires of his local council. I was in local government, and I used to complain vigorously about the standard spending assessment formula and the way in which it disadvantaged my county. However, every council takes that view. The best way forward is to look at making the best use of resources and making do with what one has, rather than devoting effort to what one does not have.
I am confident that the council in Redcar and Cleveland is modernising, and I understand my hon. Friend's point about the need to review local government finance. This issue is on the desk of the Deputy Prime Minister, and a review is taking place. Again, these are hard issues, but Redcar and Cleveland received the best settlement--a 5.2 per cent. increase in SSA--for many years.
The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) talked about Cornwall. I was in St. Ives a few days ago, and I appreciate the importance of the tourism industry to Cornwall. It is a high-quality industry which provides value for money, and I am going back on 11 August to see the eclipse. While I was there, people talked to me about raising the quality of the tourism industry, and they are doing that. They see the minimum wage not as a
threat, but as an opportunity. The county council, the police and the staff at Truro general hospital are working hard to ensure that everything will be right on 11 August.
I will write, as I always do, to the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), who raised a number of issues. On disability, it is important that we make progress in providing work for people with a disability who can work, while providing security for those who cannot. I understand the difficulties that have arisen at medical boards, and I know that complaints are made. The wait until the tribunal deserves further attention only.
The problems at the UK Passport Agency--mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes)--also deserve attention. The situation is not good, although a new system has been put in place. There are difficulties, but 99 per cent. of applications are being dealt with within the time frame.
On the jobseeker's allowance, I assure my hon. Friend that Ministers from various Departments are tackling the problems.
I wish I had a Hazel Jones in my constituency. There has been talk of transfer fees in the Chamber today, and we could have a discussion on transferring Hazel Jones to Nottinghamshire so that she could set up a First Check Point group in my constituency.
I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East had a chance to mention Derek Fatchett.
Also, there is a great deal to be done to tackle crime, prostitution and drugs in Leeds, and we must work hard to ensure that that happens.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw(Mr. Ashton) opened the match by talking about problems about employment permits. I am told that decisions will be made by 30 June--
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham):
I have been fortunate in winning ballots for Adjournment debates, but this is the first occasion on which I have had the opportunity to introduce a debate on what is, frankly, a substantial public scandal. Feltham young offenders institution is in crisis and has occasioned one of the most critical reports on a public institution to have been written in recent years.
My interest in the matter goes back about 18 months. I received a letter from a constituent who was on the educational side of the establishment, which is not in my constituency but in that of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Keen) who, I note, is present today. The letter drew my attention to the deficiencies in education provision, and I asked parliamentary questions to which I received full and helpful answers from the Home Office.
The impression of an institution in crisis was reinforced by two subsequent visits and by discussions with visitors and members of staff, and it was confirmed by the chief inspector's report. The report's introductory paragraph is more eloquent than I could ever be. It says:
The start of the problem is chronic overcrowding, which originated in the early 1990s with a massive build-up of Feltham to serve the whole of London. The number of inmates increased by about 150 per cent. between 1992 and 1996. The premises and number of staff are not adequate to cope with so many prisoners.
When I visited the centre about three weeks ago, I was told that the official staff ratio is 5:1, but that, because of recruitment difficulties and unfilled vacancies, it is frequently far worse. Staff are often sick and there are simply not enough staff on the premises to provide supervision for recreation and association, so, for much of the time, many prisoners are on what is described as a basic regime: they are locked in their cells for 22 hours a day. That applies to unconvicted remand prisoners as well as convicted prisoners; to juveniles of 15 as well as young men convicted of serious offences.
The Minister has been to the prison and will know that often two young men spend 22 hours a day in a small cell, eating, using the toilet and sleeping within a few feet of one another. Doubling up has become routine practice. There is a protocol to manage the situation, but the inspector describes one case of a 16-year-old on remand for a relatively minor offence, sharing a cell with a hardened young criminal with a violent record.
Such mixing of criminals and remand prisoners appears to be common and can only perpetuate many of the difficulties that young people have in the institution.
Another problem is the simple physical squalor. The Minister will recognise that there is a contrast: when one goes into premises with attractive gardens and relatively modern buildings one is not prepared for the sheer filth that is recorded in graphic detail in the report. Young men who frequently have no change of underclothes for a week use blankets and mattresses that are filthy, while clean blankets and mattresses stay in the cupboards.
For some reason, no one in the institution seems to know how to repair showers. Two or three weeks ago, I visited the wing on which the chief inspector had reported, and the showers were still not working, so people were still not washing. There is an overriding feeling of physical squalor. With 900-plus adolescents and young men in an institution, there are bound to be hygiene problems, but those are compounded by the way in which the system is managed and by the sheer lack of resources and staff.
More serious than the overcrowding and the dirt is the neglect of the special needs of many of the people coming into the centre. Many are no doubt difficult criminals who need to be locked away to protect society, but many are seriously vulnerable. The report shows that about 25 per cent. of all those entering the prison are users of the highly addictive crack cocaine. Many are in serious difficulties with drugs, but there is no organised detoxification or rehabilitation programme.
Many of the inmates have serious mental health problems. A separate Home Office study showed that roughly a third of prisoners in young offenders institutions need some form of psychiatric attention, but the number of psychiatrists in the prison was cut in the early 1990s and has not been restored.
One of the most damaging sections of the report relates to conditions in the medical unit. There are supposed to be 13 members of staff, but there are nine vacancies and four members of staff are on long-term sickness, so there are simply not enough nurses to look after the patients. I believe that a typical ratio is 30 patients to two members of staff. There is no supervision, so the wards are locked, and the problem is getting worse.
Education--probably the most important requirement of many of the young people--is seriously deficient. I do not want to be wholly negative, and the improvement in the number of hours of education provided is a positive angle that I would like to put on the record, but the report makes it clear that the education is often totally inappropriate. There is virtually no provision for the more academically gifted inmates or for those with moderate learning difficulties.
A comparison between Feltham and a comparable centre such as Aylesbury, which has more money but about half the number of inmates, shows the poverty of Feltham's education provision. That cannot be wholly illustrated by statistics. When I visited Feltham, something happened that many of the inmates recognised as typical. A rehabilitation programme to help people not to reoffend had been long prepared for and there was a great deal of expectation about it, with staff working enthusiastically; but a message came through from the Home Office that there were new priorities and the programme was cancelled at the last minute. One cannot measure the demotivating effect of such decisions.
Many of the inmates indulge in what is rather archly called self-harm. A few years ago, the institution had a reputation for suicides. Fortunately, there have been no suicides for a couple of years, but there is almost one case a day of self-harm of varying degrees of seriousness.
The inspector's report gives the figures on violence. I think that there were 78 assaults on prison officers and about 200 on fellow prisoners in the last year for which figures are available. That is a very high incidence of violence. That is one reason why the prisoners are locked away. There are not enough staff to supervise them and prevent violence. One of the most damning statistics that I discovered in my background work was that almost 90 per cent. of young offenders in the institution reoffend. There is virtually no success in preventing repeat offending. The phrase "the university of crime" is often misused, but it seems an appropriate description to use in this case.
The report asks who is to blame: who is responsible and accountable? It makes some damning comments about management with a big "M"--I am not sure who the operational manager is. The report states:
If, as the report says, the problem is not with management and staff, is it with the Home Office? Who in the Home Office is managing this institution? Who makes the decisions about funding and priorities? Who ensured that the 1996 recommendations werenot implemented? There is a serious problem of accountability, which has implications for Ministers. The present Minister inherited this problem so it is not reasonable to saddle him with the responsibility, but the fact is that conditions at the establishment have deteriorated over the past two years. Somebody made decisions at a ministerial level to freeze the budget of the young offenders institution since 1993-94 in nominal terms--its budget is falling in real terms at a time of crisis. Who is making those decisions?
There is a failure not just on the part of the centre and at Home Office and ministerial level, but in the system as a whole. I was shocked to discover in the report that only 29 of 200 inmates interviewed had been told about bail provisions while in the magistrates court. Many remand prisoners should not be incarcerated: they should be out on bail. However, they do not know about bail provisions. Many of them are young blacks--about half of the prisoners in the institution are from ethnic minorities--who are going straight from the streets to prison and into a life of crime. That is often a result of the workings of the magistrates court system and the total failure of the bail system. The report pointed to a key failure in local authority homes and produced an enormous amount of evidence to that effect. It found that some 40 per cent. of inmates passed through local authority homes, which
failed them utterly. There is evidence of a lack of care, and of abuse. It is a catalogue of disasters in Government decision making at all levels.
I do not know whether other hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate, so I shall conclude. What should be done now? First, there is a clear need for new premises to separate the juveniles from the adults and the remand prisoners from the convicted prisoners. I know that the Government have plans for a new centre, which I hope the Minister will describe today.
A second, more serious, problem is staffing and resources for staffing. There are not enough people on the ground--whether they are warders, medical staff or teachers. Where is the wherewithal to rectify that problem? It is easy to ask for more money, but there is a problem of priorities within the Home Office. Why does a centre such as Medway receive roughly 10 times as much funding per capita as the young offenders institution in London? Somebody has their priorities totally wrong. How will that staffing and resources problem be rectified?
Thirdly, there is an issue of joined-up government here: the relationship between the Home Office and both the health service and the education system. For example, we must ensure that money directed to local authorities for education is passported to the prison so that young prisoners get some basic education.
Fourthly, what plans do the Government have to try to keep people out of prison in the first place? We know that pilot programmes are being conducted in Scotland and in the Thames valley to ensure that many young offenders--whether remand cases or not--do not enter the prison system. What is being done to achieve that objective?
12.30 pm
"This report on an unannounced inspection . . . is, without doubt, the most disturbing that I have ever had to make in my three years as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. I have to disclose to the public not only that conditions and treatment, of the 922 children and young prisoners . . . are, in many instances, totally unacceptable. They are, in many instances, worse than when I reported on them two years ago and reveal a history of neglect of those committed to their charge and a failure to meet the demands of society to tackle the problem of offending behaviour."
The report goes on to say:
"A picture emerges of an institution and staff overwhelmed. Whatever the cause, it must be tackled root and branch now."
I asked for this debate in the context of the report and the strength of that conclusion. The report says everything that needs to be said on the subject.
"A senior manager shared his view of the establishment with us. He considered that there were examples of good staff and volunteers doing good things with young people in many departments but that the core of the institution was rotten."
Who is responsible for that? The report is understandably reluctant to blame the staff, who it says are overwhelmed and are doing an impossible job. I met many officers who are genuinely idealistic and hard working. However, they cannot cope. Management at the centre is a problem. For example, a Minister should not have to intervene to solve hygiene problems: that is a matter for management on the ground.
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