House of Commons
Monday 17 January 2000
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
HOME DEPARTMENT
The Secretary of State was asked--
Prison Overcrowding
1. Mr. Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington): How many prisons are overcrowded. [103961]
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Paul Boateng): Measures of overcrowding vary. At the end of November 1999, based on the measure preferred by the Prison Reform Trust, 62 establishments exceeded their uncrowded capacity. However, no prisons exceeded their safe maximum capacity.
Mr. Brake: Will the Minister confirm whether it is to become official Government policy to use prison hulks to tackle overcrowding? Will the life of HMP Weare be extended beyond the agreed finish date of 2003? Is he actively looking at whether HMS Invincible could be used as a hulk ship, as reported in the weekend's press?
Mr. Boateng: The hon. Gentleman ought not to believe everything that he reads in the press--even in Focus. HMP Weare has proved to be an unalloyed success, and we have made no final decision about its future. We will ensure that the courts have at their disposal all the accommodation necessary to hold prisoners safely and securely. We are determined to hold prisoners in that way, not least because our concern--unlike that of the Liberal Democrats--is not, first and foremost, the number of people in prison, but how best we reduce crime.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington): What are we doing to empty the prisons of the mentally ill?
Mr. Boateng: My hon. Friend will be aware that we have instituted a programme of reform of prison health care. One of the main strands of that is to improve communication and co-operation between the NHS and the Prison Service, precisely to identify more speedily and readily places in medium secure and high secure units for those who more properly belong there.
Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon): The Minister will be aware of the strong feeling in north and mid-Wales that there is no local prison, and that the prisons serving
the area are inconvenient, with prisoners not in their own communities. If there is a need for additional prison capacity, will he look at the possibility of an additional prison in north and mid-Wales and of using European funds to help finance it?
Mr. Boateng: I would be delighted to do that. On my visits to Wales--including visits to prisons--I have been made aware of the sentiment in relation to the need for more local provision. I have had some communication on the issue with the Assembly Members concerned and I will bear the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion in mind.
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): Does not the management of prison capacity have undesirable side-effects, such as the movement of prisoners hundreds of miles away from their friends and relatives? Does it not disrupt education programmes? Will my right hon. Friend look at those difficulties?
Mr. Boateng: We have in mind the need to make sure that we locate prisoners as near as possible to their family centres and that we take steps to ensure that the reintegration and rehabilitation of prisoners is not undermined by capacity issues. My hon. Friend will appreciate the operational imperatives in terms of ensuring that we have a system that is suitably flexible to enable us to hold prisoners in conditions of safety and security. He will be aware that we have reduced overcrowding in our prisons from the high level that we inherited. However, there is no room for complacency and we keep a close eye on the figures.
Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald): I welcome the Minister's statement that HMP Weare has been a resounding success, given all that Labour said about the use of a ship when we introduced it. What percentage of prisoners are in cells designed for one prisoner, but being used by two? What percentage of prisoners are in cells designed for two prisoners, but being shared by three? In how many prisons has slopping out returned--on however limited a scale--as a result of bringing back into use old accommodation?
Mr. Boateng: It was my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary who brought HMP Weare into play, and it was he who took steps to solve the problem of prison overcrowding. Before the right hon. Lady casts any strictures in our direction, she should consider her own record in government. In 1996-97, prisons were at 106.2 per cent. capacity; now the figure is 105.6 per cent.--it is lower. There is worse: in 1997-98, the last year for which the Conservatives had stewardship of the Prison Service, the figure was 108.1 per cent. The right hon. Lady is in no position to cast aspersions in our direction. We are on course to meet--
Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde): What about answering the question?
Mr. Boateng: The right hon. Gentleman should not get so aerated. If only he would contain himself, we would come to the answer.
In 1990-91, under Conservative stewardship, the average number of prisoners held three to a cell designed for one was 2,677. That number has certainly not been
exceeded today. The figure is on target for the key performance indicator by which one measures the number of prisoners in overcrowded cells. We are clearing up the mess that the Conservatives left us.
Miss Widdecombe:
The Minister must be hard of hearing. What percentage of the prison population is sharing two to a cell designed for one? I shall ask the questions very slowly so that he can look up the answers. What percentage of the prison population is sharing three to a cell designed for two? In how many prisons has slopping out, which we eliminated completely, returned as a result of bringing old accommodation back into use? Those are three simple questions. If he does not know the answers, let him admit it; but I always knew the answers to such questions when I was in his position.
Mr. Boateng:
The right hon. Lady might have known the answers, but she did nothing to tackle the problem. We are tackling it, and I will write to her with the specific answers that she seeks.
Miss Widdecombe:
We take it from that that the Minister does not know the answers to three simple questions.
I do not know whether it is true that the Prison Service is considering the use of aircraft carriers. If it is looking for temporary accommodation, that suggests a shortfall in prison places. I have two very simple questions: is the Minister planning any additional permanent accommodation over and above that already announced; and, if so, how does he intend to pay for it, given the very clear statement of the then Chief Secretary, the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), who said in a letter to the Home Secretary that he would entertain no further claims on the reserve for the purposes of easing pressures in overcrowded prisons?
Mr. Boateng:
The right hon. Lady need have no fear about the availability of funds for building the new prisons needed to fulfil the requirements that the courts impose on the system by way of holding prisoners in safe and secure conditions. We have three prisons currently under construction--Forest Bank, Onley II and Marchington--and there are plans for three more at Ashford, Peterborough and Ashworth. Those will all be funded and will fulfil the current requirements for the prison population.
Last year, 67,800 prison places were required. In 2001-02, we will have 71,400 places. That is what the Government are doing to address the under-resourcing of the Prison Service under the right hon. Lady's stewardship. We face up to the problems and address them, while ensuring that we also address the causes of crime: she and her Government flunked them.
2. Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate):
What estimate he has made of the impact on police budgets of the Public Safety Radio Communications Project. [103962]
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw):
Some £5 million has been provided from the police grant for the next financial year. Once the
Mr. Blunt:
While one accepts that the new system will improve the police's communication capacity, does not part of the need for it derive from the fact that the Government have sold off part of the radio spectrum? The Home Secretary mentioned costs of £150 million a year, but the total cost will be some £1.5 billion, of which the Government will produce the generous amount of £50 million from the central budget. When will Surrey have the benefit of the new radio system, and what will be the consequences for Surrey's budget of having to pay for that Government-imposed requirement? Over the next few years, Surrey will move from having the best crime prevention rates in the country and a good funding settlement to having the worst funding settlement--the Home Secretary has offered to meet me to discuss that.
Mr. Straw:
The hon. Gentleman is misinformed about the background to the project. It has arisen not because we have sold off the radio spectrum but because the Government whom he supported agreed, in the mid-1990s, that the spectrum for the police service should change under the terms of an EU directive. A digital radio and data system that will cover the whole country is a vital need for the police service. It will become operational in all police services by 2004, although I cannot give him a precise date for Surrey. The cost will be £150 million a year, which adds up to £1.5 billion over the life of the project. We have already found £50 million from the capital modernisation fund for the immediate costs and, of course, as we agree funding for the police service--including for Surrey--for subsequent years, we will take fully into account the costs of the capital radio project.
Dr. George Turner (North-West Norfolk):
In my experience, the only people who will not welcome this investment in proper technological support for the police are the criminals. If we ensure that the police have such support, they will do their job much more effectively. Does my right hon. Friend accept that, in the past 20 years, the pattern of investment in all technology has been patchy and that this Government need to address those areas in which money was not invested in the past to try to bring the police force up to a reasonable standard within a reasonable time?
Mr. Straw:
I entirely accept my hon. Friend's comments. Investment in technology for the police service has been made in the past. Some of that investment has been successful, but some has not, not least because the decisions have been left to individual police services, which has sometimes led to incompatible radio and IT
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey):
It is true that the radio communications project is welcomed by the police and that a contribution will be made to it from central funds. However, can the Home Secretary yet tell us whether he has made a decision about future general funding to pay for the project and for the police recruitment that he plans? He has announced £35 million from the crime- fighting fund for next year; it will cost at least £150 million to recruit 5,000 police officers, let alone to keep them on after that. When will both the Met--whose outgoing Commissioner has warned of the problem--and the rest of the police forces know that they have the money guaranteed to ensure that they have a real-terms increase in funds, not a real-terms cut?
Mr. Straw:
The only period in the past 10 years when there was a real-terms cut in police service funding occurred in, I think, 1995-96, under the previous Administration. We have set out firm spending plans for the year 2000-01. Additionally, for that year, we have allocated this extra £35 million as the first slice to pay for the 5,000 additional officers. The money for the following years will be announced as part of the spending review 2000, which will be announced later this year.
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale):
Will not 80 per cent. of the £1.4 billion that this important radio project costs be paid by police authorities, through the common police services budget? That decision has already been taken, but the costs come on top of the shortfall of £1.2 billion in police funding over the next three years predicted by the police service forecasting group, working on behalf of the police authorities. I think that the right hon. Gentleman will receive the group's findings any day now. They show that the police service cannot afford to meet the radio project costs without further cuts in the number of police officers.
When will the Home Secretary face up to the reality of the worst funding crisis for our police service in living memory? The issue may not have prompted the press mauling that the right hon. Gentleman has suffered recently in connection with other matters, but if he does not punch his weight more effectively with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he will be on the canvas and counted out.
Mr. Straw:
That was a rather ropy question.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that 80 per cent. of the costs will be paid from the central police grant and that deductions will be made in the grant. That is the only rational way to fund the project. However, I have already made clear what funding will be announced for 2001 and thereafter.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the most difficult time that police forces face. In response, I can do no better than to quote Mr. Paul Scott-Lee, the chief constable of Suffolk. Speaking about our crime-fighting fund and the 5,000 extra officers, he said that his force had had its
"most difficult time about five years ago."
That was when real-terms spending on the police went down, not up.
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