Examination of witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
TUESDAY 16 MAY
RT HON
PAUL BOATENG,
MR MARTIN
NAREY, MR
JOHN GLAZE
and MR MARTIN
LEE
Chairman
20. Presumably you are aware that I sponsored
one of the prisoners who took part in the London Marathon. I am
very happy to report that he did complete it but it took longer
than he hoped but he did come back as well!
(Mr Boateng) Have you sent the money yet!
Chairman: I have sent £10 and was very
happy to pay it!
Mr Cawsey
21. I want to begin our questions on the issue
this morning on alternatives to custody for drug-related offending.
You will know from the Report this Committee did that we spoke
of and welcomed the growth in arrest referral schemes—although
we note they mean different things in different areas. We also
note the Government intends to make arrest referral schemes available
in every custody suite by 2002. I am interested to know what progress
is being made for that target. Do you know what proportion of
police services are currently operating such schemes, and are
you assessing their effectiveness?
(Mr Boateng) We are making good progress in that regard.
We know that arrest referral schemes do hold out real prospects
for gain where it is possible to ensure that the offender actually
has, as a result of referral, a package of treatment and interventions
built around them that enables them to effectively address their
habit. 40 out of the 43 forces have been involved in a £20
million joint funding initiative for arrest referral schemes of
this nature; and we are quite confident that the remaining ones
will soon be on board. I saw for myself recently in Newham a first-rate
example of a scheme in which social workers/health workers are
amongst the team working in the custody suite. It is possible
immediately the suspect or offender comes into custody to begin
the process of assessment, and to make an input into the final
determination. It is working and we have made available considerable
resources to roll it out.
22. One of the things that struck me was the
fact that it can be as little as, "Here's a leaflet saying,
`Here are some relevant agencies in the locality which you can
go to, and then you can move through a whole range of options'".
What will your Department be doing to ensure that an arrest referral
scheme has a range of options, and it is not just simply, "Look,
we have a pile of leaflets on the custody desk, that means we
can say we're in the scheme"?
(Mr Boateng) I was going to say, I myself, whilst
recognising the value of printed information, am dubious about
the impact of the leaflet/pack mentality. What we are doing is
ensuring, not least in our work with Keith Hellawell and his team,
that the back-up is there from the DATs and that we have in place
the sort of partnerships between the Criminal Justice Agencies
locally and health agencies locally that have not been there in
the past, and is still in some areas not as close as we would
want to see. I would not want to give the Committee the impression
that there is not a way to go. There is still a way to go, but
I think some real progress has been made.
23. Can I move on to Drug Treatment and Testing
Orders which, as you know, came from the Crime and Disorder Act.
We understand there has been a pilot scheme in three areas and
they finished at the end of March this year. Of 180 Orders made,
about one-third had to be revoked. We also understand that other
analysis shows this rate may be closer to 50 per cent. when it
is rolled out. Bearing in mind that figure, how successful do
you believe the piloting of these Orders has been, and not just
the fact they have been revoked or breached, but also how they
were taken up by courts and what effect they then have on the
offending?
(Mr Boateng) The pilots are being independently evaluated
by South Bank University for the Home Office, and I think that
evaluation is very important. One of the great dangers in this
area, as you and the Committee are well aware, is "anecdotalism";
in which one seizes on anecdotes, be they positive or negative,
and then draws conclusions from them and uses them as the motor
of policies. One has to avoid that, and rigorous evaluation is
important. The interim evaluation report, however, suggests in
relation to the pilots that offenders' weekly spend on drugs fell
from £400 to £30 on average. Chairman, in terms of its
impact on crime and offending, that is very considerable, and
does give one good cause for hope in terms of the final outcome
of the evaluation. Overall the impact is very positive both on
offending and on expenditure on illegal drugs—a marked reduction
in both. Therefore (and I am happy to use this opportunity to
share this announcement with the Committee today) we have decided
to allow the Probation Service and their partner treatment agencies
the maximum time to prepare for the roll-out of DTTOs by enabling
them to proceed in order to ensure that we meet our targets in
this area. As from 1 October, all areas in England and Wales will
be able to proceed to deliver Drug Treatment and Testing Orders.
My Rt Hon friend will also be making this announcement today to
the Probation Service Conference. It is good news and I believe
they have a good contribution to make.
24. I understand the full evaluation is likely
to be in July? The Home Secretary said that will be published
at that stage?
(Mr Boateng) It will be, but we think it is important
they should have time to prepare. We expect that over 6,000 DTTOs
will be made in a full year. We have made available £18 million
for treatment this year, and £36 million for treatment next.
25. One of the things about the Crime and Disorder
Act (and the Anti-social Behaviour Order was one, and this may
well be another one) is that there was a feeling of frustration
that this was an important new power we hoped would make a great
deal of difference and then there seemed to be a reluctance to
actually use it. Were the pilots disappointing or satisfactory
in the amount Courts actually made use of them in those pilot
areas?
(Mr Boateng) I have some of the detail in relation
to the pilot areas in Croydon, Liverpool and Gloucestershire here.
I think that the Courts actually did welcome them. Magistrates
were involved in terms of their training in the capacity that
DTTOs both required and held out in terms of making an impact
in this area—required from the local Health Service. I do
think, as you will be aware and as the Committee is aware, there
are capacity issues around DTTOs which I do not think we ought
to gloss over, and we do not. The courts did take them up. I visited
Liverpool and saw for myself there how it was working in practice.
Without slipping into anecdotage, I was heartened by the response
both of magistrates, the Criminal Justice System as a whole but
also the sort of joint work that had developed (not without its
initial teething problems, undoubtedly) between the Probation
Service and the Health Service.
26. If I could move on to the current Bill,
the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill—clearly that
is designed to try to address this link between drugs and crime.
You, again, give it important new powers. We understand it is
planned that we will have pilots in early 2001. With the benefit
of hindsight with the legislation the Government has already passed,
in the pilots that have taken place with other powers, how optimistic
are you that the powers in this new Bill will actually succeed
in breaking the link between drug misuse and crime?
(Mr Boateng) I am confident that there is a sufficient
body of evidence out there to justify us seeking the powers that
we have sought from Parliament. I am confident that we will be
able to establish the pilots on schedule. Having said that, I
do think it is important—and we had quite a useful discussion
in Committee about this—that in selecting the pilot areas
and in establishing the pilots we do create a space for us to
learn lessons about what does work and what does not work as well,
and even to take risks that some things might not work at all.
I am quite confident that the Orders and the powers have a role
and it will be a beneficial one, but I think we need to ensure
that we evaluate the pilots robustly; and we need to allow (and
will be seeking this in consultation with the relevant agencies
as we get the pilots in place) a certain amount of variation as
between various pilot areas so we can work out what does work
better than others. I do not want to be overly prescriptive from
the start.
27. Cautiously optimistic?
(Mr Boateng) Yes.
28. When this Committee did its Report one of
the items it commended to your Department was a suggestion from
the Magistrates' Association that short custodial sentences for
drug-related crimes should be combined with a requirement to receive
treatment in the community on their release, and yet this was
not addressed in the Government's response to the Committee. Was
there any reason for that?
(Mr Boateng) We recognise the force of what the Committee
commended to us and this proposal, and it is the sort of proposal
that I would expect to be explored in the course of the sentencing
review which my Rt Hon friend the Home Secretary announced by
way of written answer to the House today; because there is and
are advantages, we know, in being able to ensure that a custodial
penalty is backed up by the rigours of supervision and intervention
in the community. I do expect the sentencing review to take into
account that proposal. In the meantime, of course, we are working,
as part of the operation of CARATs, within the Prison Service
in order to ensure that all prisoners, even those serving short
sentences, have access to some help whilst they are in prison.
It will be possible, hopefully, to build on that in order to ensure
that there is the follow-through into the community.
29. The fact it was not in your official response
to us does not mean it has been excluded?
(Mr Boateng) No, it does not mean it has been excluded—on
the contrary.
Mr Howarth
30. Minister, can we turn to the Prison Service
Drugs Strategy and consider a number of general points. By way
of background, can I just remind you of the findings of a report
commissioned by the Prison Service and Probation Service from
the University of Surrey School of Human Sciences and published
at the end of March. It does set out just the magnitude of the
task we face, because the researchers found that most of the prisoners
surveyed had experienced serious drug problems prior to imprisonment,
spending an average of £550 a week to support their habit;
that half of the prisoners were offered help to obtain treatment
on release but only 11 per cent. had a fixed appointment with
a drug agency. A further finding was that four months after release
86 per cent. reported using some form of drug. I set that out,
Minister, so we can all be reminded of the magnitude of the task.
Can I deal with the resources that your Department has made available.
The Comprehensive Spending Review provided for a further £76
million to be allocated between 1999 and 2002 bringing the total
to a very substantial £101.4 million over that three-year
period. I understand that the Prison Service has made a further
bid for another £88 million from 2001 to 2004, and that the
Prison Service admitted that its original bid of £76 million
was prepared "without the benefit of a needs analysis and
were based largely on estimates". There is a feeling around
that these figures were plucked out of the air, and these are
very substantial amounts of money. Are you satisfied that they
are being properly accounted for, notwithstanding it appears you
do not yet have full monitoring systems in place?
(Mr Boateng) I am going to ask the Director General
to deal with the specifics of the accounting system. If I can
just share with you one response to the University of Surrey's
research, and then just some brief remarks on central funding.
It was a very interesting and important piece of research. As
you say, four months after release 86 per cent. indicating that
they were using some form of drug; about half of that using heroin
every day. What was equally interesting, however, was that this
did represent a reduction of some 20 percentage points from 66
per cent. prior to imprisonment to 45 per cent. afterwards. That
is a real gain, given that in spending terms that means that spending
on drugs was halved to about £275 a week. In terms of acquisitive
crime that would be embarked upon in order to feed that habit,
that is a gain. It is also significant that, whilst the numbers
who actually fixed an appointment with a drug agency were relatively
small, to go back to the point that Mr Cawsey was making in relation
to the referral schemes, there is a breadth of other support and
assistance available and most were given some form of help—even
though some of it was indirect. There were some hopeful things
coming out of the Surrey School of Human Sciences.
31. Minister, my remarks were not intended to
put you on the defensive; they were merely so that we could all
be quite clear about what we were facing.
(Mr Boateng) Quite so. If we then turn from that to
the spending: in the three year period 1999 to 2002 the Prison
Service is going to be devoting £101.4 million of central
funding—93 per cent. of this (and this is significant) devolved
to the operational line. This is money which is reaching the front
line, and reaching the places where it has to be if it is going
to make a difference to the life of prisoners, after prison and
in prison. We are monitoring it closely. It is a beginning. We
believe that more will be necessary, but I think we are justified
in allocating the money we have, and we would not have been justified
on the evidence base we had before, it seems to me, of devolving
any greatly increased sums. There is a developing evidence base
now that is suggesting we should be bidding for more, and we are.
I will ask the Director General to outline to you some of the
specifics we are doing in the prisons to make sure the money is
well spent.
(Mr Narey) You are quite right, Mr Howarth, when we
were originally bidding for this money we had to make very quick
estimates of what we believed we needed; and simultaneously we
were also bidding for money for new investment in education and
in offending behaviour programmes. With the £76 million we
got from the CSR, we have I think, been able to make significant
progress. I put an emphasis on spending that money wisely rather
than quickly. Indeed, on the financial year just finished we have
underspent as a consequence of that by a small amount of money
but I think we have put the money to prudent use. We have established
big gains on voluntary testing; put quite a lot of it into supply
reduction, which has been the foundation for the Strategy; there
are 34 new treatment programmes, all but three of which have now
started; and four new therapeutic communities which will start
before the end of the year. Having established that, we now have
a firm base, hopefully, depending on the outcome of the current
Spending Review, for doing rather more. I think it was very important
to take the roll-out of this new Strategy very, very carefully.
I think it would have been very, very easy to squander this money
and we have been very careful not to do so.
32. You are absolutely right, and it is our
understanding that even the National Audit Office is not clear
where the money is being spent. You have acknowledged that systems
are not yet in place for the monitoring. Can you tell us when
you expect those systems to be put in place? It is a substantial
amount of money and I am sure we welcome the fact that you are
being cautious about spending it, but the Committee will want
to know, quite apart from other Committees like Public Accounts,
just how effectively this money is being spent, and when will
those monitoring systems finally be put in place?
(Mr Narey) First of all, Mr Howarth, I am confident
I will be able to demonstrate to the NAO where the money has gone
and what it has been spent on. It is true that we are not yet
fully up to speed with getting the performance reporting arrangements
that we need, to check not only how the money is being spent but,
more importantly, the outcomes of that expenditure. We are working
on those very quickly now, having got the main part of the Strategy
implemented. I certainly hope we have those by the end of this
financial year so we will be able to use them next year.
(Mr Boateng) One of the best safeguards in this it
seems to me is to ensure that we get the right procurement process,
because if you get that right then you have got a much better
chance of ensuring that you are able subsequently to demonstrate
cost effectiveness and value for money. The Prison Service has
taken some considerable care in getting that right. Because this
is in some ways a new market that has been created in drug treatment
services, it is a fairly complex and time consuming operation
to get a proper procurement process in place. We have done that,
even though it has meant in some areas a delay. I think it is
that, linked with the fact, going back to the point we were making
earlier on, about capacity. Some agencies have experience, and
I think will continue to experience, and I found this when I was
talking to people who were involved in CARATs from the voluntary
sector at Wormwood Scrubs, and shared with me concerns about the
recruitment of suitably qualified staff. That has led in some
areas to delay and all of that has contributed to the underspend
on treatment services of £5.64 million. I would rather us
underspend in that way than for the process to be discredited
by the sort of approach of "let a thousand flowers bloom"
and then we discover too much later by way of weeds and cankers.
33. I will come back to the question of recruitment
of drug workers. Can I ask a very quick question and invite a
quick answer in terms of the 93 per cent devolved down. Are you
satisfied that this will be consistently applied across the prison
estate; in other words the right prisons are getting the right
amount of money to deal with the problems that they face?
(Mr Boateng) I am, but I have wider and continuing
concerns about the prison funding allocation because I have a
wider agenda that is designed to ensure that we incentivise good
practice and good performance. I do not regard prison funding
and the basis upon which funding is allocated as being of itself
satisfactory, but within the current context, yes, I am satisfied.
(Mr Narey) I am certainly satisfied. It is not perfect
but I think it is significant that the bid we have made in the
current spending review for a further £88 million is largely
directed to building up the schemes where we have currently put
them in place. We have not found many gaps in the distribution
for example of rehab classes. We do think we have got a comprehensive
coverage. We have got an active number of therapeutic communities.
Much of the money will be used to increase the throughput through
those schemes which we do think we have got more or less in the
right place. There are clearly some small areas where I think
we need to fill some gaps, but broadly I am very pleased with
the way we have spent the money.
34. There are claims that there is an inconsistency
in the way that the policy itself, let alone the resources, is
being delivered across the prison estate. Indeed, there are differences
even in understanding the strategy, let alone the question of
its implementation, and suggestions that there is a failure to
provide central direction to ensure equivalency of provision.
Taking the point about assessing the various schemes that are
on offer, there does appear to be a very wide variation between
different prisons on the implementation of the strategy if you
take one issue alone, which is drug dogs.
(Mr Narey) I think we have made a lot of progress
on consistency certainly since I last spoke to the Committee.
We now have all our area drug co-ordinator posts in place. We
have just revised our boundaries incidentally so that they are
now coterminous with police/CPS boundaries so we can make much
better links to the community. We have a national specification
now for treatment services. All our treatment services have to
abide by that specification. We have a national procurement process
and all our treatment courses, within two years, will have to
gain accreditation from the independent Joint Prison/Probation
Accreditation Panel to show that not only do they reduce drug
misuse but that they reduce crime.
35. Drawing on my experience of spending three
days in Dartmoor Prison, one of the things that I found very interesting
there was the dedicated search team. I thought they were absolutely
superb, hugely professional, extremely well motivated. I would
like to put in a suggestion that what they do there could be replicated
across the country.
(Mr Boateng) I think that is very helpful. There is
no doubt that professionally conducted searches, searches that
can be conducted in a way, as you witnessed yourself, that does
not alienate the prison population but is nevertheless rigorous
and focussed, do have a very important role to play, as do dogs.
The Director General and I need no persuasion as to the value
of both passive and active dogs. It is the first question that
I always ask on visiting any prison: what the plans are, if there
are not any dogs around, and there is no doubt that they do make
a difference. The mere fact that there is a dog at the door deters
people who are otherwise minded to bring in drugs. We want more
of them and we are pushing for that.
36. Minister, can I turn to alcohol abuse and
mental health because it was drawn to our attention by a number
of people making representations to us, clearly the Royal College
of Psychiatrists, that tackling alcohol misuse is also a severe
problem. I wonder if you could tell us what developments you are
able to report towards the creation of an alcohol strategy to
parallel the drug strategy because in your response to us you
merely said that the Government "remains committed to the
creation of an alcohol strategy to parallel the drug strategy".
Can you tell us how it is going?
(Mr Boateng) Our priority has had to be to put in
place the new drug treatment services funded from the CSR. Clinical
detoxification is available for alcohol. The treatment regime
recommended by the service is in line with that offered to NHS
patients. In 1998/99 6,800-plus prisoners completed alcohol detoxification
courses. It is perfectly true however that in the same period
24,654 completed drug detoxification courses. There will be some
benefit to people with alcohol problems from engaging with the
new programmes available for people with drugs, but experience
tells me that within the NHS, where I had previous responsibility
for mental health problems and saw all too often those mental
health problems were underpinned, overlaid, varied, by drugs or
alcohol problems mixed, there does remain considerable scope for
further work in this area. The Home Office itself is working very
constructively now with St Mungo and others on the issue of detoxification
in terms of the wider community, but we still have a way to go
in the Prison Service in relation to alcohol abuse. I would not
pretend otherwise.
37. Perhaps you can keep us posted on that.
(Mr Boateng) Yes, certainly.
Mr Howarth: The next general issue, Minister,
is the question of prison regimes. As you will know the key performance
indicator for purposeful activity has fallen from over 26 hours
per week in 1994/95 to under 23 hours in 1998/99. When this Committee
visited Winson Green I think it was, in Birmingham, in your constituency,
Chairman—
Chairman: Next door.
Mr Howarth
38.—44 per cent of prisoners were locked
up for 22 hours or more on the day of the visit. Can you tell
us what the performance was against the target for purposeful
activity in 1999/00? Do you share the view which I think is overwhelming
on this Committee that we believe that more purposeful activity
would be a very important factor in reducing drug abuse?
(Mr Boateng) I do think purposeful activity is important.
I think it is also important, and it is something I know this
Committee has looked at and individual members on it have looked
and certainly all those who have had the responsibility that I
currently hold have this very much in mind, that we get a definition
of purposeful activity that is more suitable for the purpose and
more useful, because currently within the basket of purposeful
activity there is a wide range of actions, not all of which usefully
belong. In terms of your specific question on 1999/2000, the target
was 24 hours. We achieved 23.2 hours, so again we are getting
there. We are also getting better at actually quantifying and
calculating those hours more accurately. The Prison Service is
itself doubtful about the 26 hour figure as to whether or not
we did actually ever in reality achieve that. We are better at
calculating the hours spent on purposeful activity. I do not pretend
that we are satisfied with the existing levels. I wonder if I
could ask the Director General to give you some examples of where
our concerns lie in relation to the definition and how we would
like to take that issue forward. It is something that the Committee
might well have a view on and it would help us if you were to
express that view at some time.
(Mr Narey) First of all, Mr Howarth, I share absolutely
your belief about the link between purposeful activity and reducing
drug misuse; an active prison is a much better prison. The truth
is that I could have delivered for the Minister this year a KPI
of 24 hours but I took advice from the Minister very early in
this year and he assured me that we were right not to distort
behaviour simply to meet the KPI. For example, we have put a much
greater emphasis on drug treatment programmes than on sending
prisoners to the gymnasium. The gymnasium is listed as a purposeful
activity. It is very useful in order and control terms but it
does nothing to reduce offending. We have put a much greater emphasis
on basic skills education, which means smaller class sizes than
in for example recreational art, and we have put a much greater
emphasis on developing and expanding the number of offending behaviour
programmes rather than sending people to workshops. The gymnasium
does not make prisoners more employable, and although we are trying
to get workshops much more allied now to providing prisoners with
qualifications such as NVQs, to be frank, a lot of our workshop
activity does not replicate real work and does little or nothing
to make prisoners more employable. Our emphasis this year has
been to concentrate on the things which will make a real difference
in reducing offending behaviour, even if that has meant that we
have narrowly missed the KPI on purposeful activity which would
have been very easy to fulfil just by my filling workshops even
though there was not much work.
39. We are not interested in you doing things
to skew the figures in the right direction. Surely it is monstrous
that we spend £25,000 a year locking people up who have got
no basic skills. I am pleased to hear that you are concentrating
on that problem. But why cannot we have more of this? Is it a
shortage of money? Is it a shortage of people able to carry out
these programmes? I think this is the most serious issue facing
the Prison Service. Banging these people up without the equivalent
of any skills to go out with and get a job afterwards is simply
a recipe for disaster.
(Mr Boateng) I agree with you wholeheartedly, which
is why we have put, despite some criticism in some quarters, a
new emphasis on basic numeracy and literacy skills. Sixty per
cent I think of our prison population have levels of numeracy
and literacy that disqualify them from 96 per cent of all jobs.
We had to address that and we have got some £26 million of
new money that is being applied to basic numeracy and literacy
skills and we did achieve 32,000 literacy and numeracy qualifications
in the last year. That means a lot to people who in some instances
have their first opportunity for sustained education when they
are in prison. It is an indictment of our society and aspects
of it, but it is the truth. We do need, and we are determined
to win, the resources that are necessary for that. We are getting
more resources on line and we are getting better too, as the Director
General has indicated, at seeing opportunities within a workshop
context for NVQs and for addressing some of those basic numeracy
and literacy deficits that would otherwise go unaddressed. I am
very committed to the notion of work within prisons. I think it
is very important. I think it needs to be made as meaningful as
possible. It should be capable of proper remuneration, and then
we need to look from that at ways of ensuring that that remuneration
can make some contribution in turn to the costs of their upkeep
and also some contribution to the harm suffered by their victims.
It is something that I am very committed to and the Home Secretary
is very committed to, and we are working with the Director General
on this particular area and I hope we are going to be coming forward
with some changes in order to ensure that we do make the best
of the opportunities that do exist for work, for preparation for
gainful employment.
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