Examination of Witnesses(Questions 20-39)
MR JOHN
GIEVE CB, MR
MARTIN NAREY,
MR STEPHEN
BOYS SMITH
AND MR
JOHN LYON
THURSDAY 18 JULY 2002
20. How far are you hoping that courts will
decide on non-custodial sentences, where they are appropriate?
You are bursting at the seams now.
(Mr Narey) We are bursting at the seams and it is
somewhat of a puzzle to me because in 20 years in the prison service
I have never had such a unanimity of message from the Home Secretary
and the Lord Chief Justice about not using short sentences. There
are still very many short sentences. If only a third of sentences
of under six months were converted to community penalties, my
population would fall by more than 2,000.
21. Is there a reluctance in a climate where
there is so much concern and fear of crime that those who are
responsible for sentencing feel it is appropriate in the circumstances
I have mentioned and in the climate for custodial sentences to
be passed?
(Mr Narey) There is clearly something in England and
Wales about using custody. We use much more custody than anywhere
else in Europe, although much less than the USA. That must be
something about confidence in community penalties. I am not suggesting
for a moment that we have the prison service that I remotely want.
There is a lot wrong with it, but in part I think it is because
prisons look a lot better to sentencers than they did. The prison
population was significantly restrained when we had slopping out,
when prisons were foul places that literally smelt. They do not
look like that now. There is quite a lot of education. Visitors
to prisons see a lot of people getting their first ever basic
skills education and getting lots of qualifications. They see
lots of people being detoxed and getting off drugs in circumstances
where it is very difficult to do that in the community. When I
speak to sentencers, as I do quite frequently, they tell me that
that is one of the reasons why they are more attracted to custody
because they think it will do them some good. My view is I do
not think anyone should be sent to prison just because it will
do them some good.
Bob Russell
22. How many of these thousands of new cells
being built are safe cells?
(Mr Narey) Nearly all the 2,400 cells we are building
are in very low security accommodation. We will be pushing prisoners
through from the secure end of the prison estate into the temporary
units. They are not safe cells in the way that you describe them
but the prisoners we will be putting in there will be very low
risk in terms of suicide.
Chairman
23. Mr Boys Smith, how are you proposing to
spend this extra money, assuming some of it comes your way?
(Mr Boys Smith) Some will come our way and Mr Gieve
a moment ago referred to the £700 million that that is likely
to involve. We will spend it broadly in the way that we spent
the money that was secured in the claim on the reserve for the
financial year just gone by, which is through a combination of
IND activity and to top up the budget for asylum support. It is
that in particular that, in base line terms, is deficient and
will need topping up again therefore for the current financial
year before we get into the new spending review period.
24. I know this is very difficult to estimate
but do you anticipate that over the next three or four years the
number of asylum seekers is going to rise or fall?
(Mr Boys Smith) You say it is difficult to estimate;
I think it is impossible to give any certainty about. We are now
taking a large number of measures. Some are incorporated in the
Bill that Parliament is now considering. We are taking a number
of operational measures, some in northern France that have been
recently announced following the talks the Home Secretary had
with M. Sarkozy. In addition to that, increasing measures taken
within the organisation further to speed up decisions and so on,
all of which I hope will enable us better to deliver the new target
that we have been and that was announced in the spending review
White Paper, which is to bear down on unfounded asylum claims.
I think ministers will be very anxious to underline the word "unfounded"
because they are not trying to stop people coming here with legitimate
asylum claims.
25. You would anticipate a big fall in the number
of unfounded asylum seekers?
(Mr Boys Smith) We are doing a lot of things that
should have a beneficial impact. We also need to bear in mind
that running counter to that may well be quite unforeseeable international
migratory pressures that we simply cannot anticipate. We are doing
lots of things that are designed to have that impact. We are making
some real, impressive progress on a number of fronts. I do not
know what the international picture will be but we will continue
to strive to deliver the target of reducing the unfounded applications
that we are to have in the new period.
26. Mr Lyon, how are you going to spend the
extra money?
(Mr Lyon) The first priority is funding the settlement
that we have had with the Police Negotiating Board, which is now
agreed. The target is to implement that next April. That is going
to cost £115 million next year rising to 200 million by the
end of the spending review period. The second priority will be
to maintain police numbers which are targeted to reach a record
high of 130,000 by next April. The third priority will be the
funding aspects of the police reform programme which were set
out in the Government's White Paper last December.
27. That would be the community officers and
so on?
(Mr Lyon) That is a whole range of things, including
improving the professionalism and training of the police service
itself and community support officers—in particular, civilian
support officers and custody officers, for example—and funding
additional technology to improve the fight against crime.
Mr Cameron
28. I am looking at page 189 of the annual report.
How can you make sure that the money will get into policing and
crime fighting and will not be eaten up by increasing prison places
and increasing asylum funding? In the last two years, there seems
to have been a 500 per cent increase in spending on asylum and
a 25 per cent increase in spending on prisons; whereas the spending
on reduction of crime and fear of crime has gone up a bit. How
are you going to stop those pressures that are out of your control
from eating up the money that you have been given?
(Mr Gieve) The top line here, which is policing and
crime reduction, has gone up quite a lot, about £500 million
last year, and in addition to these plans we have some more money
for policing in the budget this year.
29. That is a ten per cent increase against
the asylum numbers.
(Mr Gieve) It is a quantum leap. The background to
that is that we effectively took over a part of the social security
budget a couple of years ago when we changed the arrangements
for asylum support. But you are right, we have also invested very
heavily in staff over the last few years and we are not expecting
that to continue.
Chairman
30. The Lord Chancellor wants an autumn progress
report as well as a spring one. Does that fill you with dread?
(Mr Gieve) An autumn progress report on what?
31. I am told he wants all departments to publish
an autumn progress report on targets.
(Mr Gieve) It does not worry me at all. The Treasury
are now saying they are going to publish a quarterly or even monthly
progress report on their website, so transparency is fine.
32. That is a lot of boxes to be ticked though,
is it not?
(Mr Gieve) If we are talking about progress on our
targets, I do not think it is a matter of ticking boxes. It is
a matter of high level but basic management information. We need
to know how we are doing against our targets and we will have
the information. There will be some parts of it where we are dealing
with national statistics which have their own timetable for publication,
but subject to that there is no problem.
33. How many targets do you have?
(Mr Gieve) We have just published a PSA which has
ten targets.
Chairman: There are lots of supplementary
ones underneath though, are there not?
Mr Cameron
34. There are 17 targets on pages 16-19.
(Mr Gieve) 17 was in our last public service agreement,
which is what we are reporting on in this report, but ten in our
new one. You are absolutely right. There is a plethora of targets
underneath that. We have yet to agree with the Treasury what the
next layer down, which is the service delivery agreement, will
contain. At an operational level, different units have different
operational targets. I have not got a number for every target
in the whole group.
Chairman
35. One can have too many targets, can one not?
(Mr Gieve) Yes.
36. Have you?
(Mr Gieve) No. You can have too few targets as well.
If you try and compress everything into one or two—and I
have heard various gurus say you should never have more than three
or four targets—in a group as diverse as the Home Office
that is a recipe for disaster because you will distort the priorities.
The ten that we have now agreed for the future do cover the main
outcomes which the public and ministers want us to achieve. If
we make progress on those ten, we can genuinely claim to have
had success.
37. Everybody understands and probably subscribes
to the Government's desire to focus on outcomes rather than processes,
but one hears it alleged sometimes that if you set targets that
are too ambitious you set yourself up for failure or else you
have a distorting effect on other aspects of your output.
(Mr Gieve) That is obviously a risk. There are lots
and lots of risks in setting targets. Possibly, you will not get
the right ones and then you will distort behaviour or alternatively
you will not get the right measures and you will create perverse
incentives and so on. I am not saying we will escape all of that
and we are continually trying to improve the measures and the
targets themselves, but if you look at our new PSA there will
be quite a widespread consensus that these are the things we should
be trying to achieve. You may want to go on with particulars.
I have some form on this because I was last in the Treasury which
introduced the system of public service agreements. I am now hoist
with my own petard.
38. I have heard one Permanent Secretary say
they are a pseudo management device so not all of your colleagues
are quite so enthusiastic.
(Mr Gieve) I think that is true. All of the colleagues
here are very enthusiastic. Traditionally, Sir Humphrey would
have said it was bad for government and insane for the Civil Service
and ministers to sign up to targets like these because they are
eminently missable. These are mostly not completely in our gift.
They are what we are trying to achieve but they will be the product
of what we and a lot of other people do. They are all extremely
challenging. On the whole, I take the view that that is what makes
them worthwhile.
39. Some in the past have been purely fatuous,
have they not, on the grounds that they are not entirely within
your gift? Was there not one on reducing the level of car crime?
(Mr Gieve) We still have one like that. We have a
vehicle crime target and we are supposed to be reducing it.
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