Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR
JOHN GIEVE
CB, MR MARTIN
NAREY AND
MR WILLIAM
NYE
15 JULY 2003
Q60 Miss Widdecombe: And what have
you concluded?
Mr Narey: It is still a possibility
but we have concluded that the work is so unpredictable that it
would be very difficult at the moment to arrive at a cost effective
contract with the private sector. The private sector themselves
are pretty stretched at the moment particularly on their escort
services but it is a possibility for the future.
Q61 Miss Widdecombe: It was precisely
because escort duties were so unpredictable that you tried to
contract it out, so you had order and predictability. Under my
very nose I saw last week what happens when you get a sudden bed
watch. I was in my local prison invited to look specifically at
the workshops and the purposeful activity that afternoon, and
there was one unexpected bed watch and the whole purposeful activity
schedule fell apart—in other words, there was not any that
afternoon. There was nothing for me to see because of one unexpected
bed watch. Now, that says to me (1) purposeful activity is always
the first casualty and, therefore, there is a continual disruption;
(2) that you are operating on a very funny staff margin if you
cannot manage with one unexpected bed watch; and (3) you could
get rid of that unpredictability if you contracted it out.
Mr Narey: We would have to pay
for the contracting out—
Q62 Miss Widdecombe: Of course.
Mr Narey: What we have tried to
do, which I think will be in the long term most successful, is
as part of transferring the budget for health care from the Home
Office to the Department of Health we transferred also the costs
of bed watches. What I believe that will do is bring some value
for money judgments into the decision whether or not a stay in
hospital is necessary. At the moment one of the problems is that
it is impossible to interfere with a clinical decision that a
stay in hospital is necessary for a prisoner, but I suspect it
is frequently the case that if the Primary Care Trust had to bear
the costs of the escort, which are quite considerable, they would
take those into account before determining a bed watch must take
place. I think more can be done to reduce the stay that a prisoner
typically has in hospital and get them back to be nursed in what
are now much better clinical conditions in prisons.
Q63 Miss Widdecombe: Staff margin?
Mr Narey: I volunteer that is
extremely tight, particularly any time from about the end of May
until the end of August. We have driven down staff costs as part
of our efficiency programme.
Q64 Miss Widdecombe: Long term sickness?
Mr Narey: Long term sickness,
all sickness, is a grave problem to the Prison Service. The figures
are far too high and we are only having limited success with driving
the figures down. If we could significantly reduce sickness absence
I think myself and the Director-General would be very comfortable
about staffing levels in the Prison Service.
Q65 Miss Widdecombe: How many workshops
across the prison estate are self-financing?
Mr Narey: Very few. I do not have
a precise number.
Q66 Miss Widdecombe: But there are
some?
Mr Narey: Yes.
Q67 Miss Widdecombe: Are we trying
to learn from those there are?
Mr Narey: In part but over the
last few years the emphasis has been much less on workshop activity
and much less on preparing prisoners for work and making them
employable. There are some workshops that can do that and some
workshops where the prisoner will get a NVQ qualification, but
a lot of workshops provide little more than occupational therapy
and that is why they are closed first, so that we can protect
other things.
Q68 Miss Widdecombe: Why is there
no will to expand self-financing workshops which are no strain
on the taxpayer, no strain on anybody?
Mr Narey: Because it is much more
difficult to do than might be imagined and the Prison Service
over a number of years has had its fingers burned trying to do
so. Significantly we contracted out workshops at Coldingley to
Wackenhut. They believed they could make a significant profit
from running a commercial laundry service and a sign making process
but they pulled out after 18 months—
Q69 Miss Widdecombe: But there have
been others that have been successful. In businesses across the
country some go to the wall, some are successful, some struggle.
Mr Narey: Some have been successful,
although some of the successful ones we have had to haul back
when we have had concerns from local MPs about the effect on the
local community. In the north west of the country I can tell you
that we have had huge success in preparing vegetables for sale
in supermarkets but we have had to reduce that work because of
concerns of Michael Jack MP about the effect on his constituents
and the loss of jobs.
Q70 Miss Widdecombe: Can I move on
to safety and decency? You said and you have told us in writing
that Wandsworth and Pentonville prisons offered "safe decent
environments and met targets on purposeful activity". The
Chief Inspector says that Wandsworth was "failing to meet
basic standards of decency and activity" and that Pentonville
was "unable to meet the tests of a `healthy prison'".
Firstly, how worried are you about the state specifically of those
two prisons? When do you expect them to have reached an acceptable
standard of provision, and how many other prisons in the estate
might qualify for that sort of comment that have not been reported
on recently?
Mr Narey: Wandsworth and Pentonville
specifically are worries both to myself and the new Director-General.
Wandsworth particularly has been struggling to retain staff. Retaining
staff in London prisons has been a grave difficulty now for the
best part of two years although there has been some improvement
to that, and clearly Wandsworth is one of those prisons which
is significantly overcrowded and the Inspector's recommendations
were that we should reduce overcrowding. The problem is the Director-General
would have to overcrowd somewhere else. But the Chief Inspector
did also say about Wandsworth that some of the culture improvements
witnessed two years ago had been maintained, and she was very
complimentary about suicide and self-harm procedures, about improvements
to health care, about what was being done on industrial relations,
and was particularly complimentary about what was being done on
the drugs front, both detoxification and treatment. But we do
need more staff, we are working on that as fast as we can, and
as we get more staff and reprofile the shift systems—and
that is happening right now—I think the amount of time out
of cell for prisoners in Wandsworth will increase.
Q71 Miss Widdecombe: Finally, what
is the suicide rate at the moment?
Mr Narey: The numbers are very
high at the moment. In this current year there have been 54.
Q72 Miss Widdecombe: And we are only
halfway through the year.
Mr Narey: Yes. That is up until
Friday. A little more than that.
Q73 Miss Widdecombe: If it stayed
at that level, and it is a statistical hypothesis, you would end
up with over 100 suicides.
Mr Narey: In the financial year
just finished we had 105 suicides.
Q74 Mr Clappison: Does it tend to
go up if the prisons are overcrowded?
Mr Narey: Yes, because it does
become more and more difficult for staff to identify and protect
the vulnerable and the proportion of people coming into our care
who have previously tried to take their own lives is frightening—20%
of men, 40% of women. But it is not a direct correlation. For
example, in the last few months as the population has reached
record heights the number of suicides has tailed off a little
but I am not claiming that we have turned a corner. I thought
we had cracked suicides three or four years ago when they fell
to the lowest level for many years. We have been doing exactly
the same things but they have started to climb again most alarmingly.
Q75 Miss Widdecombe: Yes. Six years
ago it was running at about 60 a year; it is now up to 105 a year.
Mr Narey: It climbed to 92 in
1999 and then in 2001 we got it back down to 70 again and at that
point, measured as a proportion of the population, it was at its
lowest figure since 1993, but then it has exploded since.
Q76 Miss Widdecombe: I am not trying
to make counsels of perfection but if it was 60 when the prison
population was, give or take a few hundred, 60,000 and the prison
population is now just over 70,000 but you have 105 suicides,
that is quite a sharp increase.
Mr Narey: I accept entirely that
the rate has increased very worryingly despite myself and the
ministers for whom I have worked making it absolutely clear there
is no greater priority, and we have poured money into this. We
have spent millions and millions of pounds providing more single
cells, providing suicide co-ordinators in every local prison,
I have incredible support from the Samaritans—of whom I
cannot speak too highly, and still the number of deaths has continued
to climb.
Q77 Chairman: Going back to what
you said about the immediate prospects for the prison population,
I think you said you expected there to be some fall because of
the introduction of changes to the home detention curfew early
release scheme. Two or three days ago it was reported that the
prison service was very close to needing to use police cells because
of overcrowding. Are you able to tell us that there is no danger
of that happening over the next three months because of the impact
of the early release scheme?
Mr Narey: There is a possibility
that in some areas of the country, and the north west is hard
pressed, there may be a very small use of police cells but the
population has fallen for the last two days and I would expect
it to continue to fall and I would be very surprised if this side
of autumn we had to use police cells in any significant number.
Q78 Chairman: But there may be some
use?
Mr Narey: There may be partial
use in some areas of the country where it is simply impossible
to move prisoners quickly enough to where there are spare beds.
Q79 Miss Widdecombe: One other point:
is it true that you are now issuing targets to Cat C trainers
in respect of prisoners who must be reclassified as Cat Ds?
Mr Narey: No. It is not true that
we are issuing targets. We are encouraging Cat C prisoners to
reclassify as Cat Ds and not to hold on to prisoners who are working—
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