Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600-619)
17 NOVEMBER 2004
MR PHIL
WHEATLEY, MR
MARTIN NAREY
AND MS
SUSAN PEMBER
OBE
Q600 Mr Gibb: So what you are saying
is that, aside from those crisis moments in prisons, all prisoners,
as far as you are concerned, are getting to their classes on time?
Mr Wheatley: Yes, and the crisis
will include things like—I have given you two fairly obvious
crises—but if we have got a number of staff who go sick
in the morning, we only staff up to run the prison, we do not
have a contingency of staff standing by ready to walk in if anybody
goes sick, then we will have to trim the regime to we can sure
we can do the essential things first, and the essential things
will probably be—
Q601 Mr Gibb: It is not just crises then;
it is some routine problems that are causing delays in getting
prisoners to classes as well?
Mr Wheatley: Any problem that
restricts the full ability to deliver has to be balanced on the
day. Do we send prisoners to court on time? Do we feed prisoners
on time? Do we get people to the workshops on time? All those
sorts of decisions are being taken on a daily basis in prisons.
My experience of prisons is that running the big purposeful activity
includes workshops, includes education; movements tend to take
place at the same time.
Q602 Mr Gibb: So I am getting from you
that there are delays?
Mr Wheatley: There may be delays,
but nowhere near the scale of delays that you are talking about,
and not because it is not organised properly but because prison
has to cope with a wide variety of events not all of which can
be planned.
Mr Gibb: Too much sickness; is that right?
Q603 Chairman: Can we move on.
Mr Wheatley: No, actually sickness
is reducing and we are hitting our targets on sickness at the
moment, but sickness is a problem in a world where staff are working
under a lot of pressure with difficult in-your-face prisoners.
Mr Gibb: That means more viruses, does
it? I do not quite understand that.
Q604 Chairman: Mr Wheatley was saying,
it is a very stressful job.
Mr Wheatley: In a 24 hour a day
job—this is not something you do nine to five—shift
patterns, with difficult work to do, including the possibility
from time to time of being assaulted, I think the sickness rates
we are currently achieving are not bad; we must work to improve
them, because I want to get the maximum amount of work I can get
from staff and I want to keep staff as fit as possible.
Q605 Mr Pollard: Have you done any research
into shift working and how that affects staff? I worked shifts
for years and the concept was that you have a much shorter working
life and a much shorter life expectancy if you worked regular
night shifts particularly. Five years was the figure that was
banded about some years ago?
Mr Wheatley: We believe that the
fact that we are running shift schemes makes it more difficult
to keep staff at work and not feel stressed and suffer sickness,
and that includes unsocial working hours, which we have quite
a lot because we have to staff our prisons 365 days a year, every
Bank Holiday, every night. We cannot ever close them down.
Chairman: The general picture we are
getting from other evidence is that the lack of joined up practice
in prisons. You have very big ambitious schemes that seem to stop
and then start and you have different areas that are not coterminous,
and that is one of the problems. One of the ones we have heard
a great deal about is Project Rex and its cancellation. David
wants to lead on this.
Q606 Mr Chaytor: I want to ask about
the relationship between education and vocational training. Perhaps
I can ask Susan Pember: is it still generally considered that
education and vocational training should be better integrated?
If so, was this not the purpose of Project Rex and why was it
abandoned?
Ms Pember: Absolutely, educational
vocational training needs to be integrated, and that is why we
have put in place with the Home Office and the Prison Service,
heads of learning and skills in every establishment, to make sure
that education and training is seen as one activity in the prison
itself, and they are making a difference. They are making a difference
to the way that it is managed, the way that it is organised and
the quality of that activity and the management of the contractor.
That brings us back to the Rex project, which was the re-tendering
project?
Q607 Chairman: Why was it called Rex?
Ms Pember: Why was it called Rex?
There was an acronym. I asked this a year ago: "Why is it
called Rex?" It is just about re-tendering. It was a re-tendering
exercise and we got Rex. It could have been for anything. It did
not have to be for prison education. The re-tendering exercise
originally was just about the fact we had contracts that had been
run for two sets of four years—they needed to be done again—but
alongside that was the need to improve quality. Running alongside
that, although it was not in the public domain, was the concept
of developing NOMS (the new National Offender Management Service).
The problem with the tendering contract originally, it was going
to be, although a better contract in substance of what was needed
to be delivered, it would have been substantially the same that
had happened the previous two sets of four years, and actually
life had moved on. One of the other things that was obvious to
me last year was that we needed to improve the quality of the
activity: the teachers needed to be supported and we needed to
improve the quality of activity. With a tendering process all
that happens is that you might get new management but all the
staff get carried across—they would have been the same staff—and
in that year of tendering we would have lost momentum about increasing
better quality and, again, these would not have been supportive
people. The reason that that process was stopped as it was going
was the creation of NOMS, the need to improve quality and the
need to support the teaching staff; the creation of the Learning
and Skills Councils and them becoming incredibly active at a local
level so that we had another vehicle that we could put funds through;
and, lastly, the creation of a whole management service for offenders
that allowed us to think about prisoner education, not just in
prison, but in the community as well. When you think about the
numbers in involved now, there are around 70,000 individuals in
prison, but there are over 200,000 serving their sentence in the
community. We needed to think about the whole offender management
and the whole offender learning skills in a different way.
Q608 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the different
groups of staff on the education side and the vocational training
side, what are the issues there in terms of their background,
rates of pay, their qualifications and experience?
Ms Pember: They are actually doing
a sterling job and I think that should be noted. Many of them
are really well trained, maybe not qualified in teaching but they
are well trained. Many of them have really good practical skills
that we need in the future service and, between them, they are
actually accrediting about 100,000 individual vocational units
in each year. What we need to be able to do, if I could just refer
to the future, working with the local learning and skills councils,
with the prisons in that area and with probation with JobCentre
Plus, is to deliver a service that brings us all together and
those VT trainers are going to be incredibly important to that
service and they will be brought into that service at that time.
The things you were talking about, pay and conditions of service
and who actually manages them, will be taken on board at that
time in that local area to meet those local circumstances.
Q609 Mr Chaytor: So, there will be standard
terms and conditions and standard basic requirements in terms
of qualifications. Will they all need to have a teaching qualification
whether they are on the educational or the vocational training
schemes?
Ms Pember: I cannot commit to
standards in terms and conditions because the contractors up and
down the country, FE colleges, do not have standard terms and
conditions, full stop. That is not the way that further education
is run these days. On the qualifications, we would expect them
in the future, as we do with skills tutors in further education
colleges, to be qualified in that particular vocational area.
That is what we would be looking for from VT people in the future.
However, we are where we are now and some of them are amazing
and brilliant and therefore we do not actually want to displace
people who are really good, we want to facilitate them in order
that they can actually take part in this service in the future.
Q610 Mr Chaytor: If the re-tendering
process were delayed and now could be delayed up to 2007, presumably
there is some uncertainty in the field. What effect do you think
this has had on the existing contractors and the existing staff
within the prisons involved in vocational training? Is there evidence
that it is stable or are staff leaving or is there an increased
turnover of staff? What is the picture that emerges from this
delay and uncertainty over the new contract?
Ms Pember: Last October when the
discussions about Rex were taking place and there was uncertainty
about where the next stage was, I think you are right, people
felt uncertain and there was some staff movement. In the last
year, there has been improvement in teaching and learning grades,
so the teachers' grades are actually improving. Over 70% of all
classroom inspections are satisfactory or above. We have had two
contractors getting a two in inspection grades for the management
of that activity which is the first time in this sector that we
have actually had two grades. So, yes, although there is uncertainty,
on the other hand this has been balanced. The work of the heads
of learning and skills is having a marked difference because the
quality of the activity is actually improving. I think, talking
to contractors, they are aware now that they are part of the real
education world; they are inspected by inspectors, they have been
managed properly by the prison itself and I see a marked improvement
over the last year. If you talk to some people, they will say
that it is dismal, that people are leaving in droves etcetera,
but contractors are able to meet their contractual responsibilities.
Q611 Mr Chaytor: Over the last six years,
there has been an increase of about 125% in the prison education
budget. Do you think there has been an increase in volume and/or
quality commensurate with that 125% increase in cash?
Mr Narey: In terms of output,
very clearly, Mr Chaytor. In 1998 when we had the first serious
injection of money to expend on prison education, in terms of
basic skills qualifications, we could have got 2,000 a year. This
year, prisons will get about 60,000 basic skills qualifications.
I do not know what the figures were for work skills qualifications
but it is about 100,000. Measured by outputs which I think is
the best possible measure you can have as a rule of thumb, I think
we have more than matched the investment we have been given.
Chairman: Let us continue with contracting
arrangements.
Q612 Jonathan Shaw: Susan Pember, I understand
that you were the person who made the decision to axe Rex, put
Rex down; is that correct?
Ms Pember: I made the recommendations
but it was actually ministers' decisions and based on the recommendations
that we drew together. I cannot say that I personally took the
decision about Rex.
Q613 Jonathan Shaw: You put Rex's head
on the chopping block.
Ms Pember: No. It was a very balanced
approach with the support of both the DfES and the Home Office
at the time.
Q614 Jonathan Shaw: I would not expect
you to say anything else!
Ms Pember: I have only been a
civil servant for four years!
Q615 Jonathan Shaw: In taking this balanced
decision or recommendation to the Minister, did you say to the
Minister, "Minister, we have had this PWC report . . ."
Did it take years?
Ms Pember: Yes.
Q616 Jonathan Shaw: Did the Minister
ask, "How much did this cost?"
Ms Pember: Absolutely. We had
to put through a rationale to say, "Right, this exercise
has been going on for about 18 months, this is where we are now
and this is what you will get, this is how much it has cost. However,
the other side of the coin is that the learning and skills councils
are working in each of the areas and nationally; they have been
funded to provide learning for those in the community; they have
been funded to provide staff training for people who are teaching
post-16; we have the creation of NOMS coming on the cards in the
following year. This is the service we want in the future and,
if we carry on in the way we have been contracting through the
Rex process, we will not get what we need in the future."
Q617 Jonathan Shaw: You know what I am
going to ask you now and that is to answer my question. What was
the cost?
Ms Pember: I will need to find
the number for you. I was the person who contracted with PriceWaterhouseCoopers
who have been in at the beginning—
Q618 Jonathan Shaw: This is quite a fundamental
issue. It is a reasonable question for this Committee to ask.
You had an 18 month process and you decided that you did not want
to go ahead with the recommendations of PWC, so what right—
Mr Narey: We will find that figure.
Chairman: We will have that figure. [2]
Q619 Jonathan Shaw: Thank you very much
indeed.
Ms Pember: It was not in any form
of a deal breaker. It was not that extensive.
2 Ev Back
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