Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 757-759)

6 DECEMBER 2004

LORD FILKIN, CBE AND PAUL GOGGINS MP

  Q757 Chairman: Can I welcome our colleagues, Paul Goggins from the Commons and Lord Filkin from the other place? What a privilege it is to have the House of Lords here. You can refuse to come but I think you have to come if you are a Minister. We want to make this as good a report as possible so we do value having both departments represented here today. Do either of you want to say anything to kick us off?

  Paul Goggins: First of all, can I say how much I welcome the fact that your Committee is doing this inquiry and for the opportunity to participate in it. I will probably regret saying that in an hour or so because I am sure you are going to give us a good grilling. For all the shortcomings which you will identify and make recommendations about, it is worth saying just how far prison education has come in a very short time. Last year, one in 10 of all basic skills qualifications gained anywhere in the country was gained in a prison. That is testament to the hard work that is going on. Indeed, four out of every 10 prisoners are now engaged to some extent in education in prison, 1,000 of them on Open University courses. I got an endorsement for the improvement from an unlikely source last Thursday at a conference I was speaking at to do with rethinking crime and punishment, an important piece of work that is being done, from Tony Adams, the former Arsenal and England centre half who spent some time at Chelmsford Prison some 14 years ago and spoke about how different it is now. There was no education when he was in prison 14 years ago and there is so much more today. The second comment is simply to emphasise that this discussion, this inquiry and the work that we are doing to develop further education and skills training in prison is happening within the biggest reform of prisons and probation that has been undertaken for decades as we develop the National Offender Management Service to do three things. First of all, to rebalance the system so that we have fewer short term prisoners in our prisons doing precisely the kind of thing that you were just describing, lying on a bunk for a few weeks doing very little else when they could be on robust community sentences. Secondly, to make sure that we deliver the new sentencing framework arising from the Criminal Justice Act 2003, where people who go to prison will serve the whole of their sentence, the first half in prison, the second half in the community, under more robust supervision. Thirdly, to make sure that we join up government agencies, voluntary organisations, private sector organisations in the whole business of effective resettlement so that we get a better outcome for the investment that the taxpayer puts in in terms of reduced reoffending. In a sense, that sets the context for the discussion that we are having here specifically on education.

  Lord Filkin: First of all, I think a lot has been achieved. If I look at the increase in expenditure by comparison with, say, 1996-97, the spend has roughly trebled. If I look at the numbers of basic skills that have been achieved in prisons from about 12,000 in 2001, we are probably going to hit about 60,000 this year, so we are seeing about a five fold increase in the basic skills being achieved. Also, we have seen a significant shift in terms of the creation of a head of learning and skills in every single prison. Secondly, there is an enormous amount of work and change in progress, as you probably sensed from the previous session, particularly in terms of the implementation of NOMS and the potential that gives for having education and skills straddling both community and custodial situations, which is clearly essential and, secondly, in terms of the capacity of the Learning and Skills Council to be fusing both basic skills and work skills so you have two integrations going on at once, which is pretty obviously necessary for this to work better. The third point is that both Paul and I and other ministerial colleagues are really clear there is a heck of a lot more to be done. We will seek to outline some of that in the rest of our evidence.

  Q758 Chairman: Is it not all a bit slow though? This was in our manifesto to radically improve prison education. Normally, you expect to have a manifesto and then a mandate—we certainly have the mandate—and then to deliver. Here we are talking about the next election and, being generous to the very good people that we have just had evidence from, they are talking very tentatively about things that might happen. Some things have improved but a lot of people like us going to three or four prisons and having witnesses realise that we have not really delivered very quickly on this manifesto commitment, have we?

  Paul Goggins: I think we have. Every prison now has a head of learning and skills. We have seen relationships developing between the Learning and Skills Councils and individual prisons. Last year, we had a target for 36,000 basic skills qualifications. The Prison Service achieved 46,000. The target for this year is 56,000. Where it really matters in terms of the outcomes for individual prisoners, I think we are making substantial progress. By the autumn of 2006 when the structural changes we are making really are bedded in, we will see further change still.

  Q759 Chairman: You may know that I was shadow Minister for Police, Prisons and Crime Prevention quite some time ago when I was Roy Hattersley's deputy. I used to berate the Secretary of State for the Home Department for having 50,000 people in prison. We now have how many?

  Paul Goggins: We have 75,149 today, or thereabouts.


 
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