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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