Examination of Witnesses (Questions 760-779)
6 DECEMBER 2004
LORD FILKIN,
CBE AND PAUL
GOGGINS MP
Q760 Chairman: That is a substantial
increase. Is it possible to manage to get an education and skills
programme working when, on the one hand, we have a very large
prison population and, on the other, everyone says it is so difficult
to do anything because of the high degree of churn in prisons?
Paul Goggins: We have enormous
pressure arising from the increasing population. Over the last
10 years, we have seen a 50% increase and a 200% increase in the
number of women in our prisons. This is largely because of increased
severity of sentencing and so very many of the people going into
prison are going for fairly short periods of time. That is why
we are rebalancing the system so that people who go to prison
for three or four months who could very easily be on community
sentences, properly enforced, are in the community and not in
prison. Prison should be reserved for the serious and dangerous
offender. I think we are beginning to see that that message is
getting through. Whilst I gave you a figure for the prison population
today, it is around 350 fewer than it was at Easter. There are
fewer women in prison today than there were a year ago and I think
there is evidence that sentencers are seeing the value of the
community sentence rather than a short term prison sentence. There
is no doubt that if we can stabilise the prison population we
would get less churn; we would have a more stable population and
the staff would be able to get on with the job they want to do,
whether that is in terms of offender behaviour programmes or indeed
education and training.
Q761 Chairman: We were talking about
constructive alternatives when I was in the field. Why are we
not picking up on ideas like the Australian system of having people
going to prison for a weekend, because that is when they hate
losing their liberty, but it allows them to carry on with education,
work, training or whatever and does not make them unemployable.
Are we looking at aspects like that?
Paul Goggins: You will be delighted
to know that we have begun a pilot initiative called the Intermittent
Custody Pilot at Kirkham for men and at Morton Hall for women,
where precisely what you have described happens. Part of the week
is spent in custody; part of the week at home, so that prisoners
are able to keep hold of their job and sustain their families
but also lose their liberty for part of the week. The pilot only
began in January but what we have found so far is that there are
more people who go on weekend custody and stay at home during
the week, rather than the other way round. I think we would all
expect that. We are finding a very high adherence rate for those
people who are sentenced. I can provide the Committee with accurate
figures but we are looking at somewhere in the region of 130 people
who have been sentenced to this. Eighty-six have completed the
period of custody without any further problem. Only six have been
sentenced to full time custody. I think you are right. This would
be an effective, imaginative use of custody which helps people
to hold on to jobs and family.
Q762 Helen Jones: We have heard an awful
lot about what we are doing in prison education. What I think
the Committee would like to know first of all is where we are
aiming to get to. What do you think the purpose of prison education
is? What is the over-arching direction that should be determining
all the things we decide to do?
Lord Filkin: I agree. I think
that is one of the fundamental questions. There are several goals
for prison education. I can think of at least three off the cuff.
The most important one is getting people into work.
Q763 Helen Jones: And the others?
Lord Filkin: Seeking to get as
many offenders into work will require that basic skills are addressed.
One will never get everyone into work for all sorts of obvious
reasons so there will still be some who, whilst it might not be
possible to get into work, will still have very significant life
skill deficits. Therefore, we ought to have as an object of policy
reducing illiteracy and innumeracy for social exclusion reasons
as opposed to employment reasons. I suppose the third one would
be essentially about almost classic reasons for education, by
which I mean that it has a value in its own right in terms of
what it does to the individual. If you think of the lifer in prison,
in that situation, whilst they may not be going to get into work
or they might not have illiteracy problems, it is important that
there is some meaningful use of the time that they have to spend.
Access to other forms of education for them is a different objective
but also important.
Q764 Helen Jones: I do not think many
of us would disagree with what you have outlined but, from the
evidence we have had, it is very clear that for many prisoners
it is very difficult to bring them up to the standards where they
can go out and get a job while they are within the prison system
and they need to work both while they are within prison and afterwards.
What progress has been made to get this holistic approach together
that continues education during the sentence and after but also
deals with the other problems that many prisoners have? Many of
them may have drug problems, for instance. They may have problems
when they come out accessing housing and getting a more stable
lifestyle. Ought those things not to be all together as one package?
What progress is made towards delivering that? How, when the LSC
take over prison education, are all those things going to be linked
together?
Lord Filkin: In essence, yes,
we would agree with that. That is why Paul and I and Jane Kennedy
in DWP are essentially asking the question. Over and above the
good work that has been done so far and the very important and
quite challenging work that is going to be done over the next
two years that we have to put in place in terms of the changes
that are being implemented through LSC, what ought to be the medium
term goals for policy and what would that require in terms of
changes to a set of systems so that they do, in your earlier phrase,
behave like one system which is focused on how to maximise the
number of offenders, whether in prison or not, who are helped
to get into work and sustain it. That has to be a central goal
of policy across government because obviously if it can work more
it will reduce reoffending and it is also better for an ex-offender
because they will have we believe a better prospect in their life.
We are at the very early stage as a ministerial trio of working
with officials about thinking what is the nature of scoping how
such a system would perform but you are quite right. A crucial
part of that, as well as undoubtedly having an effective system
for assessing the skills deficit and aptitude for work, and as
well as putting in appropriate training and interventions
and an appropriate set of motivations, is the resettlement process
as well. Even if a person was motivated and had adequate skills,
if they are not off drugs or if they are homeless or if the resettlement
process is not supported, that is likely to be nugatory. Therefore,
you are quite right. One has to have a broad approach to that
across all of those elements.
Paul Goggins: The whole purpose
of this is about reducing reoffending. That has to be the sole
purpose. We see education as a means to an end, equipping people
with skills to gain jobs that can sustain a life outside of crime.
In terms of policy, we published in July the National Reducing
Reoffending Action Plan and a clear mandate that every region
of the country must have in place a Regional Reducing Reoffending
Action Plan by the spring of next year.
Q765 Chairman: Who is going to produce
that?
Paul Goggins: At the regional
level, it will be for the agencies concerned to work together
to produce it. Two weeks ago, I was in the north east with the
Government regional office, the Prison Service and the Probation
Service to publish their Reducing Reoffending Action Plan and
every region will have one.
Q766 Chairman: Will the LSC be part of
that?
Paul Goggins: Indeed. The LSC
were represented at the event. The whole idea is to bring together
all of these agencies and say how, on the ground, can we work
together in order to achieve that objective of reducing rates
of reoffending. At a practical level, this is where offender management
really comes in. There will be a named offender manager for every
single offender, whether in custody or in the community, who will
ensure that their punishment, their programme, is properly enforced.
That can be housing; it can be drug treatment; it can be education;
it can be offending behaviour programmes, whatever is the appropriate
mix for a particular offender. It will be the responsibility of
the offender manager to follow that through with an emphasis again
on reducing rates of reoffending. That really is the overall goal
that we are looking to achieve.
Q767 Helen Jones: Can we go back to the
education system? There is undoubtedly some very good work done
but we have also had a lot of evidence about poor provision and
in particular one of the things that concerns me is the position
of staff delivering prison education who are often very isolated
from other staff in the further education sector and so do not
get the opportunities for career development and so on. We saw
how that was tackled when the Prison Health Service was improved
by putting it under the Department of Health but we have not yet
received much evidence that it is being given as much priority
in the DfES. It was championed through the Department. Who is
championing prison education inside the DfES which has an awful
lot of other responsibilities to deal with? Who is making sure
this does not slip down the agenda?
Paul Goggins: You alluded to the
parallel development in terms of health. I think it is important
to emphasise that we see these as parallel developments. The education
aspect of this started a little later than health developments
but by the end of 2006, as I see it, all health care in prisons
will be commissioned by the Primary Care Trust. All education
and skills training will be commissioned by the Learning and Skills
Council. We will end up at around the same time arriving at the
same commissioning arrangements. It is entirely right in my view—I
say this obviously as the Minister responsible for the Prison
Service—that we have education and health care run by those
who understand it and who know how to achieve higher and better
standards and also who would be able to connect those staff who
you identify as perhaps sometimes being rather at the end of the
system and identify how they can be fully connected to the wider
education process.
Lord Filkin: The short answer
is I have the ministerial responsibility specifically for what
was called prisoner education. I have now called it offender education
for obvious reasons. I work to Charles Clarke on that. In the
seven weeks I have been there, I have already had three discussions
with him about it which is an indication of the priority that
he gives to it as well. The other answer to your question is that
the perspective I have developed in discussion with Paul, with
Martin Narey, with the chief inspector for adult learning and
other ministerial colleagues is that we have to work with officials
at a further question over and above the successful implementation
of what are very important processes underway. That further question
is best summarised by: what would a system look like from beginning
to end that had as one of its central objectives the maximisation
of the number of people getting into work and supporting them
doing so? That is the question I, with Paul and with Jane Kennedy,
said to officials we wanted to work on identifying the answer
to over the next few months, however long is necessary. The reason
for that is obvious. Whilst we have some very good processes underway,
the real challenge is will those go far enough? Will they be successful
enough to maximise the ability to get more prisoners, more offenders—because
I think the ambit has to be wider than just prison—into
work and to stabilise other aspects of their life sufficiently
so that they are more likely to stay in work. By asking that question,
we are not being naíve. We are not expecting that the answer
can possibly be 95% because that would be daft. Even if we increase
by 10 or 15% the proportion of ex-offenders who hold down a job,
we would have made a phenomenal achievement. Therefore, that is
why I think it is right that we ask that very tough question about
how would you design a system that had that as its objective and
then how do you get there having done so.
Q768 Helen Jones: How are you proposing
to make sure that this is given enough priority by the LSC who
have other demands on them? Let us be blunt inside the Committee.
A lot of the pressure is on the LSC and on local Learning and
Skills Councils to do certain things but prisoners are not high
on anybody's agenda outside them. I am sure they are high on your
agenda but they are not high on the public's agenda. How are you
going to make sure that the LSC give enough priority to delivering
a better system of offender education and that they understand
the reasons for doing it? It is not just about education but it
is also about reducing the offending and ultimately protecting
the public from more crimes and so on.
Lord Filkin: Essentially, by making
them aware that success looks like maximising the number who get
into jobs and stay there. I say that because it gives some clarity
as to what the business is about which all of us need, but if
they start to succeed in that, the politics will follow that,
if you understand what I mean.
Q769 Jeff Ennis: Paul mentioned progress
that has been made in prisons. There is no doubt that progress
is being made but we have a long way to go. One of the main focuses
of that was the appointment of head of learning and skills within
prisons which has obviously been a key driver to take the issue
forward. We are talking about adult prisons being some of
the biggest remedial education establishments in the country with
60-odd% of the clientele with basic learning problems. We see
that in the youth offender institutes we have special educational
needs coordinators operating, SENCOs as they are commonly known,
as you do in most mainstream educational establishments. We do
not have SENCOs in adult prisons. Is there a need, because of
the overwhelming emphasis on basic needs in adult prisons, to
consider establishing SENCOs?
Lord Filkin: It is not a question
I have put to myself before but it requires me to reflect on it
because you are quite right. The scale of educational under-achievement
for people coming into prisons is about as bad as it can get.
I do not want to imply by that that we should be diverting from
the LSC route as the way in which we try to deliver the lift.
I also have responsibility for special educational needs and what
I need to do is to take that question and discuss it with LSC,
because it clearly implies that the nature of the educational
input they are putting in has to be informed by the best understanding
of how you address special educational needs.
Q770 Jeff Ennis: This question goes back
to the point I was making with the earlier witnesses about the
very short amount of training that prison staff have in this country
compared with most other western European countries. We need to
involve prison officers more in the individual training and educational
needs of the people they are looking after. Is there a need for
us to review the amount of training that prison office staff currently
have with a view to trying to incorporate a module looking specifically
at educational needs of the prisoners?
Paul Goggins: Just having listened
to the exchanges this afternoon, I sense that you will have something
to say about the training of prison officers. I hope the following
comments are helpful to you: it was the case that prison officers
received 11 weeks' training. They now receive eight weeks' training
and that focuses mainly on security and resettlement. The three
week reduction was because fitness training was no longer felt
to be part of it, since most of the people who come along are
pretty fit anyway. What we need is a fitness test and they can
get fit in their own time. However, that is not the end of the
story as regards training because what the Prison Service has
done is to devolve responsibility and resources down to establishment
level for working out what is the appropriate training for that
particular prison. Every prison has to have an establishment training
plan. Every prison officer has to have a personal development
plan and it is possible to follow through training within individual
establishments, to take NVQs and so on that are appropriate. You
can imagine that the training needs of a category D open prison
are rather different than a high, secure prison taking category
A prisoners. Therefore, what we have sought to do is to make sure
everybody has the basic training so that prison governors can
then work out what is the appropriate training for the individual
staff within their establishment. It is not quite true to say
all we have done is cut the training and left it at that. There
is a lot of training that goes on at establishment level.
Q771 Jeff Ennis: We have been informed
by other witnesses that the amount of budget per head available
for training within prisons is very limited and it tends to go
on training for restraint and issues like that rather than education
provision.
Paul Goggins: I do not deny that
there is a bit of a difference of opinion. I know that Mike New
gave evidence to this Committee. He has a particular view on this
and the Prison Service will have another view. We need to take
a balance. There are resources there and what the Prison Service
has sought to do is to place responsibility on governing governors,
to work out what is appropriate for their establishment.
That is the right approach. We certainly need some training at
national level but we need to make sure that the training is appropriate.
What happened before was that a lot of training that was done
was not helpful to a particular, specific establishment and that
is clearly wasteful. Therefore, we have to make sure that what
is appropriate is done at each particular prison.
Q772 Chairman: Surely we want to have
a well trained and educated workforce in prisons? It is the mark
of good management. Digby Jones said the other day that there
will be no jobs for unskilled people. Given that prison officers
come in at quite a low level of education, surely it would be
our aspiration to educate and train them relevantly for the job
and to develop their own talents?
Paul Goggins: I agree very strongly
with that. What we have now is a system where prison governors
must work out with their staff what is the appropriate training
for them and make sure that is carried through. The Prison Service
staff need to be well trained and need to gain vocational
qualifications that are appropriate.
Q773 Chairman: Would you like to see
an environment in which prisoners have an entitlement to education
and training and prison officers have an entitlement?
Paul Goggins: That is a very good
way of putting it. I think the staff do have an entitlement to
expect to receive appropriate training. In the end, what are they
being trained for? They are being trained to work with and motivate
the prisoners who are in their custody and care. What we are trying
to do in prison is to change lives and that requires tremendous
skill on the part of an officer who has to be responsible for
security and safety but also has to be able to motivate and help
people change their behaviour and attitude. That is a highly skilled
job.
Q774 Chairman: We have seen good evidence
of some very highly motivated prison officers, although we are
finding prison officers at a senior level a little elusive in
coming before this Committee, but we shall make them in the end.
Paul Goggins: I am glad you made
that point. It is a point I make whenever I have the opportunity.
We have a very dedicated workforce in our prisons who do a fantastic
job. They are no longer turnkeys; they are professional people
who are trying to change people's lives.
Chairman: We will have the Prison Officers'
Association at the highest level here.
Q775 Mr Turner: Could I go back to why
the transfer of health care worked? Why do you think it worked?
Paul Goggins: Primarily because
people understood that the people who should run health care are
the health professionals rather than the Prison Service. That
was a message that was understood. Then we needed to translate
that into action which clearly required some planning. From April
of this year, the first 18 primary care trusts commissioned health
care in their local prisons. Next April, we expect most other
primary care trusts to be commissioning the services and by April
2006 the whole thing will have gone across. As I visit prisons—I
know the Committee has been to prisons too—I can begin to
see the difference that that is making. It beggars belief that
it is only a little over a decade ago that people who were planning
prisons were planning operating theatres within our prisons. It
shows you how far we have come. Of course, that is a ludicrous
idea and we need appropriate health care run by health professionals.
We see evidence of improving physical health care but also improving
mental health care as well, which is a huge challenge as we all
know in our prisons.
Q776 Mr Turner: With the exception of
a very small number of prisoners, health care is a dip in and
out for most of us. Our need for health care is from time to time,
whereas the need for education is continuous and progressive.
Is the analogy absolutely right between health and education and
what do you think the LSC has to do that the PCTs do not have
to do?
Paul Goggins: I think there is
an analogy there because just as there is a high level of need
in terms of education for people in our prisons so frankly there
is a relatively high need in terms of health care. Many of them
have acute health needs. Many people coming into our prisons have
drug abuse problems and so on so they do require a relatively
high level. What can the Learning and Skills Councils learn? I
think the most important thing is to get the partnership relationships
right, to make sure that there is good communication. I have seen
over the last year or so those prisons that have been able to
establish good communication with the primary care trusts. They
are able to get on with things and get things in place. They are
the ones that will be in the best position. Some of them are the
ones that went ahead in April of this year with the new commissioning
arrangements. My strong urging is that the Learning and Skills
Councils are engaged actively and personally with our prisons
so that we make sure that there is good communication so that
we can get things in place.
Q777 Mr Turner: I am not quite sure what
that means. Engaged actively? What do you want them to do?
Paul Goggins: It starts with proper
communication. I am aware that in most cases when it came to the
relationship between the primary care trust and an individual
prison people got on with it. They engaged in proper conversation
about what was required, about what clinical governance arrangements
would be in place etc. There were some where people were less
inclined to communicate and that is a situation where people are
slow to develop the proper systems that need to be put in place.
I think the lesson is an obvious one that where people communicate,
share an issue and come to a common solution, we can make rapid
progress forward. That is one of the lessons from the devolution,
if you like, of health care to the primary care trusts which can
be transferred across to the Learning and Skills Councils.
Q778 Mr Turner: I was going to ask about
the manager. Each offender will have a manager and I assume they
will have that manager, as far as practicable, throughout their
sentence and any probation or whatever may follow on from that
sentence. What if an offender is moved from prison to prison,
as does quite often happen, and the local LSC is commissioning
something in the prison where the offender is moved which does
not provide continuity with his previous educational experience?
What does the manager do?
Paul Goggins: The offender manager
literally picks up the case right at the start of the whole process,
before court. He would be responsible for writing the report for
court, recommending a programme or sentence to the court and making
sure that that sentence is effectively carried through, both the
custodial elements of it and also the community elements. The
scenario that you describe is one in which a prisoner's education
would be dislocated and it would be the job of the offender manager
to make sure that as soon as possible it was possible to put that
education programme back on track. What I am hoping is that as
we develop the offender management service with a stronger regional
focus fewer people will have to go outside their region in order
to be found a prison place. At the moment, about a third of prisoners
are imprisoned outside the 50 mile distance from home. You know
this very well because of your own experience of prisons in your
constituency. I want to see that number reduced because if we
can keep more people who are in prison in their home region we
can better connect them with the rehabilitation and resettlement
services that we are trying to develop.
Q779 Mr Turner: That sounds like a promise
to close some of my prisons.
Paul Goggins: There are absolutely
no plans to close any of your prisons. I visited the three prisons
only two or three weeks ago and I saw in Albany Prison some of
the best prisoner education that I have seen with classrooms full.
It was very active and very well balanced between workshops and
classroom.
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