Examination of Witnesses (Questions 940-951)
8 FEBRUARY 2005
MS ANNE
LOVEDAY, MR
DAYO ADEAGBO,
MS JANE
BIRCH, MR
VIC PMOEROY,
MR PETER
BLUNT AND
MS FIONA
DUNSDON
Q940 Jonathan Shaw: I suppose my only
concern is if there are only going to be these four providers.
Ms Loveday: That is only one model,
is it not?
Mr Blunt: There are two other
models, one in the North East and one in the North West which
are based largely on what happens now but are geographically based
rather than based on the four functions I have just been describing.
Q941 Jonathan Shaw: I suppose the question
it throws up is it sounds good in theory but there is concern
about whether the infrastructure is available out there and will
all your picking and mixing that you are going to do, Anne and
Vic, mean that it is not sustainable for these contractors? Am
I right, Peter, is that a problem, or Fiona?
Mr Blunt: There is that possibility.
It depends if all the providers are appointed. It may be that
we are bidding for two. If we get two and the other provider gets
two there will only be two providers. We could bid for all four
if we want but we have chosen not to. I agree wholeheartedly with
the way in which the LSC has become involved and will become the
provider and the funder. I think that is a really good move. Hitherto
we have not been well served with the people who have managed
it before.
Q942 Chairman: I am being a terrible
spoilsport but we are coming to the last three or four minutes
of this session. I want to tell you that we are very grateful
for the quality of the stuff that you are giving us but we have
now got about 30 seconds each for you to tell us anything you
think we have missed or something else you would like to tell
us. Fiona, you can start.
Ms Dunsdon: First of all, staff
and the new contractual arrangements. We have got some good experienced
staff in prisons and we do not want to lose them. Some of them
are very good. This is what worries me very much. We need an electronic
transfer of inmate records as soon as possible. We have been promised
it since "granny was a boy".
Q943 Jonathan Shaw: It is coming soon.
Ms Dunsdon: We are still waiting.
I would plea that all the money that has been spent on things
like the PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultancy—and I think
this is at least the second or even third time they have had some
money out of the budgets relating to prison education and the
aborted REX project—if we could concentrate on spending
money at the coal face for our prisoners. Everybody who works
in prison education, you asked what kept them there; it is because
they love the job basically. I hate to see this waste of public
money when it could be spent on computers for my boys.
Q944 Chairman: We should do a report
that says PWC should give the money back.
Ms Dunsdon: If I could just say
if anybody would like to visit Littlehey it is only 40 minutes
from King's Cross and I would be delighted to show you around.
Mr Blunt: I would like to make
two very quick points. There are two of the things that are outside
the remit of the LSC which I think are tremendously important.
The first one is accommodation. Something has to be done about
the quality of prison education accommodation. It is okay in the
new places like this but for every one of these there are ten
where it is extremely poor. That is the first thing. Materials
and equipment is also outside the remit of the LSC and we have
got to rely on non-existent systems for the allocation of funds
for them. Finally in a prototype region I would like to think
that there would be a possibility of actually creating a secure
college in one of the prisons where every prisoner was a student.
Q945 Chairman: I like that. Vic?
Mr Pomeroy: Mine is a weighted
score card. Again I am back to perverse incentives.
Q946 Chairman: I like that. This has
got to be in.
Mr Pomeroy: The biggest deficit
that a governor can have is to lose a prisoner. Unfortunately
last year we lost three prisoners and we went from being one of
the top five prisons in the country to being bottom. Does that
mean that we became a bad prison overnight? I do not think so.
We out-score all our educational targets, our training targets
and all the rehabilitation targets. The weighted score card is
so perverse in terms of security that it means when you are making
decisions in prison those low order things on the score card are
ineffective. Prisons are failing and the adult learning inspectorate
is still not on the weighted score card.
Q947 Chairman: Because of my cold I thought
you kept saying the waiter's score card and I was saying to our
Clerk, "What's a waiter's score card?"
Ms Loveday: I agree about the
weighted score card because we would love to do much more ROTL—release
on temporary licence—where students go out to college, go
to motor mechanics training, or whatever. Simply because of that
weighted score card it is so difficult to get anybody out of this
prison. Once we had 20 boys down to go for the Duke of Edinburgh
Award. At the end of it we got four cleared and by the time they
were going out they were all released. Realistic key performance
targets and secure funding and let people like me have my budget
please by at least the end of April. I am still getting dribs
and drabs of money to come in from 1 April budgets. We do not
know where we are often in prisons. We get so much money from
different areas. That is one of the things. Consistent resources
and what I have said this morning, I would like eight learning
support assistants for the YOI side please. Thank you.
Q948 Chairman: Thank you.
Ms Birch: Movements. Just an example.
In one classroom last year 2004 we had 1,400 boys in the art room
of the YOI side. Prior to that there were 600-800 boys on the
juvenile side in one year. We could do so much more if we could
keep boys here for longer. We have had to write our own accreditations
in order to meet their needs, which we can do and we are working
so hard to try our best to do that but the movements are phenomenal.
Q949 Chairman: The last word to you.
Mr Adeagbo: To me it is to refocus
on what we are missing. It breaks my heart when a young man goes
out from here and is a broken arrow and he comes back within a
year or two. We need to focus on why that happens. We need to
have the same quality of provision that sometimes we are able
to provide and reach this learner. When he goes away and leaves
this gate and there is nothing out there for him and he comes
back, it makes all our work meaningless.
Chairman: That is very important, too.
Thank you.
Q950 Jeff Ennis: Can I come back to a
point that was made earlier on and it is specifically to do with
the movement of prisoners. We referred earlier on to an example
of 20 moving out to allow 20 to move in from the local community.
Is any cognisance taken of the 20 who would be moving out in terms
of where they are in their educational course work at the time
and would that be a reason for allowing a particular prisoner
to stay in this institution rather than be one of those to be
moved?
Ms Loveday: It is needs led. We
do have holds on people up to 12 in this whole prison of 600 and
something prisoners, but if it is required they have to go. It
breaks our hearts.
Q951 Jeff Ennis: How did you manage to
keep Levi Smith here for 13 months?
Ms Loveday: Some of them are here
for a longer time. It is just the average. As I said this morning,
if someone is here for 12 hours that shoots it all the wrong way
for you. So you are talking average.
Chairman: These guys will fight like
mad for the health and safety of workers but when it comes to
giving our verbatim reporter a 15-minute break between sessions
they still keep talking. That is the end of this session. We could
talk informally during the break if any of you can hang around
for a couple of minutes. Will you stay in touch with us? If you
think of anything you have not told us or you think on the bus
home or in the car home you should have said this to us will you
communicate with us because we want to make this a seriously good
report. Thank you.
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