Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
TUESDAY 16 MARCH 2004
MR MICHAEL
SPURR, MR
PETER WRENCH
AND MR
SIMON BODDIS
Q340 Mr Taylor: Does the Prison Service
have any long-term plans to integrate vocational training into
other facets of prison work, such as production workshops, to
give prisoners the opportunity to gain recognised qualifications
to help them to obtain employment when they are released?
Mr Wrench: Certainly, as I said
in my last answer, we want that integration of vocational training
with broader learning. We also want to maximise the opportunities
of our production workshops for people to acquire skills.
Mr Boddis: Could I add to that.
A lot of our workshops have classrooms attached to them and kitchens
increasingly have classrooms attached to them for that very purpose.
Q341 Mr Taylor: Finally when will
vocational training become a fully integrated part of the sentence
planning process?
Mr Wrench: Sentence planning is
a developing art, if I can put it that way, and things like the
OASys computer system for offender assessment is being gradually
rolled out across the estate and we will have it everywhere by
the end of this calendar year. This is a continuing, developing
process of being able get a complete integrated picture of all
the elements of intervention we can make to help individual offenders.
Mr Taylor: Chairman, could I ask one
more question. Mr Wrench, this verges on being a bizarre question
but it puzzles me and I think a wider audience might be interested
in the answer to this. Not everybody who comes into custody in
the Prison Service is a complete hopeless failure at everything.
Some of these people come in, may I say, with some very considerable
skills indeed, and I am not going to caricature this by saying
there will be some expert locksmiths and lock crackers who come
in but using that as a rather trivial example—
David Winnick: Or former ministers!
Q342 Mr Taylor: Being more serious
for a moment, if my colleague will allow me, do you do anything
to identify any of the inmates who really do have some skill that
they might even be able to teach to others?
Mr Wrench: Absolutely, that is
what we want to do and we do not want to assume that everybody
needs basic skills training. We are looking to do assessments
very early on in people's sentences and find out what their true
level is. We rightly put emphasis on basic skills and driving
up the skills of people who have got the biggest deficit when
it comes to learning and skills, but at the same time we are trying
to deal with the top end of the market too and increase the number
of Open University courses that are available, for example, so
we do not want to be completely blinkered and look only at basic
skills.
Q343 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I feel reluctant
to ask this because I feel I ought to know the answer but your
title, Mr Wrench, is Head of Resettlement and you, Mr Spurr, Head
of Operations, and yet some of the replies that you have given
to us today would indicate a heavy operational interest. Could
you just explain the terms of reference for your particular area
of work and, Mr Spurr, if you could tell me at the same time so
I might have some idea about the structure which you are supporting
and after that I have got a question about short-term prisoners.
Mr Wrench: Basically Michael is
responsible for the operation of the prison establishments so
he is the line manager of prison governors and the area managers,
the operational line if you like, whereas I manage a number of
teams who develop policy and provide support services in this
area. Mine is a headquarters function, he is the head of the operational
line.
Q344 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Okay, that
explains that. Thank you very much for the comments that you have
made in relation to training. I notice you said the number of
people engaged in training and then we looked at the amount of
time allocated per person and it sounds pretty good but could
you tell me what is the optimum amount of time a person needs
to be in prison to access that training package because I am particularly
concerned about young offenders who are in for a relatively short
period of time and may be there as a result of dropping out of
education and therefore have significant educational requirements
before in fact being able to access any work opportunities that
may arise.
Mr Spurr: I would say that in
terms of optimum time I do not think there is an optimum time
in that respect. I would be reluctant to say how long you should
imprison somebody for the length of time you would need to train
them because I think it is the wrong way to look at it but if
you were to look at it in that way you would have to look at individual
need and it would vary with individuals depending on where they
are coming from and depending on what their needs are when they
come into custody. We do have with short-term sentences a difficulty
with the length of time prisoners are with us, particularly with
young offenders, in what we do. What we are doing, which I think
is right, is to focus on the key things that we can do in the
time available. If it is very short then it will be very basic
resettlement needs that we will be able to tackle.
Q345 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: What does
that mean in English?
Mr Spurr: It means basic resettlement
needs, it means working with them to ensure that they have got
a house to go to when they go out, which is simple but absolutely
critical if they are not going to go out to offend again, working
with them if they have come in as a short-term prisoners with
employment to retain that employment, or working with them almost
from the minute they come in on the potential for a job when they
go out. If we have not got time to train them we work with them
so that they have got something to go to. With youngsters if they
are children under 18 it is not going to be a job we would look
at what form of further education or what form of training they
would go into on release, so we would be doing that very early.
Alongside that are basic skills levels and we work from the very
basic entry level up to level 2 basic skills which is about what
a 14-year-old would achieve with level one in between and we can
focus in very short periods on that entry level and do some very
basic work with people coming in. It is difficult because each
individual will be coming from a different starting point. There
is not an optimum time for how long you would need somebody depending
where they are starting from.
Q346 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Can I ask
another question then: I have visited a significant number of
prisons and I concur with a point made by my colleague earlier
that there is a huge discrepancy between good practice in one
and poor practice in another. How do you circulate good practice
because you can have two prisons in the same town where one is
an exemplar of good practice and there is lots of good stuff going
on and next door really a disaster even though the facilities
available may be better. The contrast is particularly acute between
what the private sector has managed to achieve, I have to say,
and what the public sector is struggling to achieve. Why that
discrepancy and where is the evidence for distributing good practices
and good procedures?
Mr Spurr: If I can answer that.
We have got much better in recent years at looking at the differences
between establishments and whether establishments are performing
well or not. I have monthly bilaterals with each area manager
and I go through each individual establishment's performance in
detail looking at over 40 performance indicators and not just
at those performance indicators but what lies behind them for
each individual establishment every month. We assess establishments
on a quarterly base and now publish those assessments indicating
what standard of performance we believe establishments are at.
We have a benchmarking programme which is looking to improve performance
with establishments with three levels, identifying the best performing
establishments which we designate as high performing establishments
and performance testing the least well performing establishments
where we require the establishment to meet standards which if
they do meet them we will give them a service level agreement
and if they do not meet those standards we will put them to market
without a public sector bid. So that is at the other end. In the
middle we have a performance improvement planning process for
middle-ranking establishments to improve their performance. All
of that has been developed over recent years and that is ensuring
we are spreading good practice because in terms of that benchmarking
programme we are requiring area managers and governors to look
at what the best are doing and bring their establishment up to
that standard. That is the whole point of the programme. I would
take issue with one thing. I do not think it is true that there
is a wide disparity in everything between private and public sector.
There are some things in which private sector establishments have
done better than public sector.
Q347 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Like?
Mr Spurr: For example, their contracts
require them to have a high level of time out of cell for prisoners
and because they are meeting their contract requirements they
do have a higher level of time out of cell in general for prisoners,
but they are not necessarily meeting all of their targets in terms
of purposeful activity and those establishments are all new establishments
with therefore purpose-built regime facilities and some of the
public sector prisons that are comparable with those types of
establishments will be delivering at the same level. There is
obviously a distinct difference if you take a prison such as Brixton
which has not got the space or the regime facilities we would
want in that establishment, so we are having to do other things
to be more innovative in the way I described earlier to make sure
that we are giving proper, decent care to the prisoners who are
there.
Q348 Mr Clappison: I do apologise
for my late arrival and correct me if this has already been covered
in your answer. Have you got any idea of what proportion of prisoners
who are working are receiving some sort of training as part of
their work?
Mr Wrench: I do not have a figure
off the top of my head. We can certainly see if there are figures
available and write with that.
Mr Clappison: That would be very helpful,
thank you.
Q349 Mr Singh: With regard to the
closure of a workshop, who would make that decision, is it the
individual decision of a governor or is it some wider body that
has a role in that?
Mr Wrench: This is something that
is changing following our review of the industries. The traditional
model has been the individual prison governor in consultation
with his or her area manager taking that decision. What we have
now agreed as a result of the review is that, except when there
is an immediate operational need to close, these decisions are
going to be considered by our Industries Management Board which
includes people from Simon's group alongside representatives from
the operational line.
Q350 Mr Singh: Why the change?
Mr Wrench: Because we want to
look at the system as a whole and closing a workshop can have
a significant impact on the internal market—supplies that
are available to other prisons and so on—we want to make
sure these decisions are taken in a properly considered and structured
way.
Q351 Mr Singh: Do you think governors
in the past were not taking these decisions in a properly structured
way?
Mr Wrench: I think to be fair
to them they did not have the information available in order to
take a properly informed decision. What we are doing is providing
the structures and the information and a system to allow that
to happen.
Q352 Mr Singh: There are a variety
of workshops in different prisons. How do you decide and who decides
what type of workshop is suitable to the individual prison? What
factors do you take into account?
Mr Wrench: I think again this
is something that has not been done in a properly informed way
in the past and people have made best guesses and best judgments
on the basis of where they sit in an individual establishment
or area. What we want to do now is draw in more contextual information
about what contributions it can make to prison industries as a
whole.
Q353 Mr Singh: One thing that surprised
me in the briefing—and I should not really have missed it
and it is not really your fault—is that the Prisons Minister
and Minister for Rural Affairs have agreed to scale down agricultural
work. It is not your fault but I would take this opportunity to
ask you the questions about it. This is of some surprise to me
because I thought that agricultural work would have great rehabilitative
value and will phasing this work out not knock our agenda in terms
of rehabilitation?
Mr Wrench: I do not think it will
because what we are doing is diverting effort that is currently
going into field-scale agriculture into horticulture where we
can get more training places and more activity places out of our
effort and end up with people acquiring skills that are more relevant
to the job market outside. If you look at the market outside for
landscaping activities, the growth of garden centres, that side
of it, there is rather more call for that than looking after dairy
herds.
Q354 Mr Singh: That seems to make
sense but following your logic then, why are you closing HMP Leyhill's
thriving farm which apparently is commercially successful, has
a busy café and regularly wins gold medals for its flowers
at the Chelsea Flower Show? I heard your previous answer. Surely
this is horticultural work of the best kind that you are supposed
to be promoting?
Mr Wrench: Yes and we are boosting
horticultural activity at Leyhill and increasing the number of
prisoner places available within it.
Q355 Mr Singh: So why am I told it
is due to be shut this year?
Mr Wrench: I do not understand
that. I am not sure where that information has come from.
Mr Singh: Chairman, we will have to look
into it.
Q356 Chairman: We will follow that
one up. So the farm is not shutting?
Mr Spurr: They have not got a
livestock farm at Leyhill anyway. I was at Leyhill only on Thursday
talking to the governor about that. I do not think they are doing
the Chelsea Flower Show this year but not because they are closing
but because they are devoting themselves to other things and plan
to do it in two years' time. We are expanding the amount of work
there in terms of horticulture. We are continuing to run a tractor
workshop there. The farm shop and visitors' centre at Leyhill
are actually being expanded so we can have more prisoners involved
in learning to retail, if you like. So I am not sure where that
information has come from. The governor and area manager are content
with what we are doing in terms of Leyhill. We are certainly not
looking to—
Mr Singh: I am certainly pleased to hear
your answer and I do not know why we are at cross-purposes on
this one.
Mrs Curtis-Thomas: It is the Daily
Telegraph, that good fount of all knowledge!
Q357 Bob Russell: Very briefly, are
you involved in any way in the non-military side of the programme
at the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester, the
workshops and the training programmes there?
Mr Wrench: No, we are not.
Q358 Bob Russell: Are you aware of
the work that they do?
Mr Wrench: I am not, I am afraid.
Bob Russell: I recommend that you perhaps
might like to see because they have a very flourishing and comprehensive
training regime on the non-military side.
Q359 Chairman: Just before I bring
Mr Prosser in, can I ask one question about the strategy for workshops
and employment opportunities. Two things. When we were at the
Aylesbury Young Offenders' Institution some frustration was expressed
that there does not seem to be any systematic attempt to match
the training opportunities that are on offer within the Prison
Service to the nature of the job opportunities that are likely
to be open outside of prison or indeed to match the type of work
that is available in prison to outside employment, and your breakdown
of the type of employment and training opportunities tends to
back that up. What liaison is there between the Prison Service
and the Learning and Skills Councils which are meant to be informing
the whole of the government system about strategic labour market
needs?
Mr Wrench: It is a growing liaison.
The existing contracts for education in prisons are due to end
and the DfES are planning to move to a new system which integrates
what happens in prisons much more closely with what is happening
in the community, and in that the Learning and Skills Councils
will have a critical role to play. So we are developing our relationships
with them very much and also developing our relationships with
Jobcentre Plus (who now provide surgeries in prisons and we have
an integrated system for arranging for people to plug into the
New Deal and other schemes when they go out) and also with economic
planners at the Government Offices of the Regions. What we want
to do is ensure we talk to all those agencies who have got an
understanding and knowledge of the economic situation and how
the labour market is developing so that we can properly modify
our resettlement strategies to take account of that.
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