Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400
- 419)
TUESDAY 16 MARCH 2004
SIR JOHN
PARKER, DR
MARY HARRIS,
MS SAMANTHA
SHERRATT AND
MR PETER
WRENCH
Q400 Bob Russell: Would they be teething
problems rather than significant, major points of difficulty?
Dr Harris: Both internal and external.
Both making sure internally that guaranteeing the job and the
person coming into the job is being accepted. It has been a learning
process inside.
Sir John Parker: I would say that
some of the negatives have actually turned into positives. Some
of the negatives were within our own house. Some of our managers
who were suddenly getting these young lads into their sites for
training said, "We do not want these types of chaps around
here. There is plenty of copper cable et cetera lying around."
We had enormous scepticism from some managers where in actual
fact they have been won over and have become real champions. This
is another very important dimension of this. It is not just about
training young offenders, it is actually about giving them support
and mentoring, and it is amazing the things that you have to do
for them. When they actually come into employment—and it
is very interesting to hear some of our contractors talk about
this—with Mary's help and the prisons' help often we have
to go out and find them digs. Often they have not got a driving
licence and there are travel-to-work problems for them and so
on. All these things have to be resolved and some of them have
very little infrastructure support from home life to enable them
to do it.
Q401 Bob Russell: Have you seen any
conflict between your company's agenda and the rehabilitation
agenda of the Prison Service? Has there been any conflict?
Dr Harris: We have had a learning
process together. The time scales in industry are very strict,
you get there at 7 o'clock, you start your job at 7.30 and you
work until you are needed because if you are repairing or replacing
gas mains you do it until it is done. Our learning process is
such that a prison is much more like a hospital, it looks after
the whole person, so that will be night staff and day staff. Our
prisoners have to get up and out the door at 7 o'clock in the
morning because they need to leave to be able to get to work for
8 o'clock, it is mechanistic. It is making sure that there is
a consistency of the ROTL process, so if you have somebody who
is being ROTL-ed in our feeder prison they can be accepted by
the help prison and there is consistency across.
Sir John Parker: Does everybody
know what ROTL is?
Dr Harris: Released on Temporary
Licence. It is the mechanistic approach, how are we going to make
this work?
Q402 Bob Russell: I have an all-embracing
question and you may not wish to answer all of it, how would you
describe your experience of working with the Prison Service? What
are the keys benefits of the project for your company and for
the Prison Service itself?
Sir John Parker: If I start with
the benefits for the company, I think we are fulfilling a job
need because we would have to train someone or have to recruit
someone or our supply chain would have to recruit someone. That
is the first point. The business need is being satisfied in any
event. Secondly, we have found that there are tremendous benefits
from getting some of your own people locked in to work with these
young lads.
Q403 Bob Russell: Not literally.
Sir John Parker: No, no—we
talked about locksmiths earlier. To get them really bound in with
them and support them. It generates a lot of interest and enthusiasm
which I think is of benefit in the organisation. Frankly I think
young people, young graduates coming into the organisation, some
of them who support Mary in her administration and project management
of this, get a big thrill out of this as well. They see it as
an important dimension of a big company's life. There was another
point you made.
Q404 Bob Russell: Describe your experience
of work in the Prison Service, it is a new dimension I suspect?
Sir John Parker: Yes. I have not
been in a prison before so to go and visit a prison is a very
interesting experience itself. My contacts have been mainly with
the Governor in Reading. I must say I have had tremendous co-operation
and contact with ministers, and so on. Mary has had much wider
contact and she must speak for herself.
Dr Harris: I think there is a
great willingness now, which has been a learning process over
the last four or so years, between us as industry and the Prison
Service. There is still some shock when the governors find out
exactly what they are taking on board. Industry necessarily has
to be quite selfish in saying, "this is what the course is,
they have to do the course, they have to complete it, they have
to be there at certain times". I think there is a genuine
willingness to accommodate this selfishness which industry necessarily
has to have to ensure the qualification. The most important thing
is that job afterwards and the fact that it is industry-led. This
is not training that they are doing, they are doing it because
they are going to end up being able to go from being a criminal
to a tax payer. That is the reason why they want to do it, they
want to be able to support themselves, if you can guarantee them
a job that is going to be providing them £14,000 or £16,000
a year and they are going to be able to support themselves that
is a high motivation. Working with the Prison Service and the
Prison Service being able to use that as an exemplar within the
prison I think they found it useful for themselves.
Q405 Bob Russell: I would like to
thank you both for a very encouraging session.
Sir John Parker: Thank you very
much.
Q406 Chairman: Do I have the figures
correct, including the new industries that you are bringing into
this we are talk about 1,200 or 1,250 prisoners a year. What is
the challenge or what is the solution if you wanted to do the
next scaling up? You are just about to multiply Transco's initiative
by five, if we then wanted to go from 1,200 to 6,000 a year, so
that it is making a really big impact in terms of the overall
objectives of the Prison Service, what would you have to do to
replicate it again on a much bigger scale?
Sir John Parker: I would have
to find another three or four Mary Harris' to start with. I think
there is a safe speed for the convoy here, we are targeting 1,100
of a population of 75,000, principally it is young offenders,
although some adult prisoners have come into the system we are
targeting. When you apply the filter on those that are suitable
to come in, those that have the right aptitude, those that are
screened by the prison to be suitable for release on temporary
licence, and so on, then naturally the 1,100 is automatically
going to shrink to some other number at any rate. The other very
important mathematical fact is that the re-offending rate is somewhere
round 70%, this is really fuelling this growth in the 1,100 population
to start with. If you can reduce that you can get some control
over the top line number here. What we have tried to do in this
roll-out from one prison to four plus 10 or 11 feeders is that
by '06 we are saying that between gas and forklift, which is largely
within our own supply chains, there will be about 300 per annum.
The balance of say 200 coming from each of these other sectors,
if they can build up at the rate that we are targeting, would
be another 800 which brings you to the 1,100. We think that is
realistic and it should be realistic relative to the screened
numbers as well. You could clearly, I think, take that up to a
higher number but my view would be that we have got to get these
other companies confident that they will genuinely satisfy a job
need by going through and using the model that we have used but
injecting into that the particular training qualifications that
they want their future employees to have.
Q407 Chairman: It would be fair to
say the limited capacity is as much the number of suitable young
offenders at any one time as the number of private sector employers
who are able to do what you have done?
Sir John Parker: There is that
dimension. I think there is also the fact, and we have made it
very clear to the companies that we have marketed to and got signed
up, this is something that they have to devote that extra effort
to, this is not like taking a trainee off the street as an apprentice,
training them and leaving them to their own devices. They have
to put in that extra managerial and mentoring help to make it
a sure thing. If you do that then the re-offending rate drops
significantly.
Q408 David Winnick: Mr Wrench, this
is quite impressive, is it not? Were you surprised by how successful
it has been?
Mr Wrench: We have been extremely
pleased by the success so far. I think the points that have just
come out about getting the number of young offenders who are going
to be suitable for these schemes as it goes to scale is going
to be critical. Already with the relatively small numbers so far,
Sir John has brought out the need for management input and mentoring.
I think from the discussion we had earlier this afternoon about
the multiple needs that a lot of our clients have it is going
to be quite tricky to maintain the quality control and maintain
the level of confidence there has been so far as it goes to scale.
We very much want to give it as much encouragement and as fair
a wind as we can.
Q409 David Winnick: I can see the
benefits, you will tell me otherwise, overall to the Prison Service,
are there any negative aspects as far as the Service is concerned?
Mr Wrench: As things stand, not
that I am aware of. Clearly there is quite a contrast between
what has been provided and made available to the 26 graduates
of this scheme so far and the generality of the population. I
suppose there may be some envious looks cast in the direction
of people who have got on to the scheme but that is something
which would be overcome as numbers increase.
Q410 David Winnick: The re-offending
rate I see is some 7% as far as those involved in the scheme is
concerned, that is quite remarkable, is it not?
Mr Wrench: The only caveat
I would put there are for a proper comparison with the overall
offending rates the general figures are based on a two year reconviction
period. We are not there yet in those terms. Secondly, this group
have been very rigorously selected. In saying that I do not want
to in any way undermine what has been a considerable achievement
and a very important step forward.
David Winnick: Thank you very much.
Q411 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Sir John
I have to congratulate you on this absolutely fantastic scheme
and also to congratulate you for employing such a fantastic ambassador
like Dr Mary Harris, who grabbed hold of me three years ago and
said, "you must come and see what we are doing in Reading".
Mary and I are both engineers and passionately wedded to finding
more engineers from wherever they may come. I think you have done
an absolutely fantastic job. The only source of encouragement
and optimism that I have felt when I was going into prison is
the sort of environment which greeted me when I went to Reading,
and that is a tremendous tribute to a private company. You mentioned
earlier on, and I think it is crucial issue in terms of the success
of these schemes, the role of mentoring. The NOMS Service starts
to lift the barricades between prison and rehabilitation and I
guess you would be very supportive of that, where do you think
the benefit of the NOMS Service helps you? Does mentoring reflect
what you hope you might see in the NOMS Programme?
Dr Harris: Our mentoring is almost
fostering. When they first come out you stand there instead of
family to a large extent. If they do not have somewhere to live
you find them somewhere to live, if they do not have a driving
licence there has to be a driving licence, some of them do not
have their birth certificates so they cannot get a bank account.
It is almost as though there time horizons are very short, they
have been in prison, they are looking at a 35 minute time horizon,
we are looking at four or five months. Something can go desperately
wrong for them, they are late for work and they do not know what
to do, you pick them up and make sure they realise as long as
they ring us and tell us they are not going to be in trouble.
If a probation officer wants to see them at 2 o'clock in the afternoon
and we have them digging a hole and mending a gas pipe, we say,
"do not worry we will ring the Probation Service and make
sure they can see you at 7 o'clock at night". With the joining
up of the Prison Service and the NOMS having that sort of continuous
training and inter-jobs, what we have been doing, there must be
a way you can take somebody who is in prison who wants to be a
plasterer or wants to be a service engineer who can start the
training in prison and then take them through to the outside world
at the same time as giving them the support they need to be able
to reconstruct their life. The idea of having a NOMS system where
the probation and the support system is actually starting from
the start of their sentence is a little how we perceived this
would work if you start with looking at their needs and then take
them through to getting them into a job and making sure they are
supported in that job.
Q412 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: What is the
unit cost per rehabilitated prisoner?
Dr Harris: For us?
Q413 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Yes.
Dr Harris: To get them through
the gas engineering course it is about £2,500.
Sir John Parker: £2,500-£3,000.
Q414 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Is that just
the training or does that include the mentoring?
Sir John Parker: We are not charging
the mentoring into that.
Q415 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: If you did
charge, if it was a holistic service, end-to-end charge what does
it cost you per unit person?
Dr Harris: We have one mentor
for every six men coming out. That mentor would be needed very
much at the beginning. The chaps will gradually walk away from
us after four or five months, their need decreases. I suppose
we are talking about perhaps in total £4,000 including the
mentoring.
Q416 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: What do you
get back? What does that save you as a company?
Sir John Parker: We could put
other people through exactly the same training scheme and it would
cost us about the same amount of money I guess but we would not
have the mentoring dimension. To be very frank we do not look
at that as a real on-cost, it is part of our contribution to society.
Q417 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: True philanthropy
then, thriving and well—
Dr Harris: Selfish.
Q418 Mr Taylor: Claire has just trespassed
on a point which was occupying my mind, is there anything in this
for you apart from knowing that you are making a valuable contribution
to society and receiving the admiration of the Home Affairs Select
Committee? I would almost feel reassured if you were able to tell
us there was something else in it for you.
Sir John Parker: I cannot imagine,
through the Chairman, that there is anything more gratifying than
to have the gratitude of this Committee. To be serious—
Q419 Mr Taylor: I would rather you
were.
Sir John Parker:—with you,
I think there are a lot of benefits to us because we started a
dialogue. I was concerned about ensuring that our contractors
were working as safely as our own people four or five years ago.
I sat down with our contractors over dinner and I gave them a
beating up. I said, "I will meet you in six months' time
and you report to me all of the improvements which you have introduced
to make the safety targets which we want to see in our business".
This led to quite a close dialogue with them and through those
get-togethers we actually told them about this project which we
were planning, we told them about the forklift truck drivers and
some signed up for that. Then we told them we had this vision
of training gas pipeline people to satisfy their labour needs
as well as ours and we made them all sign up before they left
the room. That actually built a very strong bridge with our contractors
which I think is quite important in the size of the organisation
and the volume of work that we have going on everyday on our roads
round the country. Secondly, our people, as I said earlier, have
got quite a thrill out of working with these young people despite
earlier concerns. Thirdly, our young graduates see us acting as
a responsible contributor and that is attractive to them.
Mr Taylor: Good.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Sir John and Dr Harris I know you have another meeting to go to
so please feel free to go now. Thank you very much for coming.
We will now move on to the Howard League.
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