Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
Monday 14 June 2004
Mr Martin Narey, Mr Phil Wheatley, Mr Gareth Hadley,
and Mr Robin Wilkinson
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome
to the Committee of Public Accounts where today we are looking
at sickness absence in the Prison Service and we welcome back
Mr Martin Narey, who is the chief executive of the National Offender
Management Service. Would you like to introduce your colleagues,
please?
Mr Narey: Yes. On my left is Philip
Wheatley, who is the Director General of the Prison Service. Next
to him is Robin Wilkinson, who is Head of the Group of the Prison
Service which leads on personnel matters. His boss as Director
of Human Resources is Gareth Hadley, who is on my right.
Q2 Chairman: I think we should congratulate
Mr Wheatley on receiving a CB in the birthday honours. Thank you
very much for coming. Can I also welcome the Audit Committee of
the Scottish Parliament who are joining us? Could I please ask
you, Mr Narey, to turn to page 12 of the Comptroller and Auditor's
Report and look at paragraph 2.14? In the second bullet point,
it mentions private prisons: "In six prisons, staff are not
normally paid for the first three or five days of any sickness
episode." Private prisons do have a better record on sickness
absence than do prisons in the public sector. Why do you not emulate
their tough approach and not pay people for the first three days
of their sickness?
Mr Narey: One of the interesting
things since I last sat here looking at sickness absence in the
Prison Service is to see how much the gap between the private
sector and the public sector has closed. Five years ago when the
Committee looked at this, the gap was very large indeed and the
figures are now really quite close. If current improvements in
the public sector continue, the public sector may indeed pass
the private sector. That is not to say that we are not looking
at possible changes to the regulations. I think the proposal you
suggest would be an extremely controversial one. It is a condition
of service which applies to the whole of the Civil Service but
we intend after this to take a complete look at terms and conditions
of service and we will consider very carefully whether that would
make a difference. It may not make a dramatic difference because
the number of people who are off for very short periods of time,
contributed to the overall performance last year of 13.3 days'
sickness are quite few, just one or two days.
Q3 Chairman: It is generally true that
one of the reasons behind increasing levels of stress that we
see in this Report is that your officers are fed up with covering
for those who are taking sickness. That would be one reason, would
it not?
Mr Narey: That is something which
irritates staff. The much more rigorous approach that the Prison
Service have taken in the last few years has been very supportive
of those good staff who try to come in even if they are feeling
a little unwell and are rather let down by colleagues who do not
act in a similarly professional manner.
Q4 Chairman: Could you now please turn
to page six of the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report and
look at paragraphs 1.5 and 1.6. You set this target in 1999, did
you not, to cut sickness absence to nine days per person?
Mr Narey: That is correct.
Q5 Chairman: At the moment, it is running
at about 14.7, is it not, per year?
Mr Narey: The complete figure
for last year was 13.3.
Q6 Chairman: This is the figure which
we have, 14.7, in the Report. You say it is now down to 13.3,
but in any event you set this target and yet we see in this Report
at paragraph 1.6 that you took very little effective action until
2002 to try and meet the target which you yourself had set. Why
was this?
Mr Narey: It is not the case that
we took little effective action. The previous appearance to discuss
this subject was my first appearance at a PAC and I took the Report
on it extremely seriously. The potted history of this is that
Mr Wheatley, who was then my deputy, took a personal grip on this
in managing establishments. We tried that for about a year. There
was very little change. We concluded that we needed some new procedures.
We introduced some very new, demanding procedures called the Bradford
Formula, which I think are as rigorous as anything you might see.
That made an improvement but we had to withdraw from those procedures
at court, so we had to delay getting a real grip on this by about
18 months. Since, by agreement with the trades unions, we have
introduced very similar procedures sickness absence has started
to fall quite gradually. If we take account of under-reporting,
the figure five years ago might have been as high as 15.9 days.
As the Report indicates, it has now dropped to 13.3 and we think
it is dropping further this year. We think we will hit the 12.5
mark.
Q7 Chairman: That is all very well but
I put it to you that the commitment was made to this Committee
in 1999 and very little effective action reached the front line
until 2002.
Mr Narey: For some years now,
we have been taking rigorous action. I think all the main things
that the Committee suggested to me that we should do we have done
rigorously. We have enforced procedures. We have set demanding
targets. We have introduced fitness tests which the Committee
suggested and most of all we have not only halted but reversed
the growth of medical retirement, which was a main criticism five
years ago. There were 230 medical retirements last year. By contrast
last year, we were sacking six people a week for bad attendance.
Q8 Chairman: Could I please ask you to
look at page 11, paragraph 2.7? That looks at the governors' plans
for numbers of staff. When they are recruiting staff, do they
recruit on the assumption that their staff are going to take nine
days a year sickness or 14 days a year or some other figure?
Mr Wheatley: The formula we use
for setting our staffing levels against our shift schemes is on
the tighter target for sickness. We assume that we are going to
hit the target. That squeezes governors of course because if the
target is not achieved they are shorter of staff. We think it
is important that, in setting the target level for staffing, we
challenge governors to hit our improved sickness performance.
Q9 Chairman: I have been told that in
your business plan it mentions the figure of 13.5 as given to
governors and they base their staffing on that. Is that true or
not?
Mr Wheatley: No. When we are devising
shift schemes and setting staffing levels, we do not use that.
We still work on the same level of what we call non-effectives.
That is the total of leave, sickness and training which we put
together. We still use exactly the same total as we have for a
number of years.
Q10 Chairman: If you now look at page
10, paragraph 2.4, you will see there it talks about a rise in
days lost due to depression, anxiety or stress. How much of this
do you think is due to staff having to cover for colleagues?
Mr Wheatley: It is very difficult
to break down exactly why people are suffering from stress. This
is a period of great change in the Prison Service. When we introduced
tighter shift schemes, tighter staffing levels and increased outputs,
we improved performance substantially. That process of change
put stress on those going through it, as I have said before at
this Committee. The process of achieving change in prison is always
difficult and always threatening to front line staff who are not
sure that the new systems are going to work. That was certainly
a factor in it. Once we get into a vicious circle of high sickness
levels—which is one of the reasons why we have to avoid
it; we have worked very hard to reduce sickness—which means
that there are not staff on the landings to cover the landings,
that does put pressure on staff, so it is important that we manage
sickness levels down. We recognise that there is the danger of
the opposite of a virtuous circle. In a small number of establishments
in difficulties, that has certainly happened. Across the board,
I do not think that was the main reason for the increase in time
off for depression and anxiety, which I think relates to the tempo
of change which is important. We had to hit that tempo of change
to meet what Parliament wanted or what the public wanted, but
it was threatening to staff involved.
Q11 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Narey, can
you please turn now to page 23 and look at paragraph 3.22? In
our 1999 report, we raised concerns about poor management practice
but we read in this paragraph that it was only in autumn 2003
that the Prison Service College was tasked with to deal with this.
Why this delay?
Mr Narey: Although there was a
delay in setting up the formal courses at the Prison Service College
to teach about attendance absence, that does not suggest that
in the interim we have not been doing anything else. We managed
this very, very rigorously down the line. We published a great
deal of guidance. We introduced sickness absence as a KPI. We
have taken a great deal of very demanding action to make a difference.
What this is trying to do is build on the improvements we have
made because we realise they are not enough. We have to get this
figure much closer to a single figure than where it is now but
progress over the last couple of years gives us a great deal of
encouragement.
Q12 Chairman: Will you now turn to appendix
two, page 25, bullet ii, which talks of the level of sickness
absence varying very considerably across prisons. Why have you
not managed to resolve this enormous difference between levels
of sickness absence between prisons under your control?
Mr Narey: Some differences do
still exist but since we were able to reintroduce the procedures
which we lost at court there has been steady progress in this
direction. Indeed, since the Report was published, the convergence
of prisons has further improved. The Report quite accurately reports
10 prisons have sickness rates averaging more than 20 a year.
There are now only three prisons in that category. Some of the
most difficult prisons we have picked off very carefully. Mr Wheatley
has put some of his very best governors into Holloway and Wandsworth,
places which traditionally have had very high levels of sickness
and where there has been a remarkable turn around. The strategy
has been to concentrate on those places which are struggling.
Hence, there are only three in that very worrying category now
instead of 10 and a much larger number five years ago.
Chairman: Perhaps you could think of
an answer to this question in the course of the hearing: we made
a recommendation in 1999 that you meet this target of nine days
a year. You accepted that recommendation. There is not much point
in this Committee devoting all this time and effort to these issues,
making recommendations which government departments accept, and
they seem to not make any effort to meet them but they totally
fail to meet them. That was a commitment which you yourself made
in 1999 and you have totally failed to meet it.
Q13 Mr Field: Can I record my thanks
on behalf of many of my constituents for the existence of the
Prison Service? They are immensely grateful that some of their
fellow citizens disappear from the scene for various periods of
time. Would you accept that behind this Report is the Prison Officers'
Association, which is probably one of the more robust organisations
that any public sector has to deal with? Would that be fair or
unfair?
Mr Narey: I think today it is
unfair. Traditionally, they have been a very, very difficult trades
union but I think they have been much a much more reasonable and
compliant trades union in recent years. Very few people realise
that this is a trades union which has made a voluntary agreement
never to take strike action. The bit of industrial action we have
had in the Home Office in the past few years has not involved
the Prison Officers' Association. They are still robust but I
think they have been much more cooperative and they are significantly
more constructive about the service they work in and, for example,
have supported the new, very rigorous procedures that we have
now introduced to control sickness absence.
Q14 Mr Field: The buck stops with you?
Mr Narey: Yes, it does. I accept
that entirely.
Q15 Mr Field: Which makes the Chairman's
comment more serious, does it not?
Mr Narey: It is a comment which
is very serious and I take it seriously. My justification would
be that although we have not hit the nine day target we have made
dramatic progress, as the Report recognises. The practices we
employ in the Prison Service now are described as being at the
cutting edge. I do not know of any other employer in the public
or the private sector which treats sickness management so rigorously.
Q16 Mr Field: Can we turn to page 17,
footnote 18? If this is supposed to be a list which names and
shames, putting it in the footnote in the smallest type face in
Christendom breaks new records. There are ten prisons which reached
a rate of 20 days more of sickness per year on average per officer.
What are the characteristics of this group which distinguishes
them from the others because, reading that list, I cannot see
a common denominator.
Mr Narey: There is not a single,
common denominator. A number of them are women's prisons which
I think can be particularly difficult and stressful. There are
very high levels of mental illness in the women's population.
There is some element of sickness absence which is explained by
a predominantly female staff.
Q17 Mr Field: You are talking about mental
illness amongst prisoners rather than the officers?
Mr Narey: Amongst the prisoners,
yes.
Q18 Mr Field: Should they be in prison
if they are mentally ill?
Mr Narey: I would much rather
that they were not in prison but since the introduction of care
in the community in 1989 the proportion of those suffering from
some form of mental illness ending up in prison has grown significantly.
There are probably 5,000 people in prison who are profoundly mentally
ill.
Q19 Mr Field: As a result of a policy
of care in the community, these people end up in jail?
Mr Narey: They cannot survive
outside.
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