Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
Monday 14 June 2004
Mr Martin Narey, Mr Phil Wheatley, Mr Gareth Hadley,
and Mr Robin Wilkinson
Q40 Mr Bacon: Could you say how many
days per year should a prison officer work if they are turning
up all the time?
Mr Narey: Taking account of leave
and training, there will be about 46 weeks of typically a five
day working week, 230 days a year.
Q41 Mr Bacon: If you look at paragraph
2.22, it says, "The 500 staff with the worst sick record
for intermediate absences in the last two years accounted for
over 47,000 working days lost between October 2002 and September
2003." In that 12 month period, those 47,000 days were attributed
to those 500 people. That is an average of 94 days per person.
If you divide 94 into 230 days, which is what you just said, you
get 40%. Two fifths of the time these worst 500 people are not
there. That is extraordinary.
Mr Narey: That is because the
composition of sickness absence has changed. It is overwhelmingly
composed now of people who are off sick for very long periods
of time. That is why the radical change we have made in recent
years is, instead of offering medical retirement to those individuals,
we start managing them much more rigorously and sacking six of
them a week for poor attendance.
Q42 Mr Bacon: If you look at paragraph
2.23, I would like you to explain this sentence: the process of
reducing the number of long term cases from 55 to 12 involved
"re-establishing contact with staff on long term sick leave,
including one person in New Zealand and one in Sri Lanka . . .
". How long were these people in New Zealand and Sri Lanka?
Mr Narey: These were individuals
who were no longer being paid by the Prison Service. They had
exhausted half pay and were in the process of leaving the Prison
Service.
Q43 Mr Bacon: They were being paid half
pay?
Mr Narey: No.
Q44 Mr Bacon: How long had they been
paid at all while they were in New Zealand and Sri Lanka?
Mr Narey: I do not know the answer
to that, but I do not believe they were. It is not out of the
question that somebody would have gone to visit family or whatever
while they were on sick leave, if they had satisfied us that they
were not available for work.
Q45 Mr Bacon: They were not available
for work but they were available to get onto a plane and fly to
Sri Lanka?
Mr Narey: It is possible for both
those possibilities to be true but clearly that is not acceptable
and we, along with a lot of other people, have terminated the
services of those long term sick people.
Q46 Mr Bacon: Do you think you could
send us a schedule of these 55 bad cases and say exactly what
happened to them in terms of the amount of time it took from beginning
to end and how many days off each of them had in total? It seems
to me extraordinary. 500 staff out of 47,000 is a relatively small
proportion, about 2%, but there are still an extraordinarily high
number of days off for each one. I think a bit more detail there
would be very helpful because it sounds like a culture of absenteeism,
does it not?
Mr Narey: I think we have had
a culture of absenteeism which is now being rigorously tackled
and turned round quite a bit.[2]
Q47 Mr Bacon: Could you turn to figure
12 on page 17? At the bottom of page 17, it says that the ten
establishments with the highest sickness rates had sickness periods
of 180 days or more accounting for 33% of working days lost. Were
these people who had genuine, serious illnesses or were these
long term sicknesses people where you could not easily identify
what was wrong with them?
Mr Narey: Most of them will have
serious illnesses and we are having to dismiss from service those
people who might have worked loyally, with little sickness absence
for a long time, who then become so ill that they are no longer
likely to give good service again. In those circumstances, we
have to dismiss them. That is something which we did not used
to do but we do now very regularly.[3]
Q48 Mr Bacon: If you look on the left
hand side of that page in paragraph 3.2, it points out that the
range can vary from as much as 24.3 days at Hindley Prison to
as little as 3.1 days at Kirklevington. Why is the range so huge?
What is it that they are doing right at Kirklevington?
Mr Narey: Kirklevington is an
extremely pleasant place to work. It has a resettlement role.
Most of its population goes out to work during the day. Hindley
is a very difficult place. It looks after people from the age
of 16 up to the age of 21. It is going through a large process
of change. At the moment, it is under threat of privatisation.
Mr Wheatley will be able to significantly improve performance
in the next six months. None of this contributes to a performance
by staff which is likely to reduce sickness levels. Sickness levels,
to an excessive extent, are reduced and there are only three prisons
in that category now, not 10.
Q49 Mr Bacon: In paragraph 3.20, it says
that only 39% of establishments generate local management reports—page
22—that showed comparisons between different teams or grades
within their prisons. What are you doing to increase that figure
because that sounds like pretty basic management information that
you would need in each prison, would you not?
Mr Wheatley: We are making sure
that establishments know the range of information that is available.
There is now much more information available centrally as a result
of the better management of sick. We are making that information
available to establishments. Part of the process of training governors
to manage sickness involves explaining the way in which we can
compare data in the establishment to allow governors to analyse
the problem. By doing that, we are beginning to improve the way
in which governors do their job, by using this data.
Q50 Mr Bacon: Mr Narey, each time you
come before us you appear to have a different job title. First
you were director general of the Prison Service. Then you were
a permanent secretary. Then you were commissioner of corrections.
Now you are chief executive of the National Offender Management
Service. I am sure Mr Hadley, as a full management consultant,
will be able to tell you that two thirds of all organisational
changes fail. Are we to see a bit of stability in your job in
the months or years ahead?
Mr Narey: The fact that I am here
again, five years after I first appeared before the Committee,
suggests there is some stability in the management of the prison
and the probation service.
Q51 Mr Bacon: What is the purpose of
all these changes then?
Mr Narey: I was director general
for four years before being succeeded by Mr Wheatley. I went to
a post which was to bring together the prison and the probation
service. We are in the second stage of that in creating a single
organisation and the purpose of that is to reduce reoffending,
as I believe we will.
Q52 Mr Bacon: Is it going to reduce or
increase the number of staff in the Prison Service and the probation
service combined?
Mr Narey: Combined in those two
services it will increase the numbers of staff because we are
trying very hard to make our cumulative penalties much more effective.
Q53 Jon Trickett: I want to look at this
sacking six people a week for health. The figures do not demonstrate
that, do they? Table 10 on page 16 gives us the figures. You are
not sacking six people a week, are you, although you have said
that on three separate occasions?
Mr Narey: The number of dismissals
last year was about 300.
Q54 Jon Trickett: Where are those figures?
The figures I am looking at show that, in the last quarter available
it was 88. Before that it was 62. Before that it was 53 and before
that it was 50. It is nowhere near six a week.
Mr Narey: You are looking at a
graph which shows quarterly data. I am giving an annual figure.
Q55 Jon Trickett: I have annualised it
up and it adds up to 250 people.
Mr Narey: I can send a note if
you wish but I can promise you that the figure of the number of
people dismissed in the financial year just finished is 321.[4]
Q56 Jon Trickett: This is out of date?
Mr Narey: This finishes in 2002-03.
Q57 Jon Trickett: Mr Wilkinson is saying
it is out of date. If you follow the trend lines which are on
a very illustrative diagram here, what we have obviously is an
increasing line of dismissals for medical inefficiency. That is
what the Committee wanted at the hearing that you referred to
some time ago. Also, we see the trend line of people medically
retiring running in the opposite direction. It is like a pair
of scissors crossing. It is remarkable that they have only just
crossed and it does argue that action was somewhat delayed after
the last Committee meeting. Although there is an increase in the
number of dismissals for medical inefficiency, there is not a
correlation, as one might expect, in the diminution of those people
who are medically retiring. Indeed, if the two things are aggregated,
you will discover, for example, in the first quarter on this table,
92 people left, either sacked or medically retiring. In the last
quarter it was 148 so we have a 50% increase in the number of
people leaving the service for one reason or another. If the sackings
were as effective as you are implying in response to my colleagues,
would not we expect the medical retirements to be running down
into quite the low teens by now?
Mr Narey: I do not think we would
because the purposes of sickness procedures are not simply to
sack people. They are, wherever possible, to get people back to
work.
Q58 Jon Trickett: What you have here
is an increasing number of people retiring or being sacked for
medical inefficiency and, at the same time, a considerably high
level of sackings as well. The tools which are available to you
are not achieving the objectives, are they?
Mr Narey: I do not understand
why you come to that conclusion. What we used to have was an implicit
encouragement to staff to remain on sick leave for a long period
of time because they would get a medical retirement. We have taken
that option away but we have not referred to it as sacking everybody.
Some of the people who might previously have been getting medical
retirement are now successfully brought back to work and we have
put a lot of effort into bringing people back to work in those
circumstances where we think they can give full and effective
service.
Q59 Jon Trickett: That is simply not
true, is it? The number of retirements on medical grounds admittedly
is diminishing but the trend line is very shallow relative to
a relatively steep line for medical inefficiency. The two figures
added together are demonstrating the fact that more people are
leaving the service for medical reasons than ever before, irrespective
of this apparent tough policy of sackings and the sickness levels
are continuing at unacceptably high levels, are they not?
Mr Narey: You say more people
are leaving on medical retirement than ever before?
2 Ev 15-18 Back
3
Ev 18 Back
4
Note by witness: In 2003-04, 297 members of staff were
dismissed for medical inefficiency, and 231 were medically retired.
See Ev 18 Back
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