Examination of Witnesses (Questions 531-539)
CAROLINE FLINT
MP, FIONA MACTAGGART
MP AND MR
NICK ADKIN
24 NOVEMBER 2005
Q531 Chairman: Good morning.
Could I first of all apologise for the lateness of the hour, as
it were. We are still in the morning, but only just really. Could
I just ask you for the sake of the record to introduce yourselves
and give your positions?
Fiona Mactaggart:
I am Fiona Mactaggart. I am Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the
Home Office with responsibility for offender management and criminal
justice.
Caroline Flint: I am Caroline
Flint, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department of Health
responsible for public health.
Mr Adkin: I am Nick Adkin. I am
the Tobacco Programme Manager at the Department of Health.
Q532 Chairman: I understand,
Fiona, that you have to leave the committee in about ten minutes
or so?
Fiona Mactaggart: Yes, I am sorry.
I had hoped to be able to be here for you.
Q533 Chairman: I think
we will be able to clear the areas that we wanted to discuss with
you in that particular time, so we will move straight on to you.
What is the Home Office view on smoking in prisons and how should
it be controlled or reduced?
Fiona Mactaggart: Our view is
that we need to develop a programme together with the prisons
to reduce smoking, but, of course, we are dealing with a highly
addictive group of people, some 80% of prisoners have addictions
of various kinds very often including tobacco; so this is something
that needs to be dealt with in, I think, a developing way. Our
emphasis to date has been to make the working parts of prisons
smoke-free, to make secure training centres and more juvenile
establishments, to introduce smoke-free policies there, to try
to encourage policies which mean that smokers and non-smokers
do not share cells, although we cannot give a guarantee of that,
and also, in conjunction with the Department of Heath, to work
on the addictions which prisoners have to use the nicotine replacement
therapy so that we reduce smoking in prisons.
Q534 Chairman: You have
seen the likely options listed in the Prison Service memo to the
Committee. Do you support them in terms of the areas of exemption?
Fiona Mactaggart: I think it is
difficult for us to be legally obliged in every part of a prison
to impose smoke-free areas. I am hoping that the arrangements
under the legislation, recognising that the cell is a prisoner's
home, as it were, will trust us to drive through making the rest
of the prison as a workplace smoke-free.
Q535 Chairman: The issue
of shared cells. How do you feel about that?
Fiona Mactaggart: I would like
us to be able to guarantee that a non-smoker will never have to
share with a smoker, but we cannot do that at present with the
present size of prison population. We have 77,471 people in our
prisons today, which is above our certified normal accommodation.
In those circumstances, to give a guarantee that you will not
share a cell with a smoker and non-smoker is a pressure that the
prisoner state is not capable of guaranteeing. However, in most
of our prisons we seek to achieve that, and that ought to be able
to be an ambition; and, if we succeed in reducing the overall
prison population, it is something we ought to be able to do.
Q536 Chairman: What about
the protection of prison staff? Should that be looked at differently
to prisoners who are there?
Fiona Mactaggart: I think it is
important that employees in a prison should be able to work in
smoke-free areas. That is why if you visit a prison you will find
that the offices are smoke-free; the education wings are smoke-free.
In theory, and sometimes in practice, these things are breached
and we need to tighten up the way that they are implemented, but
generally these policies are conformed to and we ought to do it.
Of course, the problem for prison officers is that their working
environment includes the cells, and they will need to go into
the cells for security duties and other reasons. Therefore we
cannot guarantee every part of their working environment will
always be smoke-free, even if we have those policies in the common
areas and in the offices in prisons.
Q537 Chairman: You may
have seen the evidence that we took last week from the prison
service that went into the issues about non-smokers and smokers
sharing cells and the logistics of that at this present time,
and it is very unlikely that any legislation will have an exemption
and I do not think we would dispute that, but do you think there
should be some sort of time-limit on those exemptions? We had
firm evidence last week where a young offenders' institute in
Yorkshire—not too far away from where my constituency is—is
smoke-free, and we were told another one is smoke-free as well
and worked on very hard by staff and by prisoners. Do you envisage
that something like that should be written in and some sort of
target set, as it were, so that we could exempt for a period of
time before people would have to meet the times or standards they
meet in these particular institutions?
Fiona Mactaggart: As I am sure
that the Governor of Wetherby told you, to introduce a smoke-free
policy in a juvenile institute, which is actually the situation
that we have where we are focusing to start with—and that
is the right place to focus to start with—as I said our
secure training centres are all smoke-free; we have two smoke-free
juvenile establishments, juvenile wings in adult prisons are sometimes
smoke free; so we are starting there—but he would also have
told you, I would have thought, that had he been asked to deliver
that policy in, for example, the high security prison that he
used to run, that would have been a different kettle of fish in
terms of its deliverability and the consequences for order and
control in an establishment like that. The other problem, of course,
is if we make our prison estate totally smoke-free, if you look
at those countries which have been able to have smoke-free prisons,
there are consequences in terms of contraband. Tobacco in a prison
is, in effect, money. I was visiting Wormwood Scrubs a couple
of weeks ago and one of the things that is striking when you talk
to prisoners is that a couple of days before their canteen, which
is where they get their new supplies of tobacco, they have knocks
on the doors from people who have run out saying, "Have you
got a smoke?" That is in the present circumstance. If we
were to add tobacco to the substances that we had to prevent being
smuggled into prison that would create some further difficulties
for prisons, and it seems right to me that we should bear down
on these things, that we should try to reduce the consumption
of tobacco amongst prisoners. Of course it is one of the least
of their health problems, frankly—we are talking about people
who have multiple appalling health problems very often—but
I do not know if it would be sensible to have a legislative deadline.
I do, however, think it would be sensible for this Committee to
expect my department to make significant progress, and I can assure
you we are determined to do that.
Q538 Charlotte Atkins: Could
you tell me whether you are satisfied with the smoking cessation
policies within prisons? It seems to me that there are quite a
lot of disparities between different prisons, some more than others.
Is that your view?
Fiona Mactaggart: Smoking cessation,
i.e. helping prisoners to give up, we do in partnership with the
health provision in prisons, which now is increasingly provided
as part of public healthcare by the local primary care trusts,
and so on. I was talking about my visit to Wormwood Scrubs. In
their quitting programme they have got 15 adult male quitters
in their last round. I think they had just over 50 people involved
in the programme and 15 of them have stayed quitting. I gather
that is a relatively good success rate. I am not an expert on
these things. So we are putting NiQuitin and other quitting programmes
in place. Am I satisfied that some of the other things, in terms
of smoking reduction and ensuring that smoke-free areas are effectively
managed and so on? No, I think there is a distance to travel.
I think we have to recognise that in the sets of pressures that
the prison service is under this has not always come up as high
as it should. I believe that as we move towards legislation and
as we work more closely with the primary care trusts in terms
of improving prisoners' heath, which has substantially improved
since the change in arrangements, we can make quite significant
progress on this, and we must.
Q539 Charlotte Atkins: Is
that because many prison officers smoke themselves and are therefore
not committed to a policy of smoking cessation?
Fiona Mactaggart: It is, but the
other thing about prison officers is that they are a disciplined
service and if there is a policy in the prison they will follow
it, and we need to ensure that they recognise that there is and
then they will.
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