Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
SIR
JOHN BOURN
KCB, MS AILEEN
MURPHIE ANC
MS PAULA
DIGGLE
19 APRIL
2006
Q20 Helen Goodman: So in paragraph
4.12, which describes how in Bullingdon in particular some people
get five times as much exercise as other people and that is used
as a kind of incentive system, you believe that you can have a
better impact on behaviour through using exercise as part of the
system of rewards and punishments than by giving everybody plenty
of exercise.
Mr Wheatley: There certainly is
evidence, simply in terms of controlling behaviour, that our incentives
and earned privileges system, which is what is described here,
rewarding good behaviour is a very effective way of getting better
behaviour in prisons. From the introduction of the incentives
and earned privileges system, and that is not the only factor,
we have seen a substantial improvement in behaviour in prison
and certainly a substantial reduction in major indiscipline such
as riots, which is a thing that any prison governor or prison
administrator fears. I do not want, however, to say and I do not
believe that it is right, that prisoners do not get some exercise
and access to the outside air. That is a very important essential
part of delivering a decent prison, whatever effect it has on
behaviour.
Q21 Helen Goodman: Given that that
is the case, what are you doing to improve and make more appropriate,
the facilities for exercise in women's prisons?
Mr Wheatley: We do not believe
that the facilities in women's prisons are bad facilities. What
we need to do is to encourage the women to use to the full the
facilities that are there. There is a particular problem in women's
prisons because a very sizeable number of the women coming in
are coming in with major drug dependency problems, really significant
drug dependency problems and often coming in emaciated and in
a very poor physical state because of the way they have been abusing
drugs. I am not over-dramatising that. They are not the people
you would expect to go into a gym to do gym-type activities, but
we do need to engage them in things that will build up their health
and to feed them well, which becomes an essential part of building
them back up to strength. Many of them would die, but for the
fact that they have come into prison. We get them off drugs and
onto a steady lifestyle for a period and that should include encouraging
them to engage in exercise, getting them involved in activity
that builds up their fitness. We are trying to make sure that
our PE staff are not just providing facilities for the willing
or facilities for the maximum number, but that they are trying
to target their efforts so that they are hooking in all the groups
and making sure that they have access to something that makes
a difference to their fitness levels, particularly the very damaged
groups.
Q22 Chairman: Members may not be
aware, looking at this figure three that Mrs Goodman referred
to, that this breakfast pack is served the night before, is it
not?
Mr Wheatley: It is served the
night before.
Q23 Chairman: If the dinner is served
to you at 4pm, you might be hungry, eat your breakfast pack and
then you have no breakfast and have to wait until lunch the next
day.
Mr Wheatley: If I choose to eat
my breakfast in the middle of the night, I would not have my breakfast
either. There are choices that prisoners can make and it is certainly
a risk that some prisoners will choose to eat what is available
for breakfast at a time other than breakfast. The introduction
of the breakfast pack was primarily to allow us to unlock first
thing in the morning rather than taking people to breakfast. This
is quite an elaborate and expensive process just in terms of supervising
people through a hotplate servery area. Instead we can move them
straight into activities so that we extend the number of activities
and the access to offending behaviour programmes and to education.
An incoming staff can simply get the roll correct, prisoners can
be woken up during the period before they are unlocked, have had
their breakfast and they now have, in many prisons, kettles in
cells so that is possible. We can then unlock and prisoners can
move straight on to activities. We can extend the day in terms
of activity rather than simply having a meal which means going
down to a hotplate and in most prisons then bringing that up to
your cell to eat.
Q24 Mr Khan: You have worked in the
Prison Service for more than 35 years and been Director General
for more than three years.
Mr Wheatley: Yes.
Q25 Mr Khan: How high up are prisoner
diet and exercise in your list of priorities and issues?
Mr Wheatley: High, because it
is essential that prisoners feel reasonably content.
Q26 Mr Khan: It is one of your top
priorities.
Mr Wheatley: It is high because
it is an important component of delivering a safe and decent prison.
Q27 Mr Khan: As important as issues
around over-crowding, self-inflicted deaths, industrial relations,
budget concerns, rehabilitation issues?
Mr Wheatley: It may play into
a number of those. A prisoner is unlikely to be ready to engage
in rehabilitative work, if we have not fed that prisoner correctly.
The prisoner whom we have not got off drugs and built up in their
strength is unlikely to play a part in the rest of the regime.
That is why I say it is high rather than my top priority and it
has to be balanced alongside, you are quite right, the question
makes it clear, a number of pressing priorities which are inter-dependent
on each other in many cases.
Q28 Mr Khan: So it is not the most
important, but it is an issue for you?
Mr Wheatley: It is an important
issue, not the most important. It is one of the important issues
in running a successful Prison Service and running a successful
prison. As a governor, if I did not get good food served in my
prison, I had real problems and indeed the NAO Report makes that
plain.
Q29 Mr Khan: How do you relay to
your governors the importance of prisoner diet and exercise, leading
on to improvements in issues which are of utmost priority?
Mr Wheatley: The way of doing
that is to have clear standards through which prison governors
are judged on diet and—
Q30 Mr Khan: But Helen Goodman asked
you a question which showed the disparity between, for example,
prison A and prison B.
Mr Wheatley: But we do have clear
standards and the Chairman quoted one, that we are not getting
full compliance with the requirement to feed people at the hotplate
within 45 minutes of the food being cooked, but that is a standard
which we are trying to drive through and make sure that is followed.
We have a number of standards which we make plain to prison governors.
Q31 Mr Khan: How do you do this?
Mr Wheatley: They are published
standards which are audited and prison governors are measured
on them, they form part of our judgment about establishments.
Q32 Mr Khan: When was the last time
you spoke to a governor about prisoner diet and exercise?
Mr Wheatley: At the last prison
I visited, which was the week before last actually, because I
had last week off.
Q33 Mr Khan: Were you surprised then
that in a 48-page report, only three paragraphs refer to religious
and ethnic food?
Mr Wheatley: In terms of concerns
for me, getting food right, particularly for ethnic minorities
and for different religions, is important and has occupied quite
a lot of my personal time and was one of the things I was talking
to both prisoners and staff about on my last prison visit. I cannot
judge the Report.
Q34 Mr Khan: The question is: are
you surprised that in a 48-page report, three paragraphs are devoted
to the food that your guests who are of a certain religion and
ethnicity receive?
Mr Wheatley: I did not think about
it and it was not my report.
Q35 Mr Khan: I put it to you that
there are about 7,000 Muslim prisoners.
Mr Wheatley: It occupies more
of my time than three paragraphs.
Q36 Mr Khan: So I infer you were
surprised that this NAO Report only—
Mr Wheatley: I did not seek to
judge it. I noticed it was in there. It is something that matters
to me and I have to spend quite a lot of time on, as we have been
seeking to consult about what is a good and appropriate Halal
diet that will meet most Muslim prisoners' needs.
Q37 Mr Khan: What have you done to
make sure that all of your prisons serve prisoners who are of
a certain faith a food that does not breach their faith?
Mr Wheatley: We already serve
Halal meat in all establishments, certified as such. What we have
discovered in the process of consultation with our Muslim imams
and leading Muslim organisations is that that certification does
not, by itself, satisfy all Muslims.
Q38 Mr Khan: So you are aware some
of our inmates and detainees are boycotting your Halal food? They
do not trust you.
Mr Wheatley: Yes, they are. It
is all certified. The issue, and it is quite an important issue
for Muslims, is what Halal food is. It varies depending upon the
exact state of your Muslim faith, whether you believe, for instance,
that an animal stunned but nevertheless individually killed by
a Muslim using a knife saying the appropriate words, would be
regarded as Halal or not. There are all those variations.
Q39 Mr Khan: Come, come. Are you
suggesting that the concern that a high proportion of your 7,000
prisoners have is around the method of slaughter?
Mr Wheatley: Yes; the method of
slaughter has been very important.
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