Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
DEPARTMENT FOR
INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES
AND SKILLS,
LEARNING SKILLS
COUNCIL AND
NATIONAL MANAGEMENT
SERVICE
19 MAY 2008
Q60 Mr Davidson: If you are only
helping a fifth of those who need literacy and numeracy help then
you can obviously do a great deal more.
Mr Wheatley: Again you have to
work out who is prepared to volunteer (because we do require people
to volunteer), who is doing long enough (that is a real issue)
and you are right in saying that prisoners who are in for a year
could certainly do something. Those who are in for only a few
weeks can do a little; those who are in for a week or so—that
is many of them—actually cannot do anything very much. We
have to have people who are motivated and there long enough, and
we are trying to make sure they have the education to take up.
We are getting basic skills accreditations which suggest that
we are making a difference.
Q61 Mr Davidson: If I remember, last
time you were here—maybe not yourselves but your organisations—one
of my colleagues suggested that people should not be let out until
they had learned to read and write. Perhaps that is a trifle severe.
It is possible, presumably, that in the nature of parole hearings
and so on that that is one of the issues taken into account. Is
that done?
Mr Wheatley: It is certainly one
of the things you would take into account in parole, although
parole of course affects a very small part of the total. The vast
majority of prisoners are not in the parole field; they are going
through on shorter sentences and they are the people we really
need to reach because in amongst that group will be most of those
who have very, very poor levels of skills. It is this revolving
door group who are often in for relatively minor but, from the
point of view of the public, very unpleasant crime who carry most
of the deficiencies that have been referred to earlier.
Q62 Mr Davidson: What links them
with outside in these circumstances? I can think of many of my
constituents who will disappear for periods and then reappear.
If they are tanned they have been on holiday and if not they have
been with yourselves. What is there that can be done? Is there
a structure that can allow them to be starting something inside
and continue it outside? Is there a liaison arrangement?
Mr Wheatley: For the under 12
month group who have no supervision on release there is advice
and guidance and we try to connect them through to training courses—people
working in education and skills will try to do that—but
only for the over 12 month group where they are going out with
supervision have we got any chance of directing them with a structure
that enables us to follow through. Those are those who are on
supervision; anybody serving over 12 months or young offenders
come out on supervision for a period which means we can follow
through and we are trying to do that. In the case of many of these
young men—there will be women among them but it is very
often young men who are coming out of prison—the absolutely
crucial thing is to get them into a job to make money so they
have sufficient going on to feel that they have a life. It is
probably more important to get them into a position where they
can get employment.
Q63 Mr Davidson: I understand that
point. Unless they end up getting some sort of literacy or numeracy
abilities then they are liable to be back with you because the
jobs they can get would be at the bottom of the scale.
Mr Wheatley: It restricts the
jobs and they get poor pay, yes.
Q64 Mr Davidson: I understand that.
One of the points that is made to us as well is that some prisons
have volumes of provision equivalent to over 80 hours per prisoner
and others have less than 20. Why is that inequality persisting?
Mr Haysom: Referring back to the
answer I gave earlier, that is what was there before we became
involved. We were very anxious not to change that too quickly
and destabilise those different institutions. That is why we are
now working through in this next contracting round next year to
re-balance that mix of provision.
Q65 Mr Davidson: So next time you
appear in front of us this will be re-balanced and there will
be equity and fairness.
Mr Haysom: That is the intention.
I am not sure that equity and fairness are necessarily what we
are seeking to do here. I think what we are seeking to do is to
try to meet provision and need so it may not be equal if that
is what you are trying to get to. Certainly it will be very considered,
very worked-through as to what is the appropriate provision for
each institution and for each type of learner. We will then need
to get from where we are now to that new place in some kind of
orderly transition because again you are not going to do that
and switch it over night because that is going to cause all sorts
of issues inside prisons. We need to get that transition right.
Mr Wheatley: There are outliers
which certainly include some of the juvenile establishments and
some people at the low end of the scale including the resettlement
prisons where actually we try to send them out to work and we
are deliberately trying to select people who can go and work outside
prison rather than giving them education inside prison.
Q66 Mr Davidson: So you will be able
to demonstrate equality of opportunity.
Mr Wheatley: We should be able
to show that we have a logical process. There are some practical
measures to put in place so, for example, Wood Hill Prison has
no workshops at the moment; it only has an education block. It
is the only way of occupying prisoners and we would need to build
workshops which means that I have to have sufficient resources
to build new workshops so I can put some substitute activity in
because I have to keep people occupied to get them through imprisonment
safely and sanely. We will need to invest and have the money to
invest in alternative ways of occupying prisoners. In some establishments
they have only been equipped with educational facilities. The
other one that springs to my mind is Lancaster Castle where we
use the keep which makes a reasonable education centre but it
would not make a good workshop. It is the Norman keep boarded
in and is not really appropriate for most workshop activities.
Q67 Mr Davidson: When you come back
again how do we know that you have been more successful than you
are at the moment?
Mr Wheatley: When the next multi-variable
analysis is done it will show that there is a pattern in what
is there rather than just the history. I think that will be the
test of whether we have made real changes. We need to do it safely
so that in the process we have not provoked a riot or something
like that.
Q68 Mr Davidson: Are you on performance
related pay at all?
Mr Wheatley: Very little, I am
afraid.
Q69 Mr Davidson: Is that that you
have achieved very little? What does that mean?
Mr Wheatley: It means that the
Government does not give me much performance related pay.
Q70 Mr Davidson: Is this one of the
points that is taken into consideration?
Mr Wheatley: No it is not actually,
because in the responsibilities for how my job is split up my
task at the moment is to make sure that prisoners do get into
workshops and into education and we use what is there. The decision
about what is there belongs to the Learning and Skills Council.
Q71 Mr Davidson: Are you incentivised
to make this work?
Mr Haysom: I am incentivised against
a whole range of targets, many of which are in exactly the areas
that you have been probing, so numeracy and literacy and so on.
I have to hit those targets at level two and I have to say that
without a major contribution in this area we are not going to
hit the targets.
Q72 Mr Bacon: I have just been looking
at this note from the Howard League which prompts a question which
follows on from what Mr Davidson was saying about this social
enterprise Barbed. It sounds good but it is their note
so we do expect it to sound good given that they have written
it. Is this a model that you think can be expanded?
Mr Wheatley: I have not seen it.
Q73 Mr Bacon: Are you not familiar
with Barbed? It is the world's first social enterprise
in a prison.
Mr Wheatley: We have worked with
the Howard League who are running a workshop in which they are
using, if I remember rightly, prisoners' ability to do design
and selling their work. It is good; we are pleased to have it.
It deals with a small number of offenders; it is outside what
we are talking about at the moment.
Q74 Mr Bacon: Yes, hence my question,
is this a model that can be expanded?
Mr Wheatley: It is probably a
model we can do more with but will not be a complete answer.
Q75 Mr Bacon: There is no one complete
answer, is there, otherwise we would have gone home quite a long
time ago. The sentence that caught my eye is, "The studio
is run as a proper business, this is not a `do-gooding' project".
Mr Wheatley: It is probably a
small business, a business that is unusual and has lots of interest.
It manages to survive as a business. It is not, I think, one that
could go to scale, so not one where we could become major players
in the design business. It is possible to have a number of small
enterprises and we actually do that within our systems. For instance,
I have a number of people doing desktop publishing inside and
doing small scale orders mainly for local charities which pay
for the cost of the training that we have managed to do in those
workshops. I think trying to get things that produce real work
are very good for prisoners because it exposes them to the reality
of real work which has a tempo and a pace to it that is maybe
not what they expect.
Q76 Mr Bacon: That is exactly what
this note is all about, about the importance of real work.
Mr Wheatley: I am with that and
we are trying to produce more workshops that do that and give
that sort of experience. Not all our work is done in conjunction
with the Howard League but we are looking for opportunities to
find work that is like real work so that we can give prisoners
proper work experience. That is mainly done outside the learning
and skills arrangements but it builds on what we are trying to
do.
Q77 Mr Bacon: I wanted to ask you
a question which will probably result in your sending us a note.
You mentioned that there are a lot of prisoners who are in prison
for one week. What percentage of the prison population overnight
on any given night are in for one week?
Mr Wheatley: I would have to send
you a note on that.
Q78 Mr Bacon: Do you know roughly
what it is?
Mr Wheatley: I can tell you, because
I think I have it with me, that the first quarter's releases which
produce the re-conviction data, we have 10,334 serving less than
12 months and 2,500 in the 12 month to two year group. That gives
you an idea of the proportion. Those serving four years and over
there are about a thousand released in a quarter. That means that
we are releasing a lot more short termers than long termers. As
to how many do a week versus two weeks versus three weeks I would
need to send you a note.
Q79 Mr Bacon: That is exactly what
I wanted to know.
Mr Wheatley: It is time served
that is crucial rather than the sentence.
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