Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-40)
DAME ANNE
OWERS DBE
2 FEBRUARY 2010
Q1 Alun Michael: Good afternoon to
the Chief Inspector of Prisons. We are looking forward very much
to your evidence. We gather that you will be producing a final
report shortly, and indeed there was a suggestion that we should
interview you after that report but, when the logistics were looked
at, it did not work. We look forward with interest to reading
that in the light of the discussion with you this afternoon. It
is actually quite a long stint, is it not, in many ways? I should
also explain that the Chairman is attending another meeting, the
meeting of the Liaison Committee, and will take over the Chair
when he joins us. If you happen to look down and then look up
again you may see a difference in the Chair. Apologies for any
confusion that causes! A reflective point to start off on. What
would you say have been the biggest changes in the prison system,
for good or for bad, during your time as Chief Inspector?
Dame Anne Owers:
I suppose the big changes that you would notice would be the changes
in healthcare in prisons, given that it is now commissioned and
paid for by the NHS in almost all prisons, and the improvements
that has made in the quality, the professionalism and the governance
of healthcare. I think that you can tell a similar story in education.
More of it and more of it delivered professionally, funded through
Learning and Skills Councils, provided by trained instructors
and teachers. One of the big changes is in the focus on resettlement,
on reintegration, as a core part of prisons' role. I do not think
that it was seen as very much of a core role when I started. It
was a kind of add-on that you did if you managed to get some charitable
money or a bit of European social funding; whereas it is now seen
as a key part of what prisons do.
Q2 Alun Michael: Are you saying this
is seen as key in each prisoner and institutionally?
Dame Anne Owers: Yes, in theory
certainly; i.e. you do not go to a prison now where you
do not find a head of resettlement or a head of reducing reoffending.
The effectiveness of what is done is a different story; the extent
to which it can be effective is a different story; but the fact
that prisons think they should be doing it and that it is not
just a thing that you do if you have a bit of spare money or a
bit of spare time is, I think, different. I would say too—what
was growing before my time but has continued to grow—the
Prison Service's own focus on decency; on getting to grips with
and trying to stop negative cultures within prisons. I think it
is very welcome that that has continued and has fed into a system
that is, by and large, well managed and that tries when it can
to take action against things where action needs to be taken.
These changes also reflect a prison system that is more looking
outwards and is more inviting the outside in. The things that
I see improving in prisons often improve because you work with
outside agencies, whether that is local authorities, the voluntary
sector, healthcare or education. You bring a fresh light and you
bring a fresh perspective. What has changed for the worse? Of
course, the adult male prison population continues to grow. It
has stabilised a bit in recent months but each year it reaches
a fresh high. There are drivers within it, like the indeterminate
sentence for public protection, which continue to be troubling;
and of course it is a double problem, because it is growing at
a time when resources are already starting to decrease and, I
think inevitably, will be further at risk. You therefore have
a system with more people that is trying to do more and having
less money. Also, some of the things that I mentioned earlier—healthcare,
education and so on—while they are better in prisons, they
are also evidence of what is not happening outside prisons. The
focus, the correct focus, on providing better healthcare to prisoners,
better education opportunities to people who have not accessed
them, is indicative of the fact that it is not happening to them
outside. We should not be thinking of prisons as the place where
we look after our mentally ill or where we educate our children.
There is therefore a risk that people will feel more comfortable
about things not happening in the community because they are happening
in prisons. Finally on this point, there are still clearly examples
of poor practice in prisons. We still find them; we report on
them. Those are things that within a big system like the prison
system, under the pressure it is, will continue to require people
looking at them very carefully.
Q3 Alun Michael: That is very interesting.
Some of my colleagues may want to pick up some of those points
as we go through the later questions. Perhaps looking at the immediate
future, what do you see as the biggest challenges that will face
the new Chief Inspector?
Dame Anne Owers: I have just talked
about population and resources. A couple of years ago, the prison
system was in real crisis. It really was "musical beds";
it was people scratching their heads to find a place to put anybody.
We are not in that situation now—not quite in that situation
now—but what we have is an equally worrying hidden crisis,
an incremental issue, where prisons will struggle to find the
resources that they need to do their job properly and the outcome
of that struggle could be prisons that are containers, rather
than places that are resourced to change people in the way that
we need. Whatever happens, whenever the general election is, there
will clearly be pressures on public finances. That is evident
and that will obviously affect prisons. I think the other challenge
will be that, during my time, we have developed a very clear and
published, transparent methodology based upon our healthy prison
tests—safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement—the
characteristics of what we expect a prison to do. Those are continually
being revised and will need to continue to be developed in the
light of new thinking. The critical difficulty and difficulty
that all Chief Inspectors have is this delicate balance of maintaining
independence while ensuring that you have influence and that you
are effective, and that is a balance that I struggle with. However,
I think that the inspectorate team, the methodology and the criteria,
are very strong and the team is a very committed team, and it
will be a great sadness to leave them.
Q4 Mrs James: I was interested in
your term "containers". Are you particularly concerned
about out-of-cell hours, activities, education facilities? Would
you like to clarify that a little?
Dame Anne Owers: Yes. Already
in this financial year we have seen prisons restricting the core
day, the amount of time available for activities on Friday afternoons.
That has already had an effect. What we are seeing next year,
that we know about already, is decreasing resources and a process
of benchmarking, where some of the key activities within prisons
are being looked at in the light not of "What ought we to
do here?" but "What can we do within existing resources?".
I think that carries a real risk of a regression to the mean:
prisons being very specifically told, "You don't have to
hit the gold standard. You only need to hit the bronze standard".
Some of those activities around the edges, that we know are important
because they are innovative, are the ones that are being looked
at and threatened. Things like parenting courses, family days—even
in women's prisons. Those are the soft skills that make a difference,
that build self-esteem. Those are the things that you cannot easily
measure but are terribly important. I was in a training prison
not very long ago, one of the very few training prisons that was
able to offer really purposeful activity for nearly all its prisoners,
which was being told, "You won't be able to do that next
year". I think those are worrying signs.
Q5 Mrs James: Are staff concerned
that they cannot develop these models of good practice, which
would be beneficial across the estate?
Dame Anne Owers: Exactly so. If
the message you are sending to staff is, "You just need to
be good enough" or else, as I came across in one prison,
a staff group had of its own accord got together and got themselves
training in public speaking so that they could deliver an induction
course better—as we all know, those early days in prison
are very crucial for setting prisoners on the right track but
also for safety and people knowing what is going on—having
done that and being really proud of it, along comes a benchmarking
team saying, "You won't be able to afford to do that. It
can be done by prisoners". It is not exactly motivational.
Q6 Alun Michael: In that context,
and we are looking at it in terms of the challenge to the new
Chief Inspector, are difficulties caused due to the lack of enforcement
powers for the inspector and the inspectorate, or is that not
important to the role?
Dame Anne Owers: It has not been
and I do not think an inspectorate set up as this inspectorate
is reasonably could have enforcement powers. It is not a regulator
in that sense. I have always been quite pleased not to have enforcement
powers because, if I had them, I would only be able to recommend
that prisons do what they can do now within existing resources.
We have always seen ourselves as promoting best practice rather
than compliance, and quality rather than quantity. You end up
tick-boxing if you are a regulator, inevitably. An example I often
use is that we carry on saying that you should not cram two men
in a cell meant for one. Prisons do not want to do that. It has
become normal but if we stop saying that we should not be doing
it, it will become normative. I think it is important therefore,
given the human rights basis and so on of what we do, that we
can do that. Having said that, however, it is also important that
we are not penal voyeurs: that we are actually able to be effective.
We measure our effectiveness in terms of the number of our recommendations
that are accepted and the number that are implemented.
Q7 Alun Michael: Your emphasis would
be on the promotion of best practice rather than an enforcement
role?
Dame Anne Owers: Rather than an
enforcement role, yes; but we would need to be sure that we were
having an effect. So, at a point when I can say to you that 96%
of our recommendations are accepted and, when we go back to check,
just over two-thirds have been implemented, then I think that
is effective. If that stopped being the case, that would be worrying—because
you need to be doing an effective job.
Q8 Alun Michael: We have looked at
a number of issues relating to prisons as well as the wider criminal
justice system recently: one being the report that the Committee
produced on the Role of the Prison Officer, which inevitably
went a little wider than that in considering that role; secondly,
the report on Justice Reinvestment. Would you regard those
as required reading for a new inspector?
Dame Anne Owers: Yes, definitely.
Alun Michael: I thought that might be
the answer.
Q9 Mrs James: Said with alacrity!
Dame Anne Owers: Of course! I
think the role of the prison officer is absolutely key, because
there is a tendency to think that changing somebody's life around—which
is what the prisons and the Probation Service are trying to do—is
a measurable equation. You take a person; you add in a literacy
certificate, plus an Offending Behaviour Programme, plus you find
them some sort of low-rent accommodation to live in and you give
them a detox; and, out the other end, pops a reformed personality
who will suddenly have a quite different life from the one that
they had before they came in. In fact, what we know very clearly
is that people change because of relationships very often; because
they are motivated and challenged; because they are given a model
of a different way of behaving than the one that they have been
accustomed to. The role of the residential staff in the units
is absolutely critical to that. I see too many prisons where,
for example—I was signing off a report recently—two-thirds
of the education places were not filled. We have enough prisons
that do not have enough education places, but when people do not
get to those that there are, it is because nobody is encouraging
them, challenging them, even taking them there or even noticing
that you have empty spaces. That role is therefore absolutely
critical, and I think some good things can be said about that.
In terms of Justice Reinvestment, some of what I was saying
about healthcare and education fits into that. I am absolutely
committed, and my successor I am sure will be equally committed,
to having good, safe, decent, effective prisons, properly resourced
to do their job; but I am equally sure that, no matter how well
you resource prisons, they will not be able to do their job if
you do not resource what comes either side of prisons and you
do not resource things that can be done instead of prison—because
what goes wrong in society we have to put right in society.
Alun Michael: I think that fits very
well with the question that Siân James is going to ask.
Q10 Mrs James: It is about the thematic
reviews. What are the relationships like with other inspectorates,
both within and outside the criminal justice system?
Dame Anne Owers: I think they
are good and co-operative relationships that work when co-operation
and joining together can add value. There can be a temptation
to think that doing something jointly is always better than doing
it singly. It is, as long as the "jointness" adds value.
In the criminal justice inspectorates, for example, you will be
aware that I was not one of those who was wildly in favour of
a single criminal justice inspectorate, because I did not believe
that would play to the strengths of the inspectorates separately
and severally, and in particular I was worried about my inspectorate.
However, having said that, the work that we can do jointly with
our colleagues in the Inspectorate of Constabulary looking at
police custody, which we are now doing, and the joint work we
do on each prison inspection now with my colleague the Chief Inspector
of Probation on offender management, adds great value to what
we can do. Also, we do joint thematic work with other criminal
justice inspectorates—we will be producing our second joint
report in March on the indeterminate sentence for public protection—and
we had one on approved premises. Those bits of joint work can
add value, therefore. The other way that joint work is very effective,
I believe, is in terms of prison inspection itself, where, when
we inspect each prison, we do so together with Ofsted or Estyn
in Wales, and we also do it jointly with the Care Quality Commission
and the Welsh equivalent. We are getting a holistic picture of
what is going on in the prison but we are not overburdening the
prison by each inspectorate turning up separately. I think that
those joint endeavours work very well.
Q11 Mrs James: How does the Ministry
of Justice respond to your reports, to your thematic reviews?
Would you like to see a more formal response to them?
Dame Anne Owers: That is interesting.
In terms of joint thematic work, one of the things that the criminal
justice chief inspectors as a group have been keen on is that
there is some response and some follow-through. It has not always
been clear how that happens but we have been discussing that with
ministers recently. In terms of our other thematic work, we do
get a response: sometimes a formal one, sometimes not a formal
one. Those thematics which are about big issues, like mental health,
disability, race and so on, are what I call "slow burners",
in that they take quite a long time to implement. It requires
resources, changes in policy, sometimes the intervention of other
departments; but they do have an effect over time. What is more,
what we do in order to push that is that, when we have done a
thematic report, we incorporate its findings into our own criteria
and expectations. We are therefore expecting those things to happen
prison by prison, as we go round.
Q12 Julie Morgan: You have talked
about the rise in the prison population and I think that future
governments are expecting there being even more prisoners. Do
you think that the new Chief Inspector will have enough resources
to do her or his role, with such a big prison population?
Dame Anne Owers: I think that
we do not currently have the resources that we would like, to
be able to do the job as my inspectors would want, to be sure
that we are in prisons often enough to reassure ourselves or ministers
or the public about what is going on there. Resources are always
an issue, but we are not unaware of the pressure on resources
in departments and Government; so we try and use them as effectively
as possible. I am very pleased that ministers have agreed an uplift
to my budget to allow me to do more unannounced inspections. That
came on the back of the rather well-publicised attempts of Wandsworth
and Pentonville prisons to do a prisoner swap before inspections.
Unannounced inspections are more costly because we have to do
the preliminary work that otherwise the prison does for us, but
by the same token it reduces the burden on prisons and I think
it gives us more flexibility. We are very pleased about that.
I am particularly grateful for that, obviously, at a time when
resources are pretty stretched. I think that my successor will
need to look at the resources that are available in the light
of the amount of work that has to be done. Prisons are bigger,
more complex. Even when there are not more of them, the business
of inspecting them is more complex. There is an agreement with
ministers about how often we inspect and one of the outcomes of
independence, as far as I am concerned, is that essentially it
is for the minister to say whether he or she wants more or less
inspection, rather than seeing an inspectorate's budget as simply
part of the departmental budget which can be sliced by bits of
the department. We do not answer to the department, essentially;
we answer to the ministers. Clearly, if ministers decide that
they cannot afford as much inspection or they can only afford
so much inspection, then that is a proper political decision;
but that is the place at which those decisions should be made.
Q13 Julie Morgan: If you had had
more resources, what do you feel you should have done that you
have not been able to do?
Dame Anne Owers: I certainly think
I would have looked at the inspection cycle. At the moment we
can only undertake to inspect every adult prison twice in a five-year
period. A lot can happen within that. One of those inspections
will be a short, follow-up inspection—which is always tricky
and is particularly tricky in big prisons—to make sure that
you have really covered all the territory. I would want to look
at those resources, therefore. I think also the ability to do
more in the way of flying visits or investigations, for example.
I think it is quite proper for ministers to ask inspectorates
to do investigations into, not individual cases but matters that
go to the way that a prison or prisons are run. It has not happened
in my time and I think that it has just fallen into disuse. I
do not know that I would have the resources to do it if asked,
but I do think we should have something in our back pocket which
allows us to do a quick exercise of that kind.
Q14 Julie Morgan: Also, in our report
on the Role of the Prison Officer we do think that the
Chief Inspector should have the power to inspect the training
provided to prison officers. Would you be able to do that under
the resources you have now?
Dame Anne Owers: Certainly not,
no; nor would I be able to do it with the staff skill set I have
now—and I am not sure that inspecting training is something
that fits well within my inspectorate. Certainly in conjunction,
say, with Ofsted we would be able to do something. It is quite
a way away from the remit, however, which does not include anything
about staff or the organisation of the service. The remit is very
specific to conditions in prisons and the treatment of prisoners.
If there were more resources available, certainly one could look
more at the way the service operates, which would give a very
different feel to inspection but would not be impossible.
Q15 Julie Morgan: I think that you
have talked a bit about the impact of efficiency savings on the
prison regime. I do not know whether you have anything more to
add in terms of what is happening?
Dame Anne Owers: Not really. As
I said earlier, I fear both the actual effect of this on what
will be delivered in prisons but also the messages it sends to
staff and to prisons. There must be a concern about that—about
the way resources are being spread. I speak to a lot of governors
now who I think are more worried than they have been in their
service about what kind of prisons they will be able to run in
the next couple of years.
Q16 Alun Michael: Could I ask you
one thing there? You referred earlier on to the importance of
the relationships and the role of the prison officer in building
a constructive relationship with prisoners. You have also referred
to the importance of the training and development of staff in
order to be able to provide that. Then you have suggested that
the inspectorate is concerned more narrowly with the role of the
prison. One of the things we have made a comment on recently is
the question on how all of the criminal justice system contributes
to the whole, particularly in reducing offending and reoffending,
rather than having compartmentalised slices. Is there an inconsistency
in what you have said there?
Dame Anne Owers: An inconsistency
about not being able to look at the whole prison, you mean?
Q17 Alun Michael: Yes.
Dame Anne Owers: I do not think
it is inconsistent. I think it is valid in the sense that obviously,
by looking at what is happening to prisoners and in prisons, you
identify those things which are not happening with staff. I am
not inhibited from making recommendations that more staff training
is needed in mental health, in race awareness, diversity or whatever.
I do not feel any inhibition from doing that. However, if you
were to get into the actual organisational running of the service,
that would be a rather different thing.
Alun Michael: I understand the distinction.
Q18 Dr Whitehead: This afternoon
you have mentioned and emphasised your independence, and that
obviously is independence in fact. How do you make sure you are
seen to be independent, or do you regard those as essentially
the same exercises?
Dame Anne Owers: No, I do not
think it is the same exercise. The perception of independence
is very important and is something that you need to work at and,
if you like, police the boundaries of all the time. There is clearly
a statutory independence and a reporting, in that you report to
ministers but you have a statutory duty and statutory creation.
I can honestly say that in the nearly eight and a half years now
that I have been doing the job I have never felt under pressure
from any prisons minister to alter, to change what I have said,
to do anything differently. I think that ministers have been very
aware of independence. One of the ways I think that is crucial
for an inspectorate of prisons in particular is the fact that
we have our own standards. We have our own independent standards.
They are in many ways coterminous with the standards that NOMS
and the Prison Service set. However, as I said before in answer
to questions, we are looking at quality rather than quantity;
we are looking at best practice rather than compliance; we are
looking at outcomes rather than processes. I think that part of
the work is very much helped by the fact that my inspectorate
is now the co-ordinator of something called the National Preventive
Mechanism, which has been set up because of the UK's international
obligations under the protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture,
which requires state parties to have in place a National Preventive
Mechanism which provides for independent and expert inspection,
regular inspection, of all places of custody. In the UK, because
of the composition of the four nations of the UK, that consists
of 18 different bodies looking at all kinds of detention in all
four parts of the United Kingdom. We co-ordinate it. I think that
anchoring that notion of custodial inspection in international
obligations and therefore international human rights standards
is very helpful, and I think that is very much a part of independence.
Three things that I did when I first took on the job, which I
think went to my perception and others' perception of the actual
independence of the inspectorate, were, first, that I arranged
a protocol with ministers which made it clear that we decided
on the date and timing of publication of reports. We publish everything
and we publish it in the form that we wish, unless ministers were
ever to instruct me not to—which they never have—and
we publish at a time that we choose. Also, and again I think that
for perception purposes it was important, we moved out of what
was then the Home Office building. I think that it is important
not to have the same address as the department or the service
that you inspect. There were also some issues about appraisal
when I was first appointed, and it never actually happened. I
was very clear, as was my then colleague the Chief Inspector of
Probation, that this should happen with an independent element.
There should not be any sense in which a Chief Inspector's performance,
or pay particularly, is linked to a civil servant's perception
of the way that you have done the job. I think that those
things are all very important, therefore.
Q19 Dr Whitehead: Would you say to
your successor "Carry on", or are there particular things
you would like to consider that he or she might do differently
to ensure that that independence is safeguarded?
Dame Anne Owers: One of the things
that does not happen as much as I would have liked it to is reporting
to Parliament. In most independent systems, in other countries'
ombudsmen and their equivalents, it would be statutory reporting
to Parliament and not to ministers in the first place, but there
would certainly be a very strong link with Parliament. I hesitate
to put it before this Committee, whose workload is very heavy
I know but, being examined on my annual report by a parliamentary
committee, having that degree of accountability to Parliament,
is something that I would certainly have welcomed and I feel that
my successor might, because I think that does establish that kind
of accountability. I do not know that otherwise I have many lessons,
except to beware of invitations to come into the big tent. The
threats to independence are very often not people beating you
over the head with something or demanding that you do or do not
do something; it is often "Why don't you help us do this?"
and "Why don't you advise us on this?". Once you start
becoming part of the process then you cannot credibly independently
inspect that which you have helped to create or been part of.
I think that maintaining a distance is one of those things, as
I say, where you need to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Q20 Dr Whitehead: You have mentioned
strengthening the relationship of the inspectorate and Parliament
as a possible suggestion to your successor. What other forms do
you think that strengthening of the relationship might take? At
the moment, for example, the inspector of prisons effectively,
you might say, reports for pay and rations to the Justice Department.
Are there thoughts that might flow in that direction concerning
how the relationship with the inspectorate to Parliament might
follow in the future?
Dame Anne Owers: Yes, there are.
I confess that I have not thought this through very clearly. When
there was the talk of having a single criminal justice inspectorate,
there was discussion whether that should be a non-departmental
public body, for example. There is a reluctance to create non-departmental
public bodies. There is an issue because, clearly, while a department
or a minister would not dream of telling a chief inspector what
to do or what not to do, the fact of setting the budget is a very
powerful form of determining certainly what you cannot do, given
that you have certain statutory responsibilities. I do not know
what alternative system there could be but I would certainly be
of the view that anything that strengthens and emphasises the
fact that chief inspectors are not part of departments, do not
report to departments—those are some of the most difficult
battles I have had, to be honest, in my time as Chief Inspector—in
terms of how I appoint staff, how I manage my own finances within
my budget, all those kinds of things, where the temptation is
to try to fit you into a template, not for any wicked reason but
simply because that is the way things work in departments.
Q21 Dr Whitehead: Would you put that
down to a hardwired predilection to approach you as an inspector
from the department in that way, or are there different forms
of relationship that perhaps could be envisaged, certainly with
the Ministry of Justice or with other government departments?
Dame Anne Owers: One of the things
that I am pleased we have done, after a lot of effort- and I hope
this is something that I will be able to hand on to my successor
and they will not need to do—is that we have now developed
a framework document, which will be backed up by protocols with
the Ministry of Justice that precisely delineate the limits of
independence and the areas where we can and must have freedom
of movement. That has never happened before and that will be very
helpful. It is not because the Ministry of Justice is peopled
with individuals who are desperate to control chief inspectors;
it is simply because that is the way things work in departments.
When someone new comes in, they press the "normal" button.
They tell you that you cannot have your reports printed by a cheaper
printer, because you must use the one they use. Or you must appoint
people who would make extremely good civil servants but who may
not make brilliant inspectors—I mean the job competencies
that are laid out, not the individuals. Setting those protocols
out, getting agreement and sign-off from them, which we have now
just about done, will be enormously helpful, both in preventing
some of the aggravation and annoyance that can happen between
inspectorates and departments but also just making clear, for
the avoidance of doubt, where the boundaries lie.
Q22 Alun Michael: On that point,
you showed how the greater accountability to Parliament would
be of help to the inspector. Are there messages for us as a Committee?
We do look to you for evidence very often in inquiries and I was
trying to remember whether it is automatic that we have you before
us to talk about your reports. It has happened at least once,
if I remember correctly.
Dame Anne Owers: I think it has
happened once in my nine years, certainly.
Q23 Alun Michael: So it is a question
of that being automatic so that everybody understands?
Dame Anne Owers: I would certainly
like to see it. I am aware, as I say, of the volume of business
the Committee has to deal with but I think it would help chief
inspectors to have an annual opportunity to reflect with the parliamentary
committee on the overall picture that the inspectorate is finding.
Q24 Alun Michael: That would not
be instead of you making a contribution to a particular inquiry—
Dame Anne Owers: No, not at all.
Q25 Alun Michael: ... but as a sort
of once-a-year stock-take?
Dame Anne Owers: Just as a short
session like this, for example. A sort of state-of-the-nation
session, a state-of-our-prisons session.
Q26 Jessica Morden: You also have
immigration holding and removal centres and military detention
centres within your remit. How do you ensure that you are giving
those the attention that they deserve? Also, what would you say
to your successor about how you think these centres fit in together
with the prisons?
Dame Anne Owers: Perhaps I can
take the second half of your question first. I think what has
happened during my time at the inspectorate, and I very much welcome
this, is that we have become an inspectorate of custody—immigration
you mentioned, military and also, of course, police now as well.
That, I think, is very welcome because essentially the same kind
of criteria apply once you lock somebody up or once you force
someone to be in a place. Obviously we have developed the methodology
differently for those different settings, but the same kind of
principles, the same kind of tests, apply. Prisons, of course,
is by far the biggest part of our work and will remain so, and
we must ensure that that carries on, but the others are important.
I do not at the moment have sufficient resources to cover the
amount of immigration inspection agreed with ministers whereas
my budget for prisons has continued to match the workload; and,
as I say, I am very grateful for the relatively small but very
welcome amount of additional resources I have for unannounced
inspections. The inspection of immigration removal centres does
not match the workload.
Q27 Jessica Morden: Does that mean
you have had to cut back on your inspections?
Dame Anne Owers: It means that,
if there are not more resources, I cannot do the work.
Q28 Jessica Morden: What is your
current requirement for inspecting them?
Dame Anne Owers: I cannot remember
the exact figure but I am certainly happy to let the Committee
have it. I would hate to pluck a figure out of the air and for
it to be wrong.
Q29 Mr Heath: I ought to know the
answer to this, but you have no responsibility for military detention
overseas, do you?
Dame Anne Owers: Not at the moment,
no.
Q30 Mr Heath: Is it specifically
excluded?
Dame Anne Owers: I do not have
any statutory responsibility for the military detention at all.
I inspect by invitation of the Ministry of Defence. We therefore
inspect the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester
and, under the National Preventive Mechanism that I referred to
earlier, I think there will be a requirement for somebody certainly
to look at the guardhouses and so on, where others are held. It
is not a statutory responsibility, however, although of course
it is now mandatory.
Q31 Rosie Cooper: The job description
and person spec for your role—have you had any involvement
at all in the drawing up of it?
Dame Anne Owers: Not in the drawing
up of it, but I was able to see it and make comments on it.
Q32 Rosie Cooper: Were those comments
listened to?
Dame Anne Owers: I think they
were, yes. I did not sign it off, however. I was not involved
in the signing-off of it.
Q33 Rosie Cooper: Do you think it
is about right now?
Dame Anne Owers: I think it covers
the work that I do, yes. It emphasises the broad custodial part
of the role. It also reflects the National Preventive Mechanism
role that I have described, and the fact that one of the main
tasks of the Chief Inspector is to set standards and ensure a
consistent inspection methodology—so that is the role.
Q34 Rosie Cooper: Which are the crucial
qualities do you think that are required?
Dame Anne Owers: It is very difficult
for me to say, not least because, if you look at my two immediate
predecessors, the three of us do not exactly share a list of personality
qualities. However, having said that, it is surprising that we
have all seen the job in much the same way. In some ways the job
defines the person. The huge advantage, I think, of the job of
being Chief Inspector of Prisons is the amount of hands-on time
you get in prisons themselves. It is not a chief inspector job
where you sit at a desk all day and imagine what a good prison
might look like. It is a job where, two or three times a month,
I walk the landings of a prison and discuss with my team what
this prison should look like and whether it looks like
that. I think that you therefore need that curiosity about why
things happen and what happens. You need to be able to pull together
and the teams have to pull together, a huge amount of information,
to make a pattern, to make an analysis of what is really happening
here, and you need not necessarily to be satisfied with the first
answer you get. That nose for "Hmm, this doesn't quite look
right" and then the supplementary questions. However, I am
almost describing the role of an inspector. Of course, the Chief
Inspector is important but the inspectorate could not work, I
could not do my job, without, now, six really good inspection
teams who will not rest until they find out what is happening
in a place.
Rosie Cooper: Huge leadership. Can I
say that you have had a fairly positive response from the press.
Why do you think that is?
Q35 Alun Michael: What can you teach
us?
Dame Anne Owers: I have had a
reasonably positive response, I suppose. There obviously have
been times when things have been pulled out of reports that various
sections of the press have thought was not quite right. The answer
is that I truly do not know. One of the things that I have always
been very sure about and very clear with my inspectorate colleagues,
which I suppose comes out of my experience in the non-governmental
sector, where nobody needs to take any notice of you at all if
you are not relevant and accurate, is that everything we say should
be evidence-based; that we produce information which relies upon
as consistent and as accurate as possible evidence from the institutions
that we inspect. I think that helps, because we are not flying
kites; we are not really out to make a splash in that sense, unless
a splash needs to be made. Also, being aware of the problems,
the inherent difficulties in managing something like the Prison
Service, you need to be aware of those things. Apart from that,
I do think it helps—and I think it is something that probably
ministers would love to be able to do more of—to have actually
been there; to know yourself what is happening. You are not simply
presenting a report which you have read, but you are presenting
the tip of quite a large iceberg and you know a lot about what
is underneath. The advantage of the focus of the job is that you
can do that. I do think it is something that is valuable not just
in relation to the media but also in relation to the conversations
that you are able to have with ministers and those running the
service.
Q36 Rosie Cooper: Would they be the
tips you would pass on to your successor?
Dame Anne Owers: I would be very
reluctant to pass on tips to anybody, in the sense that I think
everybody does the job differently. The contours of the job are
the same but you actually have to make it yours. I certainly would
not want to be implicitly trying to decide for somebody else how
they do the job. But the critical parts of it are the engagement
with what is actually happening in prison; the commitment to the
standards and values that the inspectorate had before my time
and I would hope will continue to have. When we got together the
whole inspectorate to develop a statement of values—which
sounded as if it might be quite woolly and one of those quite
difficult things to do but turned out to be a very good exercise—one
of the things we put in that was an ability to believe that people
and institutions can change, and I think that is absolutely at
the root of what we do.
Q37 Mr Heath: I notice one thing
in the personal specification is that the post-holder is not expected
to have a background within criminal justice or immigration service.
Some inspectors have and some inspectors have not. Do you think
it is essentially a disadvantage to be identified with a branch
of the judicial system or the wider criminal justice system, or
is it a help because you know your way around?
Dame Anne Owers: That is a very
tricky question, given that I have no idea who you will have in
front of you in a month's time! Let me turn the question round
a bit, if I may. I do not think it is a huge disadvantage not
to have direct operational experience within any of those services.
Neither myself nor any of my predecessors have—David Ramsbotham
coming from the Army, Stephen Tumim coming from being a circuit
judge. I think that, as long as you are able fairly rapidly to
master the technical language of what is going on, it is about
using your eyes, ears and brain to work out what is happening.
Like all specialist roles, as I say, it carries its own language;
it carries its own way of working; but I do think there is something
about bringing a fresh eye to things. Prisons almost by definition
tend to be self-referential. Things tend to be done because they
have always been done that way and because that is the way things
are. It is the ability always to ask the question "Why?".
Too often, institutions are only asking themselves "How?"
and it is the role of the inspectorate to ask "Why?".
However, I am not saying that you cannot do that if you have experience
in one of those areas. I meet prison governors who are quite capable
of asking themselves the question "Why?"—and they
are the best ones.
Q38 Mr Turner: What has been the
impact on prisons of the clustering programme?
Dame Anne Owers: It is difficult
to say yet because it is still fairly new, and of course there
have been different models of clustering. There are the clusters
like that on the Isle of Sheppey, where there are still three
different governors, with a kind of super-governor or chief executive
on top. There are clusters like the cluster at Hewell, which is
run as a single prison with a single governor. Then there are
these slightly odd clusters, like Blantyre House male resettlement
prison and East Sutton Park women's open prison, which are run
together, and New Hall closed women's prison, Askham Grange women's
open prison, now run together. Those kind of clusters are essentially
money-saving devices. It means that you can chop off a layer of
top management. We do have some concerns about clusters, partly
because of the size of what you are creating and partly because
of the management lines. So much in a prison depends upon the
governor and the senior management team. Knowing what is going
on in your prison, being able to walk around it and keep an eye
on what is happening, is so important in terms of running the
prison. I think that we have concerns, therefore, but we really
have not yet been able to inspect some of those different kinds
of clusters enough to be able to give you a definitive answer.
It is certainly something that needs to be looked at. A lot depends
also on the size of the individual units within the cluster.
Q39 Alun Michael: It has been a very
useful evidence session in my view and perhaps, in practical terms,
makes the case for a sort of annual cross-examination of the Chief
Inspector that you were suggesting. Can I invite you to add anything
that we have not managed to tease out of you up until now? Is
there anything that we have not covered in our questioning that
you would like to add? Secondly, is there anything specific that
you would like to offer us, as you depart, as advice to us as
a Committee in fulfilling our role?
Dame Anne Owers: Goodness, that
is a challenge! I think we have covered most of the ground. The
challenge for the Committee, for ministers, for the National Offender
Management Service, in the next couple of years will be considerable,
because of the demand for the service increasing, the expectation
of what is wanted from it increasing, at a time when resources
are diminishing. I think that these will be difficult and tricky
times, therefore. Because prisons have not been very much on the
political radar for at least a couple of years, I think there
is a temptation to think that everything is fine and to forget
that prisons are inherently fragile environments that need managing
very carefully day by day, week by week, and that places a huge
strain on the people who are charged with doing that. You asked
me about the media and the press and, inevitably, those matters
that get attention within the media are the reports that are bad
and what goes wrong; that is par for the course and we know that.
I would hate that to obscure the fact that, by and large, we are
very lucky in the Prison Service we have, in the way it is managed
and the values by which it is managed, and in the general safety
and good running of our prisons. People come from overseas and
ask about the work of the Inspectorate and the point at which
their jaws drop is the point at which I say that all of my inspectors,
including myself and including our relatively young researchers,
have their own keys, walk around prisons on their own, unlock
cell doors, go in and talk to prisoners, even in our high security
prisons. I do not think there are many countries in the world
where that would be thought feasible or possible safely to do,
so I think that is something to be preserved. Also the willingness
and the attempts of the Service to do something positive with
the people within prisons. That needs to be protected, and I think
will be difficult to protect in the years ahead.
The Chairman resumed the Chair.
Q40 Chairman: Dame Anne, can I give
my apologies, I was across the corridor questioning the Prime
Minister and I am very grateful to Alun Michael for taking the
chair, but can I also thank you for assisting the Committee this
afternoon and for all the work you have done. We have tried in
our own recent reports to demonstrate both things that are not
good in prisons but even more the many good things which happen
in prisons, and we have tried to perhaps redress the balance to
some extent by recognising a great deal of good work, but your
service in the capacity of HM Chief Inspector is a very good tradition
and you have admirably fulfilled that tradition, so thank you
very much.
Dame Anne Owers:
Thank you very much.
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