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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To
be published as HC 354-ii
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
JUSTICE COMMITTEE
PRE-APPOINTMENT HEARING: HM
CHIEF INSPECTOR OF PRISONS
Wednesday 10 March 2010
MR NICHOLAS HARDWICK
Evidence heard in Public Questions 42 - 71
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of
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Oral Evidence
Taken
before the Justice Committee
on Wednesday 10 March 2010
Members present
Sir Alan Beith, in the Chair
Mr David Heath
Mr Douglas Hogg
Mrs Siān C James
Alun Michael
Julie Morgan
Mr Andrew Turner
Mr Andrew Tyrie
________________
Witness: Mr Nicholas Hardwick, current
Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (preferred candidate),
gave evidence.
Q42 Chair:
Welcome, Mr Hardwick. You are the preferred candidate for the post
of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons.
Many of us have come across you in person or through correspondence in
your previous roles, particularly at the Independent Police Complaints
Authority. That is a different
background, is it not, from an inspection role?
How do you see the transition from managing a 'complaints' machinery to
that of a prison inspectorate role?
Mr Hardwick: There are a
number of differences. First of all, at
the IPCC I am the Chairman, so
essentially my job is co-ordinating the work of the other commissioners and the
staff, who are led by the chief executive, who is the accounting officer. In a sense, it is a co-ordinating
collegiate role, whereas as the Chief Inspector you are very much directly,
personally and individually, in charge.
There is obviously a difference between the two organisations, in that
one is dealing with individual incidents and complaints that are located in
particular times, where there is often conflict between two individuals, and
the inspection role is looking at systems and processes. There are real differences and I would say
there are some similarities as well. For
both roles, demonstrating and achieving real independence is crucial to how
people perceive it and crucial to how the job is done. Both roles need to be evidence-based in their
conclusions and to show real clarity about that. Both require you to demonstrate leadership as
opposed to direct management, you are leading not just the organisation but the
wider system of which you are a part. I
hope that my career to date will show that I have the qualities to do
that.
Q43 Chair:
It is
a career which has brought you full circle from offenders, via the police, back
to offenders again.
Mr Hardwick: It has, indeed. That is one of the attractions. I started my working life as a very small
cog in the NACRO machine, but that made a very big impression on me. Two things in particular. First, I was a very junior member of staff at
NACRO, but was inspired by what I saw Vivien Stern doing at the time. That was a real demonstration of leadership
from which I have learned since. Second,
I was working at NACRO on what were then called Youth Opportunities Programmes,
doing community-based projects with young offenders. What worked in that were
the relationships the supervisors had with the young people. The supervisors were older men, normally, who
had been in industry, had been made redundant, and then came to supervise our
projects. For a lot of these young
people, this was one of the first stable adult relationships they had had. It really worked. I remembered that when I read your report on
the role of the prison officer, when you said that for some of the people in
prisons the role of the prison officer, the example they set, the personal and
individual relationships they have with the people for whom they are
responsible, is a crucial element in the success or failure of the system. That was something that I learned at NACRO
that is transferable to this role. The
other thing to say about my experience is that working with young offenders
gave you a particular perspective at that time.
In my current role I am responsible for working with the Crown
Prosecution Service, bringing to justice people who have committed serious
offences, putting them before the courts and trying to ensure that they are
held accountable for the crimes they have committed. It is in a particular circumstance, but that
is part of it. I also in this job have a
lot of contact with victims. With
victims, sometimes you can do something and sometimes you just cannot help them
to deal with the losses they have suffered.
All of those things together hopefully give me a rounded view of the
sorts of issues the Prison Service has to get to, and I do not just come to it
from one perspective.
Q44 Alun
Michael: Staying with the question of the comparison
between the role in the Police Complaints Commission and this role, you have
had some experience with complaints relating to police custody suites.
Mr Hardwick: Yes.
Q45 Alun
Michael: Obviously that is one of the areas of complaint
that have come in. Are there lessons
from that, do you think, that would read across to the role of the Inspector of
Prisons?
Mr Hardwick: Yes. There are two things there. One of the things I am pleased about that we
have achieved at the IPCC is that
we have contributed to a reduction in the numbers of deaths in police
custody. That has been important. For me, the crucial factor in a successful
police custody suite is the role of the police custody officer. You could have all the systems and procedures
that you like, but having an experienced officer, often a sergeant, in charge
of the custody suite, who can say to the constable who brings somebody in, "I
don't like the look of him. I'm not
having him here, take him to hospital", or who can ensure that often the
contracted staff under his or her direction do the proper checks on rousing
that they should. Again, that goes back to leadership, to the role of the
individual staff, as much as it does to systems. The other thing which is really important
from that is we are just beginning, with the Chief Inspector, with the two
organisations, to work together, to exchange information, to feed into each
other's work, and I think there is lots more scope to develop that.
Q46 Alun
Michael: I was pleased to hear you make reference to
our report on the role of the prison officer.
There were two things really that were at the heart of that for me. One was that issue of the relationship, which
you have touched on, and the other one was clarity of purpose.
Mr Hardwick: Absolutely.
Q47 Alun
Michael: If the whole criminal justice system is not
clear about that, it is difficult for prisons to be clear within it.
Mr Hardwick: Yes.
Q48 Alun
Michael: As you seem to accept the value of our
contribution in that report, I wonder how that might inform the way you would
approach your role as Inspector.
Mr Hardwick: That is
absolutely correct. One of the things I
have discovered in researching this role, when you start to apply, is that the
obvious question to ask is: what do people say is the purpose of prison? Ask 20 people and you get 40 different
answers. As I understood it, that was
the point of your report almost to say there was not clarity of purpose and
there needed to be. I am still learning,
so I am tentative in my views, but I am very struck by the argument that says,
if you like, that it is imprisonment that is the punishment. It is the decision to deprive somebody of
their liberty and the opportunities they have while they are inside that is the
punishment, not prison and what happens to them. It seems to me it must be the case that
prison should aim, obviously, to hold people securely and in a humane way, but
work to reduce the risk of them re-offending when they come out. I would have thought that wherever you are on
the spectrum of punishment you do not want prison to make people worse; you
want prison to make people better. That
seems not a strong point, but that clarity, I am sure, is essential.
Q49 Alun
Michael: Pursuing that, the big difference is that with
your current role in the Police Complaints Commission you are responding
specifically to complaints, whereas the role of the Inspector of Prisons, in
terms of improving the way those things happen, is a bit different. Would you like to comment about that
difference?
Mr Hardwick: I think that
is absolutely right. One of the
frustrations of the current role is that you are responding to events, and one
of the attractions of the Inspectorate role is that we can be more proactive. Of course there is a programme of inspections
to go through but it is important that we have the widest possible intelligence
base to direct how we use our limited inspection base. I am not clear how, currently, the
Inspectorate does its risk assessments to establish where it should focus, both
on particular institutions and potentially on thematic issues that cut across a
number of different institutions. It
seems to me that is an important thing for us to be able to do.
Q50 Julie
Morgan: How important do you think it is to be seen as
completely independent in this role?
Mr Hardwick: It is
absolutely essential. It is absolutely
essential. I have read what Ann Owers
said to you about this and I have spoken to Ann and I would have a very similar
view to her. Independence is not just in the big set
piece, the sort occasional fights you might get into where you have to assert
your independence robustly. She says,
and I would agree from my experience, that independence is sometimes most
difficult to defend when people say to you in a positive way, "Come into the
tent with us and help us solve this problem" or "Here is a set of procedures
that are really about bookkeeping and personnel and HR that we want you to
follow because it makes life easier for us, the Department". Unless you police those boundaries really
carefully, you wake up one morning and find that you are indistinguishable from
your parent body. It is asserting your
independence there. The second thing is,
in the end, how do you demonstrate your independence? You have to demonstrate it with the rigour of
your evidence, so that when you are challenged you can say, "Here is the
evidence on which I base my conclusions.
It stands up to scrutiny. I
welcome that scrutiny. Here is the
rationale for my decisions and judgments.
It stands up to scrutiny. I am
open and transparent, come and look".
Q51 Julie
Morgan: Dame Ann Owers did suggest there was a danger
of perhaps getting too involved in operational things rather than staying a bit
back. Do you think that is a danger?
Mr Hardwick: Dame Ann Owers
is going to be a very hard act to follow, but she is absolutely right about
that. It is very tempting to say,
"Right, we will inspect this management process. We will take a view on this management
process", be it training, which I know came up in your hearing, be it the
contractual arrangements for the estate.
If you do that, over time, when you do that on a number of different
issues, you start to be responsible as part of the management of the process,
and when you are part of the management of the process, it is that much more
difficult then to criticise what you have been part of putting in place. I think, however tempting it is, you need to
keep that distance.
Q52 Julie
Morgan: It is a delicate balance, is it not?
Mr Hardwick: It is. You could be as independent as you like, but
if you were not effective, if you were not making any difference, then what
would be the point. I was reading the
evidence Ann Owers gave to you about training of prison officers. It seems to me the difference is I do not
think the Inspectorate should be inspecting, on its own, the training of prison
officers. I do think, as a result of its
inspection of prisons, it might be commenting on the training those officers
had received and suggesting how it could be improved or what the problems with
that might be. You would come to it from
the inspection process and the lessons and recommendations that come out of
that, rather than, in a sense, taking a proactive role in the management issues.
Q53 Julie
Morgan: I think she does fear that there might be a
loss from some of those gains she has made by the sort of skirmishes she has
had and may revert after she leaves.
Would you be discussing with her how you would address that issue?
Mr Hardwick: Not on my watch they will not
be lost. I have learned some of this the
hard way. You have to police the
boundaries; you have to be clear, even if that makes life uncomfortable for
people. You have to be very clear about
your independence, otherwise you are no good to anyone because when you are
making your criticisms they are not taken seriously. Also, when you say, "Actually, this has been
done well, the prison here is doing a good job," that needs to be credible too
and if they think you are in somebody's pocket then that will not be effective.
Q54 Julie
Morgan: How do you see your relationship with
Parliament?
Mr Hardwick: I think that is very
important. I do not think that is just
an issue for the Inspectorate; it is an issue for wider, for these sorts of
bodies. I have thought about this a lot.
First of all, I think this is an important place. Hopefully you will support my candidature,
but I think it is important to try to get that endorsement of a cross-party
Committee and I would like to see some continuing relationship. You have a heavy workload, but the idea came
up that once a year you would come back and talk to the Committee about your
report and your work over the year and what you have found, so that you build
up, over time, expertise. In the police
complaints system I know that has happened in Australia. There are models in Australia where
there has been that ongoing relationship, and it means that parliamentarians
are better informed, it means the challenges they can give to you are very
constructive and very helpful. I think
that longer-term relationship with a committee such as this would be good for
the Inspectorate and good for other bodies of its type. You still need to have the relationship with
the Department, of course, because you are trying to influence what they are
doing. It is not a question of
either/or, but, with respect, I think this relationship should be strengthened.
Q55 Mr
Hogg: Mr Hardwick, perhaps I could just say a word
about my background for these purposes.
I was Prison Minister 20 years ago, and I worked with Judge Stephen
Tumim, and I do go to prisons quite frequently because I am also a criminal
barrister and I go and see my clients. I
am conscious from both of those facts and, indeed, from reading generally that
there is an awful lot wrong with the prisons in many very separate ways, and
that the public generally speaking does not give a damn, thinking that on the
whole prisons are there to keep people in custody and that is the end of the
matter. I can see two roles for an
inspector. They overlap but they are,
essentially, I think different. One is
just to identify faults within the parameters of existing policy. That is a somewhat passive but not
unimportant role. Second, and quite
different - and it is the one that Stephen Tumim and Lord Ramsbotham to a
slightly different degree espoused - is to champion the cause of the prisoner,
to try to alert the public as to what is going wrong, to try to get public
sympathy for constructive change, for robust, intrusive, and constructive
criticism of the establishment. I accept
that there is a degree of overlap between the two, but would you accept that
there are these two rather distinct roles and, if so, which do you espouse?
Mr Hardwick: I do not think
they are incompatible roles.
Q56 Mr
Hogg: No, they are not incompatible.
Mr Hardwick: I do not think
they are incompatible. I certainly think
- and I have thought a lot about this - prisons, by their nature, are dark
places, where people are shut away, where things that on the whole most people
would prefer not to think about happen, and where people look after people that
we would all rather not think about.
Part of the job of the Inspectorate is to shine a light on that, to make
it clear to people what is happening in an objective and factual way, to say,
"We are as a society responsible collectively, we need to know what is
happening". You have to shine a light on
those dark places, if I do not sound too sentimental about it. It goes back, I think, to the point about
effectiveness. You also want to change
and improve. My experience of
researching for this is that there is a pretty common analysis of what some of
the problems are. I saw a comment from
you, Chairman, in your justice reinvestment report, that the current prison
expansion programme is unsustainable. We
are trying to do more with more people with fewer resources. That is not a workable equation, is it? Therefore, I think there is a role for the
Inspectorate to try, in an evidence-based way, to get broader public support
and education for the sorts of changes which anyone who does have knowledge of
the system, it seems to me, wants to see.
Q57 Mr
Hogg: I have two prisons close to me, one in the
constituency and one in Lincoln. I am conscious that, with the exception of
your reports, which are fairly intermittent for obvious reasons, we have to
rely on the Independent Monitoring Boards (which I used to know as the Board of
Prison Visitors) for each prison. I
think they are very valuable but I think they are rather ignored. One of the things, it seems to me, that you
could do through the Inspectorate would be to use the Independent Monitoring
Boards as part of your arsenal to review prisons and to alert you when things may
be going wrong, but that would mean that you would have to work with them, and
I am not sure the Inspectorate does at the moment.
Mr Hardwick: I think that
is exactly right. That was what I meant
when I said earlier that we need to broaden our intelligence base for how we
use our resources. There are other
people going into prisons from different perspectives and we need to find a way
of using the insight and information they get both to inform us and to inform
our picture of what is happening inside prisons. I come out of a background of working in the
third sector. One of the positive things
that has happened in prisons recently, as I understand it, is that there is now
more third sector involvement in prisons and, like the Independent Monitoring
Boards, I think they can provide information to the inspectorate both to inform
our risk assessments and where we do our inspections, but also to inform the
broader picture that we are putting out about what is happening in a
constructive evidence-based way.
Q58 Mr
Hogg: Do you see yourself working with them or
merely passively receiving their reports and trying to understand them?
Mr Hardwick: No, I do. Absolutely, I see that. It is already on my list of things to do if
you support my application. I am a very
strong believer in the role of that kind of voluntary, citizen-based
engagement, through the Independent Monitoring Boards, through the third
sector, and what it can do. I think it
is a mutually beneficial arrangement and I would like to see how we strengthen
it and support their roles. I think that
is crucial.
Q59 Mrs
James: You have described prisons as "dark
places". In my experience of working in
the Prison Service they are very far from dark places. The people who are there, who are incarcerated,
have very dark lives.
Mr Hardwick: Yes.
Q60 Mrs
James: And they come with a raft of problems. One of your roles - and I am going slightly
off piste on this one now - would be dealing with press and publicity, because
there is a press department within the Service.
What do you think the public thinks a prison is? We have heard a little bit about what you
think the prison system is, but in my experience there are two types of
people. There are people who say "Hang
'em and flog 'em" or there are people who say, "There's a pity. They are terrible products of their
background."
Mr Hardwick: When I said
"dark places" I was speaking metaphorically.
I meant "out of the public gaze".
I think it is true you will have those two extremes of view and it is the
extremes of view often that will get the most attention. Extremes of view are more interesting than a
middle-of-the-road view. My experience
of similar sorts of issues is that, quite often, people will take a particular
hard-line view, but if you explain things to them and you get into a dialogue
with them they are not as rigid in that view as you expect. There is often a great middle ground. Those who do not have their minds made up in
that same way are more open to argument and the facts than sometimes we give
them credit for. There are polarised
sides of the debate, but I am an optimist about this. I think people are capable of being
persuaded, if you present people with the facts in a sensible way, of coming to
more rationale views. To give you an
example, when I worked at the refugee camp - something about which people have
very polarised views - when you started to get into a sensible discussion with
people, there was a lot more commonsense in their views than sometimes you
would have thought by just reading the newspaper headlines.
Q61 Mrs
James: You would be the person who would have to give
them that lead.
Mr Hardwick: Yes.
Q62 Mrs
James: And enthuse the staff, because I think the
staff is the best resource. Do you think
there is a clear strategic vision of the role of prison on the part of NOMS and
the MoJ, or is it just a matter of coping day-to-day with prison numbers,
lock-ups, bed drills, et cetera?
Mr Hardwick: Clearly people are trying
very hard and Dame Ann Owers recognised the improvements that have been
made. It seems to me you cannot have a
clear strategic vision if you do not have a clear view about what prison is
there for in the first place. You have
to be clear about that. As I do say, it
comes across to me still as an outsider that people feel their backs are
against the wall. It must be
demotivating if you are told, "Don't do the best you can but just do good
enough". I would be surprised if there were
not problems with morale and frustration and a lack of sense of direction. As I say, I think the Inspector has a role as
part of that wider leadership to try to motivate people.
Q63 Mrs
James: Getting that strategic vision, the clear set
of objectives, down to the rank and file, down to the prison officers
themselves, keeping them motivated?
Mr Hardwick: That is an
essential thing to do. The motivation of
the staff is a management issue. That is
what the Prison Service and NOMS are responsible for, but it is important from
the way in which the Inspector does that job that it is seen as a constructive
support to that process. The role of
inspectorates should be to help a service to do it better, not simply to catch
them out when they do it wrong.
Q64 Chair:
Have
you had any discussion with the MoJ about the resources of the inspectorate?
Mr Hardwick: I have had very limited
discussions with the MoJ about the resources of the Inspectorate. They are keen to impress upon me how tight
resources are and I have said to them I think that is a discussion we will need
to come back to.
Q65 Mr
Heath: I am going to ask you about something else you
may or may not have discussed with the Department and that is the future
relationships between the various inspectorates. We have seen the Her Majesty's Inspectorate
of Courts Administration suddenly disappearing.
Mr Hardwick: Yes.
Q66 Mr
Heath: Without any apparent foresight. Have you had any conversations about the
future relationships at all?
Mr Hardwick: Only a very
limited conversation. I have not
presumed I have got the job, so I have had only limited conversation. My own view on that particular issue is that
if you had asked me that question before I had thought of applying for this I
would have thought there does seem to be some logic in combining some of the
inspectorates. Reducing regulatory
burden seems to me to be a sensible thing to do and, without thinking about it
very deeply, I would have been sympathetic to it. Now, understanding a bit more, the fact that
something is called an inspectorate does not of course mean that it is doing
the same job as something else called an inspectorate. I think there is a particular function for
the Prisons Inspectorate, which goes into the first point that Mr Hogg made
about telling people about the conditions and treatment of prisoners per se
rather than the machinery of the Prison Service that I think would risk getting
lost if it was simply incorporated in some wider criminal justice
inspectorate. My view is that I am not
neutral on it, I would have a bias against that combination, but that does not
mean I am not open to argument. I have
not heard all the discussions on it yet and I would be, I am sure, after the
election - whatever happens, the scenery will shift a bit - open to the
evidence, but my bias would be that that critical role about telling people
what is happening in closed institutions must not be lost.
Q67 Mr
Heath: Your view would be not to support a single
criminal justice inspectorate but perhaps to be open to suggestions of joint
working?
Mr Hardwick: Yes. I am sure there are savings, I am sure there
are some functions that can be combined.
My experience of the way that people are working together on the police
custody inspections has been very positive, so I think there are certainly
grounds for co-operation.
Q68 Mr
Hogg: May I strongly reinforce what you said, Mr
Hardwick, at the end about an independent inspectorate. Clearly this Committee may have its own
views, but I can only express my view, which is that I think it is desperately
important for the Prisons Inspectorate to be separate and distinct from any
other inspectorate simply for the reason you have mentioned, somebody has to
shine a light into prisons, and it must not be captured by other lesser
functions.
Mr Hardwick: Yes. This role is not inspecting the Prison
Service and reassuring you about the mechanics of the delivery; it is telling
you about the treatment and conditions in prisons.
Q69 Mr
Hogg: Absolutely, so the public knows what is going
on in their name.
Mr Hardwick: Yes.
Q70 Mr
Hogg: And can be, if possible, brought to care about
it.
Mr Hardwick: Yes. Quite.
Q71 Alun
Michael: Could I reinforce that, because we are giving
you advice about it at this stage, about the emphasis you placed on being
evidence-based but looking wider than the Inspectorate's own inspections
because it seems to me that is very much the approach that is needed. There is a danger - and we have seen this in
the past - of sometimes independence not being evidence-based but more
headline-based.
Mr Hardwick: It is
essential if you are dealing in a controversial area that what you say is
evidence-based. Independence does not mean not talking to people. I would certainly want to have lots of
conversations with people with lots of different views in coming to my own.
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