125.In April 2017, HMPPS replaced the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), with the intention of creating an operationally focused organisation with prisons policy set by the Ministry. The then Secretary of State, rt hon Liz Truss MP, noted that “HM Prison and Probation Service will have full responsibility for all operations across prison and probation. The Ministry of Justice will take charge of commissioning services, future policy development and be accountable for setting standards and scrutinising prison and probation performance.”237
126.This reflected one of the key features of the 2016 White Paper, which set out a change in the relationship between the Ministry and the Prison Service. The White Paper envisaged a system where:238
Effectively, these reforms entailed a direct relationship between the Ministry and governors, with Ministry commissioners setting detailed performance expectations for individual prisons and prison groups. The reforms were due to be codified as part of the 2017 Prisons and Courts Bill, but this fell before the 2017 general election.
127.In June 2018, the then Prisons Minister, rt hon Rory Stewart MP, wrote to us setting out a further change in the relationship between the Ministry and HMPPS. He concluded that the “level of involvement in the detail of individual prisons’ performance sits better with HMPPS through its internal line management chain. Ministers and the MoJ can better drive overall performance of HMPPS against key, national-level metrics. This means that the commissioning relationship described in the White Paper will be amended and we will move to a new performance model that increases the direct accountability of HMPPS to Ministers”.239 The new model means that high-level strategic priorities are set by ministers and HMPPS is responsible for prison performance.
128.Sir Richard Heaton, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, wrote to us in November 2018, setting out further changes to the management of the prisons system. He created two Director General roles, one for prisons and one for probation, to support the Chief Executive of HMPPS. He also announced that some policy functions would revert to HMPPS, having previously been centralised into the Ministry following the abolition of NOMS.240
129.Dr Harry Annison, Associate Professor in Criminal Law and Criminology at Southampton Law School, described the continual change in governance structures as pendulous swings between two approaches: the fusion or separation of policy making and operations. He argued that a common theme in relation to a range of recent policy initiatives pursued by the Ministry has been the disconnect between policy development and operational knowledge, explaining that “It is essential that professional expertise and practical/operational knowledge is recognised as a crucial form of evidence that should inform policy development; and that practitioners are empowered to engage on policy development, to be heard, and in particular to debate the starting assumptions that often tend to determine final policy outcomes.”241
130.A number of our witnesses expressed continuing confusion at the split in responsibilities between the Ministry and HMPPS.242 The Prisoner Learning Alliance identified significant overlap between what civil servants in the Ministry and HMPPS are doing, with different policy teams working on the same areas without this being clearly coordinated.243 The Prison Governors Association welcomed the return of operational policy to HMPPS but expressed concern that there remained a lack of clarity as to what responsibility sits with the Ministry and HMPPS respectively.244
131.Since 2010 there have been seven prison ministers, and different ministers have interpreted how to fulfil their role effectively in different ways; this has had implications for the overarching governance structure for the prison system.245 When giving evidence to the Committee on HMP Liverpool, rt hon Rory Stewart MP set out how he saw his role, saying that “One of the problems has been that we have set up an indirect model where the Ministry commissions and an agency delivers. For better or for worse, I do not know whether this is true in this Department, Ministers sometimes feel it is not their job to get into operational details. They set the grand strategic policy. I disagree. I think this is an operational job and I have responsibility to make sure prisons are clean. In order to do that, I need to get into the prisons and I need to ask difficult questions about the reports.”246 Rt hon Robert Buckland QC MP, the now Secretary of State for Justice, told us when he was the Prisons Minister that “I am not here to run every prison operationally, but I am here, I hope, to set a clear steer to the civil servants about what I expect to be done.”247 The Prison Reform Trust emphasised the need for continuity in leadership, saying that operational reform “cannot be delivered by the minister but only by suitably devolved authority to an expert and dedicated professional head. Agency status, as originally conceived, sought to enshrine this basic division of responsibilities. It is manifestly not being interpreted in that way at present.”248
132.Accountability starts at the top of any governance structure and there needs to be absolute clarity as to the respective responsibilities of the Ministry, and by extension the Minister, and HMPPS. The Prison Service needs a period of stability to deal with the many challenges it faces and constantly changing who is responsible for what, with ever more complicated arrangements, is not helpful in this endeavour. We recommend that the Ministry clarifies the split in responsibilities between itself and HMPPS, particularly in relation to functions delivered by policy teams.
133.In August 2018, rt hon Rory Stewart MP announced a £10 million investment in the ‘10 prisons project’, which piloted new approaches to standards of security in 10 of the most challenging prisons in England and Wales.249 The Minister pledged to resign in a year if violence and drug misuse had not improved in those establishments.250 The Prison Reform Trust described the initiative as novel because of the close personal involvement of a minister in the operational management of those prisons.251 When we met governors, all agreed that the investment was welcome, but a number raised concern that the project had resulted in resources being diverted from other prisons in need.252
134.The results of the project were announced in August 2019. The rate of assaults per 1,000 prisoners in the prisons dropped by 16%, compared to a national decrease over the same period of 8%. However, in three of the 10 prisons the rate of assaults per 1,000 prisoners increased.253 Phil Copple reflected that there were some lessons to be learned from the project. He said: “We probably, in some respects, threw too much at some of those prisons early on, so they were getting lots of people coming in, but in a way that was not sufficiently sequenced or co-ordinated.”254 The Secretary of State said the next steps, post evaluation of the project was “to focus on eight to 10 prisons that we think are most at risk, and do some intensive work with them over a fixed period with a control-room mentality, and to roll that out. Rather than having it as a one-off, we want to do it progressively over a number of years. I have 118 prisons in the closed estate to worry about. The 10 prisons project was an admirable way of focusing attention and getting some quick learning, but I want to achieve more in the wider estate over the next few years.”255
135.We welcome the broadly positive results of the 10 prisons project. However, there were many aspects to the project, such as additional investment in leadership. The limited evaluation that was published provided no quantitative or qualitative analysis of the specific initiatives undertaken. The point of the project was to identify what works in terms of improving safety and decency in prisons, but it remains unclear exactly which parts of the project will now be rolled out across the rest of the estate and what funding is available to do this. Now that the results of the 10 prisons project have been published, we recommend that the Ministry publishes further analysis of the relative success of the various initiatives undertaken, as well as providing details as to what is now being rolled out to other prisons in the estate and what funding will be available to do this.
136.A new delivery structure for HMPPS was introduced in April 2018 with Prison Groups and Prison Group Directors (PGDs), each of whom is responsible for the operational delivery and strategic development of around four to seven prisons and line management of prison governors.256 Previously, governors had been managed in much larger groups. In relation to our inquiry into events at HMP Liverpool, the former Chief Executive of HMPPS said that he accepted the previous level of oversight was not sufficient and this was one of the reasons for introducing smaller groups of prisons, to give PGDs “more resource to be able both to support governors and to ensure compliance across the requirements.”257
137.The Prisoner Learning Alliance welcomed the move, suggesting it should mean that governors receive more support in their region and that equally PGDs would have a clearer idea of what was happening in their groups of prisons.258 However, the Prison Reform Trust was more critical, noting that “a Governor now has a chain of command above them containing at least four more senior levels in HMPPS, all wishing to be “assured”.259 Andrea Albutt was also critical of the current regime, saying that:
At a practical level, prison governors feel that they are under more scrutiny than ever. Prisons have been in a bad place for a long time, so the answer is, “Let’s scrutinise and assure more,” which is absolutely what they do. We have built a big factory of assurance above prisons, but in prisons they feel they are spending more time assuring than actually governing. It has become a real monster to feed. That is what governors report to us. The fact is that they are giving assurance. In many of our prisons, they are giving assurance that they are not able to deliver, but there is no resource to make things better.260
138.Governors we met broadly welcomed the new group structure, where small groups of Governors are now managed by a regional Director. However, a number felt that the new arrangements brought additional support, but greater scrutiny. Several spoke of being required to constantly “feed the beast” of people above them in the chain of command wanting assurance. One said that although they had support from their PGD, they were under pressure due to the high level of scrutiny and demands for assurance on lengthy lists of hundreds of action points. Another commented that they were sometimes frustrated that they had to spend a lot of time explaining what they were doing rather than being able to get on with it. Jo Farrar accepted that “we have been told by governors that there is a lot of assurance.”261
139.It is vital that HMPPS has an oversight structure in place that enables it to identify where problems exist and support governors. We welcome the introduction of the Prison Group Structure. However, any oversight structure must be proportionate and focused on outcomes. We recommend HMPPS commissions a review to look at how its oversight structures can be streamlined to reduce the burden on governors and their teams, for example by condensing the number of requests for assurance.
140.Public sector prisons are subject to a Performance and Assurance Framework designed to provide a process for the identification, management and improvement of underperforming prisons and prisons that are performing well. The Performance Management Framework for prisons looks at data against a range of measures being collected and monitored each month. Establishments are then assigned a place on a four-point scale, with level one for prisons of serious concern and level four for exceptional establishments.262
141.The 2016 White Paper included a range of performance measures, many which have not been implemented. Appendix 1 sets out the current performance measures used by HMPPS in comparison to what was in the White Paper. We have previously called for a review of performance measurement statistics to properly monitor the amount of time prisoners spend outside their cells, as well as access to purposeful activity, such as education.263 The Ministry says it “already [has] plans to update our performance framework from 2020/21 to include offender Time Out of Cell and time spent on Purposeful Activity. This will also include the time offenders spend doing paid work on Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL); and the time spent in education to assess attainment in English and Maths.”264 The Secretary of State noted that he did not yet have information about time out of cell.265 Jo Farrar emphasised that purposeful activity is “something we need to know about.”266
142.We had an interesting discussion with our witnesses about whether the amount of monitoring that HMPPS undertakes is appropriate. The Secretary of State told us that he did “not want to… swamp the service with requests for information that is a substitute for action.”267 Andrea Albutt felt that the performance measures in place were the right ones, but emphasised that prisons were not sufficiently resourced to achieve the targets set, saying that “if we were resourced to deliver all those things, we would have really good outcomes for prisoners. You can put in more scrutiny, more targets and more specific targets, but the outcomes will still not be achieved if you are not resourced.”268 Jo Farrar noted that she had started to review what performance measures were used: “We are looking at how we develop measures in a balanced and proportionate way, and how we do the right assurance but less of it, so that we can put more money into improvement.”269 Phil Copple explained that to effectively measure performance in areas such as purposeful activity, a technological solution was required.270
143.We recognise the need for any performance management framework or data collection to be proportionate, but we remain concerned about the lack of data available beyond prison safety and security. We welcome the Ministry’s commitment to introduce measures for time out of cell and purposeful activity in 2020–21. However, three years on from the White Paper, we call for a wider discussion about how prison performance is monitored and what data is collected. We note that the Chief Executive has started to review what the right performance measures are and how prisons should be held to account. We recommend that this review engages with the widest possible group of stakeholders and considers what technological solutions are available to make data collection as accurate and resource-efficient as possible.
144.The White Paper proposed performance measures in relation to both health and education in prisons, including the number of medical appointments cancelled due to non-availability of prisoners and measures that assess a prisoner’s progress against milestones in their individual learning plan. However, as demonstrated in Appendix 1, there are no specific health and education measures in the current prison performance framework. The Prison Reform Trust said that there should be a suite of performance measures that require collaboration with partners, from health and education through to resettlement.271
145.There is very little data related to health and education in prisons in the public domain. The performance of healthcare providers in prisons is measured using health and justice indicators of performance (HJIPs), however these are not published. NHS England, who are responsible for the HJIPs, told us that to enable data to be published there are a number of steps that need to be undertaken to ensure the quality and integrity of the data. It is currently working on defining data standards for prisons.272 This means there is no clear, public information on key information about the health of the prison population, which can often affect the performance of prisons. Digby Griffith, Executive Director for Safety and Rehabilitation, said that HMPPS is looking to “pull from those health and justice indicators owned by others and pool them with some of our own indicators to create a package—a suite of measures that we can use across the five agencies [involved in healthcare in prisons].”273 He anticipated that this would be in place by the end of the financial year.274
146.More progress has been made in relation to education in prisons, where the introduction of the Prison Education Framework should improve the data available and enable a core set of performance measures to be used by all prisons. Francesca Cooney, Head of Policy at the Prisoners’ Education Trust, said that “The assessment data will be a core set of data. You will be able to see who is being assessed in maths, in education, and progress there. You will be able to see screening for learning difficulties and disability. There is basic data that will be assessed across all prisons.”275 However, she noted that “In terms of outcomes that are more connected to progression and more detailed achievement, we are waiting to see how that is going to be implemented.”276
147.HMPPS collects detailed data on safety in prisons and other aspects of prison life. As a result, many of the measures in the Prison Performance Framework are safety related. However, well performing prisons are not just those that are safe, but also offer a decent environment and rehabilitate the prisoners in their care. We welcome the steps being taken to improve data collection on health and education, but HMPPS needs to work with its partners to produce a suite of prison performance measures that cover all parts of the prison regime to give an overview of the performance of individual prisons as a whole. We recommend that HMPPS works with its partners, including NHS England, to produce a performance framework that covers all aspects of prison life, including health and education. This should be reflected in the annual prison performance ratings.
148.According to the 2018–19 Prison Performance Ratings, 37% of prisons were rated by HMPPS as having either performance or serious performance concerns. The equivalent figure for 2017–18 is 46%.277 Prisons of concern are either managed within their prison group through Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) or will be put in special measures. If HM Inspectorate of Prisons has significant concerns about the performance of a prison, the Chief Inspector can invoke the urgent notification protocol.
Figure 5: Annual Prison Performance Ratings 2011–12 to 2018–19
Source: Ministry of Justice, Annual Prison Performance Ratings 2018/19, 25 July 2019. As the Prison Performance Tool is the result of a revised performance framework, direct comparisons cannot be made to performance ratings from 2017/18 derived through the Custodial Performance Tool (CPT), or to performance ratings before 2017/18 derived through the Prison Ratings System (PRS).
149.A number of our witnesses were concerned about the effectiveness of the special measures used by HMPPS to support poorly performing prisons. As at 1 May 2019, there were 16 prisons in special measures, 14% of the total prison estate.278 Andrea Albutt gave the example of HMP Bristol, where the Chief Inspector invoked the urgent notification in June 2019; the prison had been in special measures for the two years before that.279 HM Inspectorate of Prisons raised similar concerns in relation to HMP Lewes, saying that although no urgent notification was issued, its inspection called into question the effectiveness of special measures. It explained that “Despite the prison having been in special measures for two years, scores had declined in three of our four healthy prison assessments, and failed to improve in the fourth (safety).”280 Peter Clarke wrote to us in July 2019, noting that the Inspectorate had inspected eight prisons where special measures had been in place for longer than six months. Of these eight, he stated that “scores improved at three sites, remained the same at two sites and declined at three sites”.281 He also called for absolute clarity as to who was responsible for making improvements, something which he felt was currently missing.282
Box 10: HMP Bristol
HMP Bristol has declined over four inspections since 2013, with safety assessed as poor, the lowest grading, in 2017 and 2019. In April 2017, HMP Bristol was place in ‘special measures’ by HMPPS. Despite it being in special measures, the Chief Inspector of Prisons invoked the Urgent Notification protocol for the prison in June 2019, citing among others the following reasons:
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Source: Letter from Peter Clarke CVO OBE QPM, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, HM Inspectorate of Prisons to The Rt Hon David Gauke MP, Justice Secretary, Ministry of Justice, Urgent Notification: HM Prisons Bristol, 11 June 2019
150.A lack of resource to support the number of prisons in special measures was cited as one of factors inhibiting their effectiveness.283 Phil Copple noted that “There is an element in the scale of the operational challenges that has meant that we have not been able to do as much for every single place in special measures as we would like to, because there were more than a dozen of them at one point in time.”284 He said that in the case of HMP Bristol, resource had been prioritised but it was not enough to stop the prison having a poor inspection.285 He also emphasised the need for intensive support that works alongside local management for a period of time.
151.The Secretary of State accepted that there needed to be improvement to the special measures mechanism and HMPPS is currently undertaking a review of special measures arrangements.286 We welcome the review of special measures being undertaken by the Ministry. There is little point in identifying prisons as requiring additional support, if the resulting action does not result in improved performance. There must be sufficient resource available to support prisons that are struggling effectively. We recommend that the Ministry publishes the results of the review undertaken by HMPPS and sets out the steps it will take to improve the support available to poorly performing prisons.
152.We considered the extent to which current governance structures within HMPPS facilitate the sharing of good practice between different prisons across the estate. Andrea Albutt said that there was no formal strategy for sharing good practice within HMPPS, but hoped that the prison group structure would be able facilitate this.287 The Butler Trust, an organisation which facilitates the sharing of good practice in the prison and probation sector, suggested it may be helpful if prison group directors were able to provide regular reports of good practice within their groups that could then be collated and disseminated across the rest of the estate.288
153.Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League, suggested there needed to be a level of ethical oversight and scrutiny within the prison system. She thought the role of the College of Policing in the police might be a useful example.289 The College sets standards in professional development for all police forces and also commissions research into best practice. However, Philip Wheatley cautioned that “Currently there is sound operational knowledge of what good practice is, but a shortage of experienced front line staff, managers and up to date equipment to allow it to be successfully implemented in all the prisons that could benefit from it.”290
154.The Secretary of State told us that one of his greatest frustrations is the fact that there is an inability to share good practice across the system, saying that “What might be good in one establishment is not necessarily understood across the service. There is a real sense now that that has to change, and is changing, and there is a sense of common purpose that we can do better.”291 The sharing of good practice is an important function of any governance structure and we agree with the Secretary of State that this is something that needs to improve. We often hear about some of the great work that goes on in individual prisons and would like to see this captured more effectively by HMPPS, so that it can be shared with the rest of the estate where appropriate. We recommend that HMPPS develops a formal strategy for the sharing of good practice across the Prison Service and provides an update on the steps being taken to facilitate this.
155.Thirteen prisons in England and Wales are managed by private sector companies. Three different companies operate these prisons: G4S, Serco and Sodexo. HMP Birmingham, run under contract by G4S, was brought back under public sector management in July 2019. More information on HMP Birmingham can be found in box 11. The combined operational capacity of privately managed prisons in England and Wales is around 16,000.292
Box 11: HMP Birmingham
HMP Birmingham is a Victorian prison and was the first publicly built, owned and operated prisons to be transferred to the private sector. The prison was operated by G4S from 2011 before being returned fully to public sector management in July 2019. In August 2018, HMIP conducted an unannounced reinspection of HMP Birmingham and identified a dramatic deterioration in its condition. The Inspectorate initiated the Urgent Notification protocol on 16 August describing a “near total failure to address … previous recommendations” and “an abject failure of contract management and delivery.” Subsequently, on 20 August, the Secretary of State for Justice used his contractual ‘Step-In’ rights, removing the Prison from G4S’s control and placing it under the leadership of a governor from HMPPS. |
Source: HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Urgent Notification: HM Prison Birmingham, August 2018; Letter from Comptroller and Auditor General to the Chair of the Justice Committee, HMP Birmingham, 7 December 2018.
156.Contracts between private prison providers and the Ministry are extremely complex. When the former Comptroller and Auditor General wrote to us in relation to HMP Birmingham, he noted that the contract for that prison was “an extensive and complex suite of documents comprising the main contract and some 30 detailed schedules, many with their own constituent parts and appendices.”293 Neil Richards, Director of Custodial Contracts, HMPPS, emphasised that in the past year HMPPS had “put in place completely new governance processes, and completely new assurance and performance management processes. We have piloted the strategic relationship management model, which we are about to roll out. We have invested £1.5 million in assurance and performance oversight.”294
157.The role of the controller was identified as being particularly important in the contract management process. The controller is the Ministry’s on-site representative at each private prison and effectively monitors performance on the ground. Neil Richards said he had focussed on making it a dynamic role and a central part of the business. However, he accepted it had previously been seen as a role for people who wanted a break from a more demanding job in a public sector prison.295 Serco proposed to withdraw the controller role from individual prisons and replace it with smaller, regional peripatetic controller teams that visit all establishments.296 Sodexo said it felt that in general the controller role was effective, but emphasised the “sheer weight of compliance and assurance reporting” for private prisons.297
158.However, several witnesses were concerned by the lack of flexibility within contracts and the contract management process. Transition to Adulthood said that “It is extremely difficult and expensive to change contracts for Prison Services and there is an understandable reluctance to do this. However, the mechanisms for responding to difficulties in private prisons need to be more dynamic, and there needs to be a process that can happen outside of the contract. This would ensure that the provider could be held to account effectively and quickly without the contract needing to be varied.”298
159.We considered the provision of healthcare in five private prisons where healthcare is commissioned directly by HMPPS rather than NHS England, as with the rest of the estate. Neil Richards explained that when responsibility for healthcare transferred to NHS England it proved difficult to remove healthcare from some of the private prison contracts and therefore for those prisons it continued to be commissioned directly by HMPPS. He accepted the position was not ideal and noted there was discussions ongoing about how to rectify the position.299
160.NHS England confirmed that the healthcare specifications in relation to those prisons are not the same as the specifications used by NHS England commissioners. It told us that it was in discussions about taking over commissioning responsibility in contracted prisons from HMPPS, although there is no agreed timetable.300 Governors we met as part of this inquiry also raised concerns that current arrangements meant that prisoners were receiving worse standards of healthcare.301
161.It is unacceptable that healthcare in some private prisons is commissioned to a different specification than the rest of the estate and we are concerned that prisoners in some prisons may receive worse standards of healthcare as a result of this situation. It is important that contracts are flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances and this issue should have been dealt with long ago. We recommend that the Ministry sets out a timetable for rectifying this problem. It should also provide information about how HMPPS ensures that there is equivalence between the commissioning specifications it uses and those of NHS England.
162.The performance of private prisons is measured through the Prison Performance Framework in the same way as public sector prisons, however in addition to this, each contract has contract delivery indicators (CDIs) built into it with financial incentives. Therefore, if a private prison operator does not meet its target for a CDI, it may incur a financial penalty; Neil Richards estimated that total financial penalties for all private prison operators is about £1 million per year.302
163.A number of witnesses suggested that CDIs differ between contracts, because of the age of the contract. The range of CDIs used can be seen in figure 6. Wyn Jones, Custodial Operations Director, Serco, said that some CDIs in older contracts used lots of input measures, some of which were not fit for purpose. He noted that the Ministry was undertaking work to look at what CDIs in future contracts might look like.303
Figure 6: Contract delivery indicators in private prison contracts
Source: Ministry of Justice (PPG0044).Note that this graph does not include HMP/YOI Parc. HMP Birmingham is included, although it returned to public sector management in July 2019.
164.Several witnesses gave examples where CDIs resulted in perverse incentives.304 Janine McDowell, Chief Executive Officer, Justice Services, Sodexo, illustrated this in relation to contraband saying that “You can absolutely make the case that the more you find, the more successful you are at detecting contraband and doing your job properly. Equally, it can be interpreted that a failure of systems has allowed the contraband to find its way into the prison in the first instance.”305 She noted that some contracts, and the CDIs in them, were more than 20 years old.306
165.We welcome the work being undertaken by the Ministry to review the contract delivery indicators (CDIs) to be used for future contracts. However, the fact that many of the current contracts use varying and often out of date CDIs, seems to us an oddity that risks creating an unfair playing field where perverse incentives exist. We recommend that the Ministry considers how it can ensure that future contracts have the flexibility to take into account changes in performance measurement standards as appropriate.
166.The Prison Operator Framework was announced in November 2018. Once on the framework, operators can choose to compete in shorter, targeted ‘call off’ competitions either for new builds or existing privately managed prisons as their contracts expire. The duration of the framework is six years. The Ministry received six bids from potential providers to get onto the framework, although there were 20 expressions of interest.307 All six bids were successful and have been accepted onto the framework.308 Three of the six framework operators (G4S, Sodexo and Serco) are the current private prison contractors and the other three operators all hold or have held large contracts with the Ministry. Of the 20 original expressions of interest, 10 of those came from small or medium-sized enterprises, although none submitted a bid.309
167.We expressed concern that some of the successful bidders for the framework had been responsible for poorly performing prisons under other contracts. The Ministry set out the process that framework operators would have to go through to bid for individual prisons. It said that the “process provides the assurance to ensure that any current or previous service delivery issues are fully addressed and lessons learned are reflected and enables us to meet our aim of securing an operator for the prisons we compete who can provide safe, secure, decent and rehabilitative regimes.”310
168.We remain concerned at the narrow competitive base of the prisons market and the Ministry’s continued reliance on the same organisations, even when there is evidence of poor performance. We are disappointed at the lack of participation of small and medium-sized enterprises and recommend that the Ministry sets out in response to this Report further steps it can take to encourage new entrants to market, for example by encouraging joint ventures.
238 Ministry of Justice, Prison Safety and Reform, Cm 9350, November 2016
239 Letter from Rory Stewart, Minister of State for Justice to Bob Neill, Chair, Justice Committee, 2018–19 Performance Framework for HMPPS, 25 June 2018
240 Letter from Sir Richard Heaton, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Justice to Bob Neill, Chair, Justice Committee, Changes to the Ministry’s leadership concerning prisons and probation, 30 November 2018
245 The seven Prison Ministers since 2010 were Crispin Blunt MP, rt hon Jeremy Wright QC MP, Andrew Selous MP, Sam Gyimah MP, rt hon Rory Stewart MP, rt hon Robert Buckland QC MP and Lucy Frazer QC MP.
246 Justice Committee, Oral evidence: HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on HMP Liverpool, HC 75, Q102
249 Ministry of Justice, Minister announces ‘10 Prisons Project’ to develop new model of excellence, 17 August 2018 [accessed 30 September 2019]. The prisons chosen were: Hull, Humber, Leeds, Lindholme, Moorland, Wealstun, Nottingham, Ranby, Isis and Wormwood Scrubs.
250 BBC News, Prisons minister Rory Stewart: I’ll resign if drugs and violence don’t go down, 17 August 2018 [accessed 30 September 2019]
252 See Annex 1.
253 Ministry of Justice, Results from the 10 Prisons Project, 22 August 2019
257 Justice Committee, Oral evidence: HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on HMP Liverpool, HC 75, Q18
262 Ministry of Justice, Annual Prison Performance Ratings Guide 2018/19, 25 July 2019
264 Justice Committee, Prison Population 2022: Planning for the future: Government Response to the Committee’s Sixteenth Report of 2017–19, HC 2308, June 2019
277 Ministry of Justice, Annual Prison Performance Ratings 2018/19, 25 July 2019; Ministry of Justice, Annual Prison Performance Ratings 2017/18, 26 July 2018.
278 PQ 2493 6 [Prisons: standards], 30 April 2019. The prisons in special measures were Aylesbury, Bedford, Birmingham, Bristol, Chelmsford, Elmley, Exeter, Guys Marsh, Hewell, Lewes, Liverpool, Nottingham, The Mount, Wandsworth, Winchester, and Wormwood Scrubs.
281 Letter from Peter Clarke, Chief Inspector of Prisons to Bob Neill, Chair, Justice Committee, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons report on HMP Lewes, 12 July 2019
286 Q398; Letter from David Gauke, Secretary of State for Justice to Peter Clarke, Chief Inspector of Prisons, Urgent notification- HMP Bristol, 11 July 2019
292 HoC Library, The Prison Estate, Number 05646, 12 December 2018
293 Letter from Comptroller and Auditor General to the Chair of the Justice Committee, HMP Birmingham, 7 December 2018
298 Transition to Adulthood Alliance (Barrow Cadbury Trust) (PPG0020). See also Prisoner Learning Alliance (PPG0024).
301 See Annex 1.
308 Letter from Robert Buckland, Minister of State for Justice to Bob Neill, Chair, Justice Committee, Prison Estate Modernisation, 5 June 2019. The successful bidders were G4S Care and Custody Services UK Limited, Interserve Investments Limited, Management and Training Corporation Works Limited, Mitie Care & Custody, Serco Limited, and Sodexo Limited.
309 Letter from Robert Buckland, Minister of State for Justice to Bob Neill, Chair, Justice Committee, Prison Operator Framework, 8 July 2019
Published: 31 October 2019