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Public Services

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for initiating this debate and for her excellent opening remarks. Too rarely is there an opportunity to talk about a development that is profoundly affecting many areas of our lives. I will concentrate on one area only: criminal justice. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, is undertaking an inquiry into the treatment of old people in healthcare and social care settings. We have been hearing very interesting evidence and already we have heard enough to make it clear that our report will have to consider the accountability of private care homes. However, as we are at the evidence-collecting stage, I can do no more than whet your Lordship's appetites about that. We shall also shortly publish a report on the treatment of asylum seekers and there, too, we shall probably consider the accountability of the private companies that carry out forcible removals and are involved in other ways. I turn to the situation in criminal justice and particularly the contracting out of prisons to private companies. I do not want to talk about the principle of those prisons, although I know that it is very controversial. I want to talk about quality, value for money and transparency—transparency in particular. How can we in Parliament know whether there is quality and value for money and whether we are being well served by those providers if it is difficult to find out about their performance? Let me start in the obvious place. The annual report and accounts of Her Majesty's Prison Service, which is a report made to the House of Commons, is where one goes to find out about the performance of the Prison Service. It is packed with information on performance against key performance indicators on a range of measures: escape, serious assault, self-inflicted death, resettlement, staff sickness, health and safety, public health, drug treatment programmes and the cost of everything. However, there is something very odd about that report. As it says on the cover, it reports only on public sector prisons, which contain about 90 per cent of prison places. So 10 per cent of the operation of prisons in England and Wales is not reported on annually in a report presented to Parliament. That is not the case in Scotland, where the report covers all prisons and the information is aggregated. So I ask the Minister my first question. I am not mistaken, am I, in thinking that the annual report to Parliament of the Prison Service covers only 90 per cent of the prisons in England and Wales and there is no similar reporting mechanism to Parliament for private sector prisons? In reply, the Minister may be hastily advised to say that there is a report, the Office for Contracted Prisons statement of performance and financial information, on the website of the National Offender Management Service. However, before he replies, I will tell him that that report will not answer my question, as it includes data on three public prisons as well which operate under service level agreements. I should tell the House that the Government do have a performance rating system for prisons. Level 4 is the highest rating, and indicates an exceptionally high performance. Level 3 is applied to those prisons that meet most of their targets. Level 2 is for prisons with a limited regime or with significant or major problems. Level 1 is applied to prisons that are failing seriously. The figures can be found only on the Prison Service website. Figures for the end of September 2006 showed the following: 20 per cent of public sector prisons and 9 per cent of private sector prisons were performing at level 4—the best level; 68 per cent of public sector prisons and 64 per cent of private sector prisons were performing at level 3—in other words, were quite good; and 12 per cent of public sector prisons and 27 per cent of private sector prisons were performing at level 2—in other words, were quite bad. I am afraid that I cannot give the House the latest figures for private sector prisons, as those figures have disappeared. Only figures for the public sector prisons now appear on the Prison Service website. My second set of questions is therefore this: can the Minister say where the figures have gone, on whose authority they were removed, and what will replace them in the public domain? I accept entirely that he will not know the answers to those questions, and I do not expect him to. I do, however, assume that he will be able to write to someone who does and let me know the mystery of the disappearing figures. We must conclude that there is no annual report to Parliament on the performance of private prisons; so where can we look for information on them? We can, for example, find out about a prison called Rye Hill, which is run by a company called GSL, if we look at the prison’s website, which is very nice. It sets out the prison’s aspirations: "““Here at HMP Rye Hill we pride ourselves on making the difference to all we come into contact with … Our prison staff are highly trained in the necessary skills required to operate a modern prison. Management are clear on leadership and direction””." Its mission statement is, "““To be the leading provider of privately managed custodial services in the world … We have a total commitment to training our employees to know their job””." The latest report of 2005 by Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, on Rye Hill, is not on that website. She concludes: "““Our 2003 report described residential staff who were relatively inexperienced and lacking in confidence””." ““In 2005””, she said, "““this situation had worsened. We had very serious concerns about safety at Rye Hill. Staff lacked experience and confidence in managing an experienced prisoner population; this was exacerbated by the absence of visible management support, very low staffing levels and high staff turnover … We found evidence of mobile phones, and we were told by prisoners of the ready availability of drugs and weapons … and there had been a number of recent serious incidents””." There are other matters in the report which I cannot quote because of the sub judice rule. Dovegate is another private prison, which is part of the Serco group, which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has already mentioned. Serco’s website says of its prison activities: "““In all our prisons we strive to hold our inmates safely, securely and with dignity and respect””." The chief inspector published her report on Dovegate last week. She says: "““When we last inspected in 2003, we were concerned by the low numbers of staff and their inexperience in dealing with serious and experienced offenders … Worryingly, this unannounced full follow up inspection found that, while a few areas had improved, Dovegate was no safer or more controlled than in 2003. Senior Serco managers assured us—as they had in 2003—that they appreciated the seriousness of the situation and had appointed a new director specifically to turn matters around, but it is of concern that so little progress had been made since our last visit””." Serco also runs Doncaster prison. At the end of 2005, the chief inspector found a prison that had slipped back since the last inspection. She said that, "““respect was seriously undermined by the physical conditions in which many prisoners lived, which in some cases were squalid. ""Many prisoners lacked pillows, adequate mattresses, toilet seats … notice-boards and places to store belongings””." Only just over one in three prisoners were actually in work at any one time. She concluded her report by saying: "““Our main concern was not only that managers had failed to tackle the problems we pointed out at the last inspection, but that the prison had deteriorated in some important respects””." My question to the Minister is this: in the absence of an annual report on these prisons, and until the chief inspector visits—not annually, but basically about every five years—all we know about these prisons comes from their websites. Would it not aid transparency if they were at least required to put a link on their websites to the chief inspector’s latest report about their prison? I shall move on to say a word about the contracting process, and whether that could be more transparent too. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that this is very important. There is a secure training centre, a sort of children’s prison, called Oakhill, which holds 75 very vulnerable children. The latest inspection report noted that there was only one qualified social worker on the staff. Information provided by the Minister to the Joint Committee on Human Rights has shown that over a six-month period there were occasions when the minimum staffing levels of the Youth Justice Board were not met. In a later written response to a debate in which this was raised, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, told those who had spoken: "““The part of the country in which Oakhill is situated has very high employment levels and this may have hampered the contractors’ earlier efforts to maintain high and stable staffing levels””." I find that baffling. When the contract was first drawn up, did not those writing it know that Oakhill was located in a high employment area? So far as I know, the contracts are not in the public domain. Indeed, I would draw to the attention of the Minister the fact that the Scottish Prison Service has all its contracts on its website without the financial information. Finally, I want to indicate why the lack of transparency and dearth of readily available information is so damaging to our being able to monitor these prisons. During the Report stage of the Offender Management Bill in the other place, the Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, said that, "““we would contend that the successful track record of private companies in delivering custodial services in the 14 years since the first private prison was opened already offers assurance that they can be relied on to recruit competent staff””." He went on to say that private contractors, "““have certainly been a key driver of the improved treatment of prisoners—and under what is sometimes termed the decency agenda—of ensuring more decent prison regimes””.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/2/07; col. 1000.]" On the basis of the information available to us and in the public domain, that is an astounding statement. But since I know the Minister is a genuine and very honourable person, he must have access to information that is not in the public domain. Surely we need much more openness and objectivity in the information available so that we can do our job of holding the Government to account and ensuring that our money is well spent.