---

Prisons: Carter Review

My Lords, given that when I was Minister for prisons there was a day on which we had only 11 spare places left in the entire system, I extend warm good wishes to the present Minister in the formidable task which he faces. We are of course glad to see the large number of new places—they will assist rehabilitation—but whether one should call something which is very big and supposed to be unsinkable anything that sounds remotely like ““Titanic””, I doubt. I wonder whether the Government have taken into consideration not only the advantages to prison population of smaller prisons, but also the enormous difficulty in recovering control of Liverpool prison, for instance, when there was a riot. How much greater will be the problem if control is lost of the Titans? I want to talk about the elephant in the room that nobody mentions. Carter reveals that almost 80 per cent of the HMP budget now goes on pay of prison staff. He also says that the system is on a sort of escalator, meaning that it will be more than 90 per cent by 2010. Huge savings can be made there, but the Statement is silent about how they are to be achieved. The report indicates that what is needed boils down, in effect, to a system of staff management that is fit-for-service and purpose, which it is not now. That immensely difficult task has been attempted and failed by numerous predecessors. I hope that the Government will say something on that. My final point, which I have so often made, is that if but 10 per cent of that money—a few hundred million pounds—could be spent on seeing that children had reasonable and interesting things to do in the summer holidays; that children excluded from school were provided for individually; and that voluntary agencies were set up specifically to keep children evidently at risk of getting into crime out of it, by the time those children were 15, this problem would start becoming much smaller.