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Prisons

My Lords, I support the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and congratulate him on his speech. I propose to concentrate on the entirely non-political issue of how our prisons are run—their management. As I have studied the matter, it seems to me that the inheritance of today's management from the past is daunting. The 2007 edition of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology states that robustly independent critical chief inspectors have repeatedly identified ““appalling”” and ““unhealthy”” prisons in which regimes are impoverished and the staff culture is antagonistic. Prisons are costly, overcrowded, a constant management headache and apparently difficult places in which to maintain a positive regime. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, wrote that the heart of the problem of the Prison Service is the absence of a business-like structure; it does not have the benefits that flow from people knowing what to do and how to do it; and to whom they are responsible and accountable. The problem has been compounded, in the view of the writers of the Oxford Handbook, by considerable tension between Ministers and senior prison executives and between individual prisons and headquarters. We are told that both have led to frequent organisational changes. On that, I would say that that such an experience is immensely undermining of the confidence and effectiveness of senior management. I have known men of outstanding ability seeking to run public sector organisations in which there were ambiguities and changes of this kind and departing in despair. The handbook also refers to costliness. In any organisation, two issues matter: unit costs and how effectively the units are used. On unit costs, the Carter report of 2007 says—I find this difficult to believe—that the full pay package in public sector prisons is 61 per cent higher than in the private sector counterparts. This may be a reflection of the inadequacy of pay in private sector prisons; I am in no position to judge. However, Carter tells us that labour costs are due to rise in the next four years from 80 per cent of total prison budgets in 2006-07 to more than 90 per cent in 2010-11. In such circumstances, there is a premium on the highly effective management of resources, particularly of people. In contrast to what is required, Carter tells us that organisational structures are outdated and inflexible, with too much emphasis on grade and not enough on role. He says that the modernisation of the prison workforce is long overdue to address what he describes as the costly, outdated and inflexible pay and grading structures. He criticises the lack of adequate information for effective management and financial control, and says that the prisons lack a standard operating model to address a widespread variety in staffing levels and regime provision. Prisons cannot do a good job unless managers have clear stable objectives, clear accountability, authority, freedom to get on with the job, excellent financial information systems, guidance from a standard operating model, and strong backing when they take measures to deal with the management issues facing them. Of course overcrowding and the frequent movement of prisoners associated with it compound the management problem. If, as was reported in 2004, the average tenure of governing governors in an establishment is still only one year and nine months, that would add to the management problem. I support the Motion, not because the Government are inactive or because Ministers have been the least bit incompetent—indeed, there has been a flow of measures—but because this kind of management issue needs to be tackled. This is a matter for professional managers. I was alarmed to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, say that there was no director of operations except in high-security prisons. This is a big management problem that needs to be tackled by excellent managers, and I hope that the Government will take that point on board.