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Prisons and Probation

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a statement on prisons and probation. Let me begin by paying tribute to the 70,000 staff working in the services. Last Monday, the Minister responsible for prisons, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), issued a written ministerial statement about the serious disturbance that occurred at Ashwell prison, Rutland on Easter Saturday. Prison Service staff acted with exemplary skill and professionalism in dealing with the riot. I thank them sincerely, as I do officers of Leicestershire constabulary and other emergency services who so ably assisted. Prison Service and police investigations are now under way. Investing in prison and probation services has been a key priority for this Administration. Prison places are up by nearly 25,000, to 85,000, with spending rising by a similar proportion. The probation case load has risen by 52 per cent. since 1997, but spending has increased by 70 per cent. in real terms. This is the first post-war Government to see a sustained reduction in crime—down 39 per cent. since 1997, with the chances of being a victim the lowest for a generation. There was a 23 per cent. fall in adult reoffending between 2000 and 2006. Understandable concern has been expressed about the numbers of juveniles and women held in custody. There has over the past year been a reduction of 8 per cent. in the number of juveniles in jail, while the number of adult women prisoners has fallen by 3 per cent. over the same period. In response to my noble Friend Baroness Corston's recommendations, I have committed £15.5 million over two years to help divert vulnerable women offenders from prison. We also want the Prison Service and the NHS better to deal with offenders with mental health problems. My noble friend Lord Bradley's report on this will be published shortly. My noble friend Lord Carter of Coles was asked in 2007 to consider how better to manage short and medium-term prison pressures. I published his report alongside an oral statement on 5 December 2007. Since the publication of Lord Carter's report we have already provided an additional 3,500 prison places. Lord Carter recommended that net capacity should be brought up to 96,000 by 2014 and that 7,500 of these places should be created by the construction of three 2,500-place prison complexes, described as Titans. In June last year we launched a consultation on those proposals. I am most grateful to all those who responded. The Government's response to the consultation is published today, along with the document "Capacity and Competition Policy for Prisons and Probation" and an economic impact assessment. Copies are available in the Vote Office and the House Library. Once a prison is established in an area, almost without exception the local community becomes very supportive of it. A prison is a source of secure, well-paid employment and a focus for much highly creditable volunteering. The research evidence, which shows that prisons have no adverse effect on house prices or crime rates, is then borne out by experience, although proposals for new prisons can at first be controversial. I did see merit in Lord Carter's proposals for 2,500-place prisons, especially as they would have been complexes with four or five distinct and separate regimes, but most of those whom we consulted took a different view, and believed that the advantages were far outweighed by the disadvantages. Not the least of those of that view was Dame Anne Owers, Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons. I have looked very carefully at everything that has been said and, in the light of the consultation, concluded that the right approach is to deliver the 7,500 places not through Titans but through five prisons holding 1,500 offenders, each divided into smaller units. We already operate successfully a number of prisons at or around that size. ... We will leave that to one side for a moment. The new prisons will be neither Victorian replicas nor large warehouses. They will be modern, purpose-built institutions for adult male prisoners only. They will be safe, secure and effective in helping prisoners deal with their offending and develop the work, education and life skills that they need to turn their lives around. I can announce today that we are working to secure sites for the first two 1,500-place prisons at Beam Park West in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, and at Runwell in the borough of Chelmsford in Essex. Both prisons will be privately built and run, and their construction and operation will sustain many hundreds of jobs. Prison capacity planning depends crucially on projections of future demand and judgments about the cost-effectiveness and appropriateness of replacing older places with new capacity. Those and other considerations are kept under constant review, and further decisions about sites and the removal of older provision will be announced in due course. However, in that context, I can tell the House that we will not be pursuing a prison on the Omega site in Warrington. Work is already in hand to increase capacity by approximately 8,500 places over the next three years. It also remains my intention to withdraw the end-of-custody licence scheme as soon as safely possible. The expansion will include two new public prisons, Isis, adjacent to Belmarsh, and Coltishall, a former RAF base in Norfolk; and two new private prisons, Belmarsh West and Maghull. We are also expanding HMP Littlehey, near Huntingdon, to provide 480 places by early next year, as a quicker, more cost-effective option than buying and converting a prison ship. At all times, but especially in today's economic climate, we have a duty to ensure that prison and probation services work as efficiently and effectively as possible in the interests of the public. We are seeking to improve the efficiency of public sector prisons through reforms to work force structures for new uniformed staff and by reducing management costs. From today we will consult on the detail of those plans. Nearly 90 per cent. of prison places are delivered directly by the public sector, but the private sector also plays an important part. The Government's approach to competition was described in last November's pre-Budget report and in last Wednesday's Red Book. I have already set out the situation for new-build prisons. Five existing prisons have previously been subject to competition. Of those, Manchester, Buckley Hall and Blakenhurst are run by the public sector, and Doncaster and Wolds are run by the private sector. Each will be subject to a new competition as their current contracts end. Blakenhurst now forms part of HMP Hewell, so we will put the Hewell cluster out to competition when the contract for Blakenhurst ends in August 2011. Two poorly performing public prisons will be market-tested this year—Birmingham and Wellingborough. Public, private and third sector providers will all be invited to bid in respect of those market tests. It is against a background of greatly increased real-terms budgets that the probation service is being asked to make some savings of low percentages this year and thereafter. Detailed analyses show that, historically, the work load and resources of probation areas have not necessarily been well matched—especially when measured against convictions, the key determinant of work load. So, we now seek to target resources better to match needs. We want to be clearer about the service that probation should deliver, to reduce administration costs and rigorously to manage contracts. The probation trusts programme gives areas greater control over budgets and enables the private and third sectors to provide more services. If probation boards fail to become trusts, then from 2010 options will include amalgamation into existing trusts or being put to competition in the open market. Probation court services will remain with the public sector, as required by the Offender Management Act 2007. Probation areas are now also required to review their services against a national "best value" framework. If services fail to meet the standards necessary, areas must improve performance or use competition to identify alternative providers. As the first services to be reviewed in 2009, at least 25 per cent. of community payback and victim contact services will be subject to competition in this open market. As I have already reminded the House, since 1997 we have provided nearly 25,000 places to accommodate the most serious, dangerous and persistent offenders; and we are committed to bringing the total number of places up to 96,000 by 2014—just five years away. Over the past decade, prison conditions have been transformed. As Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons has acknowledged, prisons today are more decent, more constructive and considerably more secure. They are places both of punishment and reform. The measures I have announced today for expanding and modernising the prison estate, and for the management of prisons and probation, will allow us to realise still further improvements to public protection and reoffending, with maximum benefit for the tax-paying public. I commend this statement to the House.