PRISONERS (COMPASSIONATE TRANSFER) (Hansard, 30 June 1958)

§ Lord Balniel (Hertford)

In opening this debate at this rather late hour I must begin by thanking my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for undertaking to be present to answer the questions I wish to ask. I have no doubt that the best way in which I can express my thanks is to be as brief as possible and to put the arguments as concisely as possible. I am glad to do this, because the arguments which I wish to advance and the points which I wish to make speak for themselves. They are very simple and straightforward.

I am raising the case of the welfare and happiness of one, or at the very most, two, of my constituents. In normal circumstances I should wish to mention their names but I have decided not to do so, although I have given my hon. and learned Friend who is to reply the name of the person concerned so that he has been able to acquaint himself with all the facts and so that he will be able to answer the points I wish to make. I have decided against giving publicly the name of the person or persons concerned, because at present one of those persons is in prison and if any publicity were attracted locally to his family it would only add more grief and distress to that which this family already has in good measure.

He was convicted in 1956 and sentenced for an offence which is not relevant in any way to what I have to say tonight. The sentence was one of twelve years, which he is now serving in Parkhurst Prison in the Isle of Wight. At the time of his conviction his father was alive, and his mother, although elderly, was in good health. Now his father has died, and his mother is not only elderly but in weak general health, and her eyesight is failing.

It was because his mother's sight was failing, and so that before it was too late she could see him once again, that he dispatched a petition to the Home Secretary on 30th January this year, asking 1036 if it was possible for him to be granted a temporary transfer—and I emphasise the word temporary—to a prison nearer to Hertfordshire; say, at Bedford, so that he could be visited by his mother before it was too late. This petition is completely self-explanatory, and I cannot do better than quote it to the House. He writes: I am submitting this petition on the following compassionate grounds for your kind consideration. I am very worried about my mother, who is an old-age pensioner, and who has recently gone totally blind and has not much longer to live. She would be only too pleased to travel down here that is, to Parkhurst, to visit me, but the expense is too much for her, apart from, the further expense of a friend to accompany her now that she has lost her sight. It would certainly give her a little happiness and myself peace of mind if you would kindly allow me to go to Bedford Prison with the usual monthly draft from here so that we can both have the pleasure of meeting again before it is too late. I fully realise that I have another two years or so to wait before I am eligible for the privilege of visits on temporary transfer. Hence this petition to you to enable me to go there and have the pleasure of seeing my mother, who is 84, before it is too late. I would sincerely appreciate and thank you indeed if you would kindly grant me this privilege and my only means of seeing her. If you require further confirmation that this is a genuine case you have only to ask Dr."— he mentions the name of a doctor well known to me personally as a responsible and fully qualified doctor in Hatfield— to confirm this. When my constituent originally wrote to me on this subject I had not in my possession a copy of this petition, but he set out fairly fully in his letter to me the main contents of the petition, which he had sent to the Home Secretary. Although I had not the petition in my possession, I felt that prima facie here was a petition asking for a temporary transfer which seemed to have some worth and some value and which, one would have thought, merited very serious consideration. I am led to believe that it was answered within seven days from its dispatch from Parkhouse Prison, and I am told that the answer from the Home Secretary was to the effect that the petition had been carefully considered but there were—I quote the words—"no grounds for a transfer".

I think my hon. and learned Friend would be the first to agree that, especially 1037 where prisoners are involved—persons cut off from ordinary, everyday life, who may well feel that it is more difficult for them to obtain fair and just treatment—it is very important that petitions of this kind should be very carefully considered and that when it is stated, in reply, that careful consideration has been given, these words should not be merely an automatic phrase which has little meaning. My concern is accentuated by the fact that when I took up the matter with my hon. and learned friend, I wrote on 20th February and it was not until 28th March, one month and one week later, that I received a reply.

I make no complaint about that. I realise, as do most hon. Members, that the Home Office and other Government Departments deal with Members' correspondence as expeditiously as possible, and I feel sure that the delay of a month and a week was used for a very careful investigation of the circumstances of this case. I have no complaint about the delay in answering my letter. My concern arises from the fact that there was that delay, while the Department dealt with my correspondence as expeditiously as possible, whereas the petition was answered within a week.

I should like an assurance from my hon. and learned Friend that this petition, which was dealt with so promptly, was seriously considered by his Department. Could he confirm, for instance, that advantage was taken of the suggestion in the petition that he should contact the doctor in Hatfield? Was the doctor in Hatfield able to confirm the truth of the points which were made in the petition? Perhaps my hon. and learned Friend can reassure me in this respect. I should be exceedingly grateful if he could let me know exactly what steps were taken by his Department to investigate this petition.

When I received the details as set out by my constituent, I made my own investigations. I visited his mother, and I must tell my hon. and learned Friend that, having visited this lady, I find it really beyond the realms of probability to think that she could ever have the chance, on general health grounds alone, to make that long journey from central Hertfordshire to the Isle of Wight. She did, indeed, make the journey on one occasion, but it proved too much for her, 1038 and she spent several days in bed afterwards as a result.

In my view, the fact that the mother of my constituent is not able to visit her son in prison is having a very serious effect on her own health. She realises as well as anyone else that her eyesight is failing fast, and if a temporary transfer cannot be arranged it is patently obvious to her that she will never see her son again. The district health visitor was also able to tell me, from her own professional knowledge, that the journey to the Isle of Wight would be quite beyond this mother's strength.

I also took the trouble to ask the doctor referred to in the petition whether he would confirm or deny the truth of the statement in the petition, and perhaps I cannot do better than to quote what the doctor says. He writes to me: This lady is an old lady of 84 years of age. Her vision is extremely poor. She can at present see the outline of persons and can see movement of the human hand. Her dimness of vision is due to two causes"— and then he explains that it is due to haemorrhages and to early cataracts. He goes on: I would expect her vision to improve slightly if she did not have cataracts…but, of course one has to take into account that the cataracts will increase in density and this, I feel, will negative any improvement in the other condition. I therefore feel that on the whole this lady's sight will deteriorate inexorably until such times as her eyes are ripe for operation. Then her operation would give her back a very poor vision.…I would not like to give a decision on an 85-year-old woman to restore her from complete blindness to a state where she could only discern light and the outlines of human beings. At lot would depend on the person involved, and, on the whole, I think I would advise against an operation on this lady. The man is serving a prison sentence of twelve years. All he has asked for is a temporary transfer—I imagine that, literally, a temporary transfer of one or two days would be adequate—from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight to Bedford Prison, or, indeed, to any prison reasonably close to Hertfordshire. It is merely a transfer that he seeks, and if my hon. and learned Friend cannot see his way to grant what is, I imagine, a very small matter to the Home Office but a very important one to the family concerned, it means, almost inevitably, that the mother of this person, because of the deterioration—to use the doctor's 1039 words, an "inexorable deterioration"—of her eyesight, will never again see her son.

I appreciate that the rules in these matters are very strict and that, perhaps, once they are stretched in any way it tends to be a precedent for other cases, perhaps less worthy and less deserving. I would ask my hon. and learned Friend to look personally into this matter again with a view to granting what, in my opinion, is a very reasonable and honest request from this constituent of mine who is in prison.

§ The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Renton)

My noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) has done a useful service in raising this subject tonight. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary receives many petitions from prisoners about this matter of visiting aged and sick relatives, and both my right hon. Friend and I know from our correspondence with hon. Members that it is a matter on which prisoners frequently write to them, so that I am very glad of the opportunity which the debate provides of explaining why it is often not possible to grant prisoners' requests to be placed nearer to their homes.

In doing so, I would ask the House to bear in mind that, as those who have had experience in the criminal law know so well, one of the tragic consequences of crime is that the families are deeply hurt by the sentences which prisoners have to undergo because of their crimes, and that is a fact of which we should not lose sight.

The Prison Commissioners do not purposely send prisoners to serve their sentences far from their families and friends. The fact that it often happens is a natural and, indeed, unavoidable result of a prison system. Of course, prison officers have to serve wherever they are required to do, and we have to have a sense of proportion when considering the wishes of prisoners themselves.

There is an excellent pamphlet called "Prisons and Borstals," of which a revised edition was published by the Stationery Office last year, describing the policy and practice in the administration of the prison and borstal system in England and Wales, and in the appendix 1040 to that pamphlet there is a complete list of all prisons. It is worth bearing in mind that there are now 25 general local prisons, 9 special local prisons, 10 central prisons, and 14 regional prisons of a specialised kind. Some prisons, however, are used as allocation centres and others serve more than one purpose and so appear in more than one category.

When a man is sentenced by the court he goes first to the nearest local prison. If he remains there he is likely to be as near home as is possible while serving his sentence. Much depends on where his home is and whether it happens to be within reasonable reach of the local prison. But if a local prison is overcrowded, which alas is often the case these days, he would be sent somewhere else where there is room for him, or he may have to be sent away to make room for newly committed prisoners until they are allocated.

The difficulty to which my noble Friend refers arises most frequently with regard to central prisons, which mostly contain men doing preventive detention, as this prisoner, the constituent of my noble Friend, is doing, or long-term recidivists, of whom there are a great many at Dartmoor. Different types of prisoners require different prisons for their treatment, for experience shows that training is best carried out in prisons which contain so far as possible the same sort of prisoners. That is another factor which has a bearing on this matter, because we cannot without completely upsetting the prison system, move men about with the principal desire of dealing with compassionate circumstances.

Further, we have to remember that when a prisoner is moved from one prison to another an escort is required, as indeed is usually the case when a prisoner is taken on a visit outside a prison, whether a central or a local one, in case of exceptional hardship.

The Prison Commissioners already provide a vast number of escorts every year. It is a considerable strain on their resources, and they have to be careful not to add to that burden. Nevertheless, transfers from a prison where sentence is being served to a prison nearer a prisoner's home are allowed, in certain circumstances.

The case about which my noble Friend wrote to me, which he has in mind tonight, is that of a preventive detention 1041 prisoner. As my noble Friend said, the man's sentence is being served at Parkhurst Prison in the Isle of Wight, and he is in the second stage of his sentence already. It is a fact that the prisoner was very worried about his mother, who, he said in his petition to the Home Secretary, had recently gone totally blind and might not live much longer. We made inquiries about the medical facts, and found that there was some genuine hardship; but the mother was not totally blind, although her vision was undoubtedly poor. I am glad to say that there is no evidence that she was then, or is now, in a critical state of health. It is a fact that she could not travel to Parkhurst to visit her son, and he, therefore, wanted to go to Bedford, which is the nearest local prison to his mother's home.

Even if circumstances had justified the expense and inconvenience of transferring the man to Bedford, he would not have been allowed out of the prison to visit his mother, in the medical circumstances relating to her which I have described, and she could not have visited him more than twice during any stay he might make there even if all the visits due to him were allowed. The conclusion, therefore, was reached by the prison authorities that compassionate circumstances at the time of the application did not justify the exceptional treatment which I have mentioned.

However, as I have informed my noble Friend, it is the practice, where the health 1042 of a near relative takes a critical turn for the worse, to allow a visit, either under escort or, in cases where a prisoner can be trusted, on parole. The prison governor himself has authority to act at once where the need arises, without reference to the Prison Commissioners.

My noble Friend asked me to explain the apparent disparity between a petition dealt with promptly within seven days and a much longer period required—over a month—for me to reply to a letter of his. I am relying on my recollection at this moment and I shall have to verify this and let my noble Friend know about it, but it may well be that the inquiries required to enable me to answer him were rather more exhaustive than those needed to answer the petition. I assure my noble Friend that, when these requests are made to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary or myself, we consider them with real sympathy. There are formidable difficulties about granting many of them, It is surely right that we should apply a stringent test, not only because of the practical difficulties I have mentioned but also in order to avoid causing jealousy or discontent among other prisoners. I assure the House, however, that, when very exceptional cases arise, we can and do take steps to deal with them, and deal with them promptly.