PRISONS, BORSTALS AND DETENTION CENTRES (ESTIMATES COMMITTEE'S REPORTS)

HC Deb 14 November 1968 vol 773 cc629-733

4.2 p.m.

Mrs. Renée Short (Wolverhampton, North-East)

I beg to move, That this House takes note of the Eleventh Report from the Estimates Committee in Session 1966–67 and of the Fifth Special Report from the Estimates Committee in the last Session of Parliament relating to Prisons, Borstals and Detention Centres. I should like, first, to say how grateful I am that we have an opportunity to spend a whole day debating this Report, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for his support in this matter. I am sure that it will be an encouragement to all members of the whole Estimates Committee that after a great deal of work we have the opportunity to debate the Report in the House.

This Report was published in July, 1967. May I take the opportunity of thanking the members of my Committee for the support which they gave throughout the inquiry. I would particularly thank the Clerk of our Committee, who worked extremely hard on our behalf, and the governors and the staff of all the establishments which we visited and who gave evidence before us, and also the staff from the Home Office, who were most co-operative and helpful throughout our inquiries. We are indeed grateful to all those people. During the course of our inquiries we visited 17 establishments, including the newest prison, built on the Isle of Wight. We visited the staff college at Wakefield, a detention centre being built by prison labour and two voluntary hospitals.

In this Report we made over 50 recommendations to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and I wish to say here and now that we are most grateful for the way in which our recommendations were received by him and his Department. We had help from the Governments of the Soviet Union, West Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden. We should very much have liked to visit Sweden and the Netherlands, to look at specific problems which arose from the investigation. Unfortunately, that was not possible. This is still a problem to be settled by the House if Select Committees are to carry out their functions properly. I hope that that will be done.

My first impressions of the men's prisons, in particular, were of intense and severe over-crowding. The reasonable capacity without overcrowding is about 29,000 prisoners, but the average number in prison when our Report was published was about 32,000. That leads to a good deal of sharing of cells, which is most undesirable. There were 1,400 prisoners sharing two to a cell and about 7,000 sharing three to a cell. We also found that boys in remand centres were overcrowded. There were 39 boys sharing three to a cell and 214 sharing two to a cell. The tendency for longer sentences which we discovered has led to increasing the overcrowding. That is undesirable from every possible point of view.

We found that some of the worst overcrowding in prisons was in Barlinnie Prison, near Glasgow, which has accommodation for 950 inmates, but which, at the time of our visit, had a population of 1,530. There were 277 young prisoners in accommodation intended for 175. In this prison, too, we found six cells with five men in each cell. It speaks well for the care and attention of the prison medical service there that there were so few epidemics in such grossly overcrowded conditions.

Most of Britain's prisons are antequated and out of date. Many of them are over 100 years old—a fact which they share in common with a large number of our hospitals. In the days when the prisons were built, prison officers were simply custodians concerned only with security, and the prisoners' régime was a matter of passing time rather than trying to use time constructively to help prisoners to equip themselves to settle again in society after discharge.

As a result of the antequated prisons and the overcrowded conditions, both inmates and prison officers have to contend with very unsatisfactory conditions. Approximately 20 per cent. of the time of prison officers is spent on the unproductive task of locking and unlocking doors. Every time either one prisoner is moved or a group of prisoners are moved, whether from a cell block into the workshop or from the workshop into the place where meals are served, doors have to be locked and unlocked.

We recommended that there should be a pilot scheme into the possibility of using electronic locking and unlocking devices, and I understand that such a scheme has been carried out. I must say that I have here a considerable constituency interest, because our best firm of lock and safemakers is in my constituency. I understand that they supplied the locks which were used in the first pilot scheme.

We were shocked by the degrading business of "slopping out" which is carried out in our prisons and we were dismayed to discover that even in the new prison on the Isle of Wight the same methods are being provided. We hope very much that no more prisons will be built with these antiquated methods and we recommend that a considerable effort be made to improve the sanitary arrangements in old prisons.

Because of the overcrowding and the poor facilities in prison workshops, the working day and the working week of many prisoners has been reduced to a figure which none of us can view with equanimity. For example, in Manchester the working week is only 25 hours and I understand that in Pentonville it is only 14 hours. This is worst in the closed prisons where two-thirds of our male prisoners are. The urgent need to rebuild and reorganise prison workshops and to reorganise prison industries has been recognised by the Department. Industrial and agricultural productivity in 1967 amounted to £2½ million, but this should be increased with the modernisation and rationalisation which is to be carried out.

About one-third of the prisoners are employed in workshops. A large number are always employed on maintenance of prison buildings, inside and out, and on vocational training. We have to remember that about 6,000 prisoners at any one time cannot work at all because of old age, disability, or sickness. A chief production engineer has been appointed and regional industrial managers are now advising on industry in the regions, and I understand that a firm of industrial consultants has been appointed to advise the Department about the reorganisation of industries. This will be concentrated on six industries, metal recovery, carpen- try, textile production, tailoring, engineering and laundry work. A good deal of work is done for prison use, and, of course, use in Government Departments.

We were pleased to see that the income from sales rose from £800,000 in 1961 to £1.9 million in 1966, and that about £500,000 worth was for sales even outside Government Departments. We believe that, with the modernisation which is taking place, there will be scope for earnings even outside Government service to a greater degree.

We were very impressed by the standard of some of the work done in some of the prison workshops, and I should particularly like to mention the tailoring done at Wakefield, where discharge suits are now being made by prisoners instead of the work being put out to private contract as previously. This saves a considerable amount of money. We feel that there is great scope for the development here, and for the making of officers' shirts and uniforms as the standard of tailoring work improves; and, of course, it will save money.

We feel that much more use could be made of prison labour on socially useful work for the community. Obviously prisoners would have to be selected very carefully for this kind of work, but we feel that a rather more adventurous spirit could be shown by the Department, and suggest that work such as the clearing of canals and making them available both for transport and for recreation would be very useful. We feel that the removal of colliery tips, such as that at Aberfan, the reclamation of derelict land, road making, and, of course, an extension of building work for the prison service could be done by prison labour.

I should like to take this opportunity of drawing to the attention of the House the really spectacular success story of the building of Eastwood Park Detention Centre for 100 boys. It was carried out almost entirely by prison labour, men from Bristol Prison and Leyhill Prison. These men were brought to the site by lorry every day, just as building workers are brought. A minimum amount of work on this site, for example, the boiler installation and the perimeter wall, was carried out by private contract, but the rest of the work was done by prisoners from those two prisons.

They built the staff recreation block and the matron's accommodation, at a saving of £3,000, or 16 per cent., on that part of the job, and a saving of no less than £65,000, or 22 per cent., on the target cost of £300,000 for the detention centre itself. We were most impressed by the excellent workmanship and the very good finish of the entire job. The men were trained in vocational courses organised in prison, and they were able to earn rather more than the normal 8s. a week which men earn in prison; they earned 17s. 6d. or £1 a week.

The success of this should greatly encourage my right hon. Friend to press on with all speed with using prison labour to carry out a good deal of his future building programme, and I hope very much that he will do this.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. James Callaghan)

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for what she says about this. I am sure that it is right. As regards Aberfan, there was a party of prisoners who would have been able to go and could have been made available for the work, but it was decided, not by the prison authorities, that it was too highly specialised for them. Therefore, no party went.

Mrs. Short

I am much obliged to my right hon. Friend.

We feel that there is, nevertheless, in this reorganisation of the prison industry which is going on, an urgent need to consider the conditions of long-term prisoners, both in terms of security, the work they do, and also—this is a very difficult problem—of maintaining family relationships and the prevention of the deterioration in personality which inevitably occurs when men are incarcerated for very long periods. It is likely, as the years go by, that there will be an increase in the number of men sentenced for long periods. We make proposals for more suitable work for long-term, intelligent prisoners. We also suggest that consideration should be given by my right hon. Friend to the possibility of arranging conjugal visits in certain carefully selected cases—and I would underline, carefully selected cases.

We understand, of course, that there are difficulties in connection with security, and so on, and accommodation, but we know that in the U.S.S.R., in the United States, in Sweden and in Mexico, where experiments on these lines have been carried out, the work of the prison, the general atmosphere of the prison, has been helped by this, because of the reduction of tension, and the benefit to the whole of the prison work and the general atmosphere of the prison affects both inmates and officers.

There are two groups of prisoners who cause us particular concern. These are young people and women prisoners. We were concerned at the number of disturbed young people who are being sent to detention centres. Such centres have an authoritarian, tough régime, which is quite unsuited to disturbed boys, boys with drug problems or with psychiatric difficulties, and yet it is quite clear that such boys are being sent to detention centres by magistrates without proper regard being given to the régime carried out, or to the availability of a place in a detention centre—indeed, on occasions without even ascertaining that there is a place in the centre for the boy they are sending there.

We also consider that much more thought should be given to the physical toughness of the boys being sent to detention centres and recommend strongly that there should be not only a review of the whole policy behind detention centres, but that, if these are to continue, there should be a medical report as to the boy's suitability for a detention centre régime.

We were impressed by the success of prison hostels as a means of introducing a prisoner to work outside, and to life outside at the end of his sentence, and believe that there is considerable scope for the extension of hostels, both for adult prisoners and for young people. We feel particularly strongly about young people in this respect, because many young people get into difficulties with the law because of unsatisfactory home backgrounds. We believe that to send young people back to the same sort of background which caused their difficulties in the first place is a waste of everything which is done in the establishment to which they are sent. We hope that it will be possible to develop the hostel scheme.

We were concerned at the severe overcrowding of young people in remand centres. These centres, of course, are intended for the observation of youngsters in trouble, but, in the overcrowded conditions which obtain in the centres, this is not possible. When we visited Ashford Remand Centre we were horrified to find that boys were locked in their cells at 5 o'clock, tea time, one day and were kept locked up until 6.30 the next morning, with only very limited attempts at any kind of educational programme for them, and with only a very small medical staff, none of whom was trained in psychiatry. The whole set-up was a matter of concern to us because of the overcrowding and the shortage of staff, and suitably qualified staff, there should be at the centre.

The recidivism of borstal boys and girls indicates that here, too, magistrates need guidance about who to send to borstal and when they should be sent. The figures indicate that borstal is called for rather earlier in many cases, if it is to be successful.

We question, too, the policy of opening borstals in the middle of rather beautiful countryside far from a community which could help young people to find their feet again. I realise that there may be conflicts of opinion about this, but I wonder whether it is the best use of our resources to establish borstals for young people coming from towns in places where they learn to raise pigs and breed cattle, which is a very interesting pastime but which does not help them when they have to return to a town community to live and earn their living.

We need to educate people to adopt a rather more constructive and kindly attitude to offenders of all types—adults and young people. My right hon. Friend meets considerable difficulty when he wants to open establishments of this kind. The community always tends to oppose them. Perhaps people should understand that they can play a part and establish links between those in the establishment and the community. There would be benefits to both sides if such establishments could be sited near a town where these links could be created.

The problem of women prisoners is a much smaller one, because women are more law abiding than men and there are only about 800 women in prison. We visited Holloway. This is a very grim place, built on the model of a man's prison and, again, about 100 years old. We very firmly believe that highly disturbed women should not be in Holloway, but should be in a psychiatric prison. The House will recall that Grendon psychiatric prison was built for men and for women. A women's wing was added to this prison, but it has never been used for women prisoners, for various reasons. I urge my right hon. Friend to look urgently at the problem of the placing of disturbed women prisoners.

A large number of the women that get into difficulty and who are sent to prison are drunks and drug addicts. There are a considerable number of prostitutes, too. I suggest that these people do not need to be imprisoned. They need hospital treatment if they are to be cured. I cannot see the point of sending either drunks or drug addicts, male or female, to prison, particularly one where they get no treatment to help them to overcome the difficulties which drove them to drink and drugs; so that on their release they return to the same conditions and bad habits.

Most women prisoners, apart from highly disturbed women, are what we might describe as feckless, inadequate, badly organised, badly educated and badly brought up. They need guidance about how to look after their families and how to organise their daily lives. I suggest that the women and girls that get into our prisons, borstals and such places are very much in need of advice about family planning. Many of them have had illegitimate children. This opportunity should be taken to give them advice so that these mistakes are not repeated.

We need to think about how we can deal with women prisoners instead of sending them to prison. My view, which, I think, is shared by the members of my Committee, is that they need to be cared for in small numbers on hostel lines, but I think that many of these women would not need to be taken from their homes if there could be an extension of the probation service and a local authority welfare service working together. This would help to identify women who are in difficulties.

There are ways and means of doing this. We recommend that all the tremendous ability and talent for public service in the women's organisations should be mobilised. If my right hon. Friend were to persuade women's organisations that this was a useful, socially valuable job which they could do for their own kind, I believe that they could work with the guidance of probation and local authority welfare officers and help women in their own homes.

This would prevent the break-up of families. It would prevent the appalling business of putting a mother in prison and her children into care. It costs £760 a year to keep a woman in prison and about the same amount to take a child into care with the local authority.

Apart from this aspect, there is the immeasurable damage which is done to a child which is taken away from its mother. We should do everything in our power to prevent scars being caused to a child's personality and breaking out in later life by its removal from the care of its mother.

I hope that my right hon. Friend will accept this recommendation and regard this as a matter of urgent priority. If he were to ask me personally which of the recommendations I most passionately want to see carried out, it is that about women prisoners. My right hon. Friend is a reforming Home Secretary, as all good Home Secretaries must be. If he could empty the women's prisons, it would be a splendid advance in prison reform.

There is an acute shortage of suitable staff to work in prisons and in all establishments of the type we visited. The result of staff shortage is that a great deal of overtime has to be worked by the devoted men and women in the service. Sixty-five per cent. of the total vote of £26½ million, or £17½ million, goes on pay and allowances for staff.

A new scheme of working has been introduced giving a 40-hour, five-day week. The Committee was told that this would require an additional 400 officers. A great deal of overtime, amounting at that time to £½ million a year, must be worked to implement the new scheme. Prison officers have to endure many difficulties, some of which are inherent in their job and which, however much we improve working conditions and pay, will remain. Morale is affected by working conditions. In our view, urgent attention must be paid to the question of job prospects and promotion within the ser- vice and to the provision of good quarters, or alternatively an adequate rent allowance. We found that the question of quarters and rent allowance was frequently a source of trouble and dissatisfaction among the prison officers to whom we talked.

We are certain, too, that much more up-to-date methods of recruitment, of both graduates and non-graduates, are needed. Much more responsibility should be given to governors. With the development of regionalisation, this will be possible. We think that governors should have the power to advertise locally and to do their own recruiting. We were disturbed to learn that recruiting is so low. For example, at Barlinnie recruitment effected at that time was not sufficient to keep abreast with the wastage.

Concerned as we were about the shortage of staff, we have tried to put forward proposals to my right hon. Friend which would help to resolve the difficulty. I have mentioned the question of mechanical devices to improve daily work in the prison. We also propose the establishment of an escort service to relieve prison officers of the task of taking prisoners to court. We understand from the replies we received from the Department that this was not too well received, but I hope that my right hon. Friend will continue to examine it.

We think that retired police officers and ex-Forces personnel would be ideally suited to this work. So long as there is a shortage of staff we should not then have to take prison officers away from their duties in prison to carry out escort duties. When they are taken from their duties in prison the burden on those who remain in the prison is increased and the whole question of the prison day is made much more difficult to organise. We were concerned with the shortage of psychiatrists and psychiatric prison workers. If rehabilitation work is to be carried out effectively, urgent attempts must be made both to recruit and to train more staff of this kind within the Service.

I shall devote my concluding remarks to the problem of security. We visited E block at Durham and saw conditions there. We saw the closed circuit television which had been installed at Wake-field as a result of the Mountbatten Report—at considerable cost, over £200,000. Since our Report was completed, there has been the Report by the Radzinowicz Committee, which went into the whole question of prison security in great detail. We were interested to see that Report. No doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), if he catches your eye, Sir, will say something about it.

We support the thesis of the really secure perimeter so that a less rigid régime can be carried out within that perimeter. We think that that is the right development. We also accept that a minority of prisoners—fortunately, a minority—will always have to be kept in conditions of top security, but the whole question of security must be kept in perspective. After all, on average, there are only about 70 escapes from prison a year. It is a great credit to the Prison Service that there are so few. Those who manage to get out are out for only a short time, often for a matter of hours and certainly only days. We must not get too panicky about this.

The television circuit at Wakefield is very expensive and when one has a battery of television screens one has to have people watching them. We found at Wakefield that 15 officers from the understaffed service had to be withdrawn from other duties to watch television screens. If they see anything happening they see a clean pair of heels going over the wall. We have to weigh up and decide carefully whether expenditure of this kind is justified and whether it will bring the result we want. I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider this most carefully before any other schemes of this kind are embarked upon.

We much enjoyed carrying out this investigation. I think we worked very hard and I hope that members of my Sub-Committee did not feel that they were too brow-beaten. It gave us a considerable insight into the responsibilities of my right hon. Friend and his Department, responsibilities which, I suppose, weigh most heavily upon him. We were impressed by the way in which those responsibilities are carried out. We hope that our 50 or more recommendations are acceptable to the House and that my right hon. Friend will be able to implement the majority of them so that the reforms we have suggested will be incorporated into the prison system.

4.34 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Fraser (Stafford and Stone)

I pay tribute to the leadership which the hon. Lady the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) showed with her Committee. They have produced a very valuable Report. I agree with her that the work done by the Committee was most interesting and that one was filled with a proper sense of humility when engaged in two of the basic works of mercy—visiting the sick and the imprisoned.

I hope that the Report we produced has been of some value to the House. As the hon. Lady did, I thank the Home Office for not giving too dusty answers to many of our recommendations. Nevertheless, in spite of my sense of humility, I propose to come to a fairly formidable question about the whole prison arrangements when looking into the future. Before doing so, I wish to raise two points with the Home Secretary to which, frankly, I do not know the answer.

The hon. Lady raised the question of the selection of the type of imprisonment for the young offender. I agree with her that this is one of the most difficult tasks which lie before magistrates. The trouble is that magistrates are quite often wrong about the type of boy they send to a detention centre and equally about the type of boy they send to borstal. For borstal, there is a process of sorting out the inmates to decide what sort of borstal they should go to, but if a boy is sentenced to detention he cannot cross the prison threshold and there is no chance, as things stand, for the decision to be made about whether a boy is not suitable for detention but suitable for borstal.

The right hon. Gentleman will know that there was a very unfortunate event—which was no one's fault—when a youth was sent to a detention centre in the North of England and died during a P.T. course. This difficulty would have been met by the point which was made by the hon. Lady. Far more important is the psychiatric or commonsense judgment, which often is not possible for magistrates to make, as to which type of treatment would be more appropriate for the boy concerned, I do not know how this is to be met, but I hope that the Home Secretary will give it his attention. It is very difficult as the law stands. It is impossible to put these youths into a sorting area because of the rules regarding detention of prisoners. I do not entirely agree with the hon. Lady about detention centres. I think they form a very useful remedial process for the right character.

I should explain to those who are not fully aware that escort duty means accompanying a prisoner who is going to hospital, or to court, and so on. It is clear that this has a very heavy impact on the undermanned Prison Service. Mrs. Xenia Field, in the evidence she submitted to us, showed that 52 of the total Prison Service of 82 available at Holloway, were engaged on some variety of escort duty. That means that the efficiency of the maintenance of that prison is bound to be greatly damaged. If more than half the prison officers are engaged on escort duty it means a colossal burden of overtime on others. We have suggested that there should be a pilot scheme.

I come here to the real problem. As things are in the Prison Service, because of the high wages which can be won on escort duty, I believe that to put into operation a system of escorts from outside the service would lead to a heavy number of resignations. The brutal fact is that the average prison officer can earn between £23 and £24 a week by doing a great deal of overtime. However, on escort service he is able to earn between £40 and £45 a week.

This poses the problem of the general management of prisons and the Prison Service. I should like to go a little further than the Report. I question whether the present set-up will be efficient and sufficient for the problems which will face this country over the next decade or so. We are a law-abiding country compared with the United States where, in Houston alone, more murders are committed in one year than in the whole of this country. We will be faced with growing problems. There will be growing numbers of people in prison, as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East said, because of the rise in population, because of the growth of the cult of violence, and so on. We shall also be faced with the problem of applying the remedial action which is now becoming more available to science for the curing of the mental instability which so often leads to crime.

I question whether the present set-up will be able to deal with all the vast problems which apply to solve our main problem, which is not keeping people in prison but keeping them from going to prison. I question whether the present set-up will be able to gain sufficient financial priority to carry out these things. Administratively, the problem of our prisons can be put simply enough. Today, about 50,000 people are employed or detained in about 130 establishments. In 10 years that may be about 60,000, including the Prison Service, the prisoners, hospitals, and so on. In addition, there are the medical functions, the psychiatric functions, farming, agriculture, and research functions and a budget which, over the next 10 years, will probably go up from the £26 million that we spend today to between £40 million and £45 million.

The question which I must ask the Home Secretary is: who administers it, who manages it? Where is the nerve centre of this very large organisation? Who takes the decisions? The prison department of the Home Office, a department in a Ministry which has no other managerial function, no expertise in building, in industry, in agriculture, or, indeed, in labour or human relations.

I wonder whether this is right. Who is responsible for this great combination of the varieties of institutions with these great functions that they have to perform? Who fights for the cash? Who heads the whole thing up? The Home Secretary has a general responsibility. But who, at the last gasp, can either resign or be fired? Nobody. I do not believe that this is satisfactory management for an enterprise of this scale faced with our present-day problems.

The Mountbatten Report animadverted on this weakness. Although this is outside the terms of reference of our Report, because the decision was made only in 1963 to do away with the previous régime, our investigation brought further evidence to light of the strange and difficult way that the prison department administers this huge organisation from Whitehall. As organised, the prison department seems to have no real functional competence, as one would expect in a headquarters managing this sort of organisation. Even the accounting methods, referred to in the Report, were extremely antediluvian. They would shame even a second-rate commercial organisation. It is almost impossible to find out the true cost of anything. Yet, going hand in hand with this system, we have the Dotheboys Hall régime by which prison governors are not allowed to spend a penny without reference to London.

The latest thing has been to appoint an Inspector-General. This is a military and popular gimmick, but it does not get to the root of the matter. It is like a business which is not doing very well and which appoints a commissionaire with plenty of medals to stand outside the building.

I do not agree with much of what the Howard League for Penal Reform has recommended, but I do agree that the prison department needs a firm of business consultants to look into its whole operation. I do not see why that should not be done. The Metropolitan Police has had such an investigation and the Bank of England is to have one now. It would not be a bad idea if the right hon. Gentleman got McKinsey to look into it. I go further. There is a case here for a semi-autonomous Government agency. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) and others often talk about autonomous Government agencies, and I hope that they will follow this one up.

Until 1963, there was a body of Prison Commissioners, and we had such a semi-autonomous body. According to the evidence we heard from the Home Office, it had become, to quote its magic words, a "vestigial anachronism". Of course, it had become a vestigial anachronism, because both the Treasury and the Home Office had so invested and infested its terrain that it was left without any useful function. I believe that serious consideration should be given to changing back to some such system.

If we look back only a short time, can it be said that the Prison Commissioners, an independent body, were vestigial and unimportant when there was a great man like Sir Alexander Paterson, whose name was a household word in his time, as the dominating figure among the Commissioners, and a man like Sir Lionel Fox as chairman of the board? I ask the House to consider whether, if Sir Alexander had been deputy chairman, and Sir Lionel had been chairman, surrounded by a board which knew about prisons, which knew how people worked, and how the service worked, we would have had the absurd political panic by the previous Home Secretary two years ago, when Blake escaped?

The right hon. Gentleman set up the Mountbatten Commission, and in my view, and in the view of many people, wasted, or diverted about £2 million away from the real objectives of penal reform. If the men to whom I have just referred had been in office, no such nonsense would have taken place.

I believe that until we get the central system right, many of the things to which we point in the Report, the absence of real managerial function right through the organisation, and so on, cannot be put right. I shall be told that this is putting the clock back, but I believe that it is not a question of putting the clock back, but of making the mechanism work more effectively.

I think that there is an overwhelming case for an autonomous body, responsible to the Home Secretary, running this organisation. This is a huge province managerially, administratively, economically, medically, and penalogically, which needs at its head, not a faceless civil servant, however admirable or devoted he be, but a person of the calibre of Paterson whom the public, the Prison Service, and, indeed, the prisoners themselves, can trust.

What is more, I believe that if that thought were given serious consideration—and I hope that when my hon. Friend comes to office he will give it that consideration—it would open up a far wider career for the talents of prison governors and the Prison Service itself. It would also make far easier the regional organisation to which we refer in our Report.

Mr. Callaghan

The right hon. Gentleman is on a central point. Will he tell us his thoughts on the question of accountability to this House, and to public opinion, if there is such an autonomous commission as he has in mind?

Mr. Fraser

In the Report we talk about the cost accounting methods employed internally. I am talking not about accountability to the House, but of the value accounting inside the Prison Service. We found this to be not effective. We asked for figures, but they were difficult to get. With a properly specialised management, this problem could be overcome.

Mr. Callaghan

I was not dealing with cost accounting, but with accountability in terms of custody of prisoners, and treatment of prisoners, matters on which the Home Secretary is rightfully challenged in this House, and for which he has a direct responsibility. What would be the relationship between this autonomous commission, the Home Secretary, and the House of Commons, in respect of that kind of accountability?

Mr. Fraser

It would be the same as with the old Prison Commissioners, who were responsible to the Home Secretary. That was the position until 1963. This autonomous body would be responsible to the right hon. Gentleman. I do not think that there would be any problem there. Until 1963, the Prison Commissioners were responsible to the Home Secretary, who, in turn, was responsible to this House. This is a thought which should be given the deepest consideration by both Front Benches. From what I have seen of the Prison Service, I am certain that this would be welcomed as a step towards a better, happier, and more effective prison system.

4.56 p.m.

Mr. E. Rowlands (Cardiff, North)

I should like to follow the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) in some of the points he has raised, but before doing so I should like to join him in expressing thanks to the Chairman of the Sub-Committee which considered this matter. This is the first Committee of its type that I have served on, and the first Report on which I have worked, and it was a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short).

This is the most constructive job that I have had to do since coming to the House in 1966, and I am now a little older and wiser. It took us a long time to prepare the Report, and even longer to get it debated. Nevertheless, we are all thankful that we are debating it today.

I think that the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone was a little unfair in what he said about the previous Home Secretary's decision to set up the Mount-batten Commission. The saddest thing about the Prison Service is the way the House treats it. Every time a distinguished prisoner goes over the wall, at the drop of the hat there is a Motion of censure on the Home Secretary. The service tends to get kicked around like a political football. I think that both sides of the House must share the blame for the way in which prison matters have been dealt with in the past. To a certain extent, I accept some of the right hon. Gentleman's thinking about the Prison Commissioners.

We toured the prisons in the aftermath of the Blake escape. The Prison Service was recoiling from the row, the crisis, and the panic which followed that escape, and also the recommendations of the Mountbatten Commission. My knowledge of the Prison Service is confined to what I have learnt from our deliberations, and my views this afternoon are my personal impressions, rather than opinions based on any deep academic knowledge of the subject.

The reaction in the prison system following the Blake escape and the Mountbatten Report raised fundamental questions, to which my hon. Friend referred. Wakefield Prison was the one that we saw in the greatest detail. We saw the barrage of 42 television screens, and the staff required to look at them. I know that many of my liberalising Friends will criticise me for accepting the controversial recommendations of the Radzinowicz Committee, two members of which are present today. I accept the decisions about perimeter security, and even the controversial proposals to arm certain people in the Prison Service to secure maximum perimeter security. But on one condition—that there is a considerable degree of liberalisation within the prison.

At Wakefield, we did not find the sort of liberalisation which we hoped would occur within the prison as a result of spending money on perimeter security. In spite of the money spent, and the staff employed at Wakefield, we found that the régime was slightly harsher, and there was no improvement in the service. We saw that outside working parties which used to contain a number of long-term prisoners had been withdrawn, that the number going on outside working parties was fewer, and that these parties consisted chiefly of short-term prisoners.

This could only be detrimental to the development and maintenance of the personality of the long-term serving prisoner at Wakefield. Despite this, when we asked how many attempts had been made to escape from outside working parties by long-term serving prisoners, we were told by the people to whom we spoke that they could not recall an occasion when that had happened.

I should like to know the present position concerning outside working parties at Wakefield. Has there been a relaxation of the rigid control over those parties which was instigated after Blake's escape? Are long-term serving prisoners now allowed to go on outside working parties? There was a suspension of refresher training courses for prison officers at the staff college as a result of the Blake episode and the Mountbatten Report. I trust that the refresher courses have been fully restored and that the staff college is back to normal.

I endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East said about the rehabilitative rôle that the prison officer wishes to play and particularly the need for constructive employment for people serving long sentences, which even the Prison Service does not over-estimate. I was struck by the fact that prison officers desperately wanted to do the work of the social worker as much as the work of the guard and security officer. I was not altogether impressed with the extent to which, in the training courses which we inspected, this rehabilitative rôle was sufficiently accommodated or that there was an opportunity for this aspect of the prison officer's job to develop.

I endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East said about the need for constructive employment and the development of prison industry and, above all, an increase in the length of the working day, which is absolutely vital. The figures which she gave for Pentonville and Manchester are deplorable, and I hope that there has been some improvement in the situation.

I turn to the thing which made the deepest impression on me during our investigations, namely, the way in which younger people, particularly in borstals and remand centres, were dealt with. When we started our investigation, I was quite close in age to some of the people in the borstals and remand centres. I was shaken by what we discovered. It is a truism to say that today's borstal boy could easily be in a few years' time the inmate of the E wing at Durham. It does not surprise me that this happens, because we do not do as much as we should in tackling the problem of the young criminal of 16 or 17 years of age, some of whom probably have already a number of convictions.

Attention has been drawn to the question of waiting time at borstals—first, waiting for a month or so in the local prison then going to one or two allocation centres of Manchester or Wormwood Scrubs and eventually reaching, in some cases a considerable time later, his destination of borstal. I am glad to hear that there has been a considerable improvement. The most astonishing thing about waiting to be allocated was that if one was a comparatively ordinary lad one waited long enough: but if one was a disturbed boy waiting for special treatment and to be allocated to Feltham, the psychiatric borstal, one waited much longer. Instead of having speedy and effective treatment and arriving at Feltham as quickly as possible, one could wait for between three or four months at Wormwood Scrubs before arriving at Feltham because of the over-crowding and lack of space at the institution.

Six to eight weeks at an allocation centre for a disturbed boy is six to eight weeks too long. The tragic irony is that when a boy reaches Feltham the situation is not exactly helpful. He arrives at the second oldest borstal in the country, which was built in 1854. It was not a purpose-built building. It lacks many of the facilities for dealing with the problem of the disturbed boy. It lacks staff and many necessary facilities.

Of all the evidence which we collected in the course of our inquiry, the evidence which left the deepest impression on me was that which was given by the medical officer at Feltham. She said: There are a great many boys who never get looked at because we"— that is, the medical staff— just do not have the time". She then said that It is just the boy who needs help, whose condition is treatable and who has the best chance of being returned to the community as a useful citizen, who does not receive attention, because of the demands imposed by boys with totally disintegrated personalities, who simply need a community to contain them". She went on to say that she found that in a year she would see something like 70 per cent of the boys for some, sort of an interview, however brief; but it is not enough". This is the sum total of our services to the disturbed boy sent to our one and only psychiatric borstal.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East said that she had a preferential recommendation. This is mine. Feltham desperately needs a vast injection of money and a considerable number of additional staff. It wanted 17 more staff. I should like to know how many staff have been recruited at Feltham since we prepared our Report.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East mentioned the remand centre at Ashford. Our visit to Ashford was, for me, a memorable experience. Here there is overcrowding of the worst type. In a way, this was probably the most inhumane aspect of the service. It was a glorious evening when we went there. We were walking from the remand centre at about quarter to six. The birds were still singing. We went away in the knowledge that growing boys had been locked in their cells, sometimes two or three to a cell, since five o'clock and would remain there until half-past six the following morning for no other reason than that there was a grave shortage of staff. In view of the increase in the number of staff at Wake-field to look at television sets and the lack of staff to deal with essential and immediate problems at the other end of the prison system, where a boy may be beginning on a career of crime, perhaps we have our priorities wrong.

I wish to say a few words about the the administration of the Prison Service. The right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone was rather unkind about the way in which the Home Office ran the service. I believe that, despite everything, it is run reasonably well. Here we have a service employing a large number of people and spending a considerable amount of money. It would be welcomed in the service if there were an identifiable group of people at the head of the service in charge of it.

I agree with what he said about accountability and the need for the Home Secretary to be in charge, but perhaps it is not necessary to have a debate in this House every time an escape is made. I do not support these debates. I do not think that they do the service any good.

We need a group of identifiable people at the head of the service—some people who have had a career in the service itself instead of one which has been primarily outside the service, in an administrative grade of the Civil Service. We do not want people who are looking for higher appointments and do not consider that a job in the prison department of the Home Office is the height of their careers. We require the type of person who is outside the administrative structure of the Civil Service.

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will consider these matters with the humanity and fairness which he has already shown as a reforming Home Secretary, and I hope that he will not take what we have said as being in any way an effort to take a significant part of his empire from him.

The work covered by this Report was the most constructive and useful piece of work that I have done in the House, but when we have prepared our next Report I hope that it will reach the Floor of the House sooner than this one has done.

5.11 p.m.

Mr. R. Gresham Cooke (Twickenham)

I, too, pay tribute to the energy and thoroughness of the Chairman of our Committee, the excellence of our Clerk, and the open-mindedness of the Home Office in respect of a number of far-reaching recommendations that we made to it. On going round the prisons I was impressed by the briskness of the régime and the punctuality of the prisoners at work and at mealtimes. As an ex-public school boy, I felt quite at home.

Our prisons are hideously overcrowded. We require every one of the electronic and labour-saving devices which we can install in them in order to cope with the overcrowding and the old-fashioned methods which are used. It seemed to me that substantial improvements had taken place during the last eight years. During my first three or four years in the House I had occasion to visit some of my constituents in prison and, on going round the prisons this time, I felt that there had been substantial improvement since then. This was a great tribute to Lord Butler and his work as Home Secretary, Great improvements had taken place in respect of painting, decorating and cleanliness, and the slop-ping-out was better, being considerably less smelly.

I was not satisfied, however, with the high security wing at Durham. We saw there train robbers, spies, the Moors murderer, and similar people. The whole set-up was too congested, with not enough exercise facilities. I hope that the Home Secretary can tell us what plans are in train for improvements to the high security wings. I would like to see put into force the suggestion of a well-lighted wall round a fairly large prison to allow room inside for the inmates to circulate fairly freely, with considerable security on the outside.

Arguments have been put forward against the use of closed-circuit television, but I thought that this allowed greater room inside the prison, and was an advantage. I should like to know whether the plans for improving the high security prison on the Isle of Wight have been implemented since we went round it in 1966.

I was impressed by the psychiatric work being done at Grendon in putting right the cauliflower ears and smashed-up noses of prisoners, thus helping to remove their inferiority complexes. I could not help feeling that when they came out of prison they would be considerably better, both mentally and physically.

The prison warder is very important. He is not only a warder, but a father-confessor, a friend and philosopher to prisoners. He helps them to rehabilitate themselves, so that they are ready for life outside prison when they leave. The warder can do much to help prisoners in this way. The public must understand that the warder is not only a very strict man; he has to look after these prisoners, but is also a person who will help them. We have to look on prisons not only as deterrents but as institutions which lead to reformation.

I support the hostel system under which, after spending several years in prison, a man is allowed his own room, which he can decorate himself. He has his bed therein, and sundry little comforts. He is allowed out, first to do work and then at weekends. The hostel system is a real step forward, allowing a prisoner to re-establish himself.

Although I thought that they showed many excellent tendencies, I, too, was rather horrified by the remand centres. Places like Ashford were overcrowded, so that boys were sometimes locked up three in a cell for many hours at a time. The public should not be too horrified about boys in detention centres and remand centres. Prisoners turned out to be not the tough thugs that I expected. Often they were rather weak characters, physically under-developed—boys or young men who had been rather easily led astray.

If the people in a locality hear that it is proposed to set up a prison, detention centre, or remand centre in their midst, they should not be frightened. They should look on it as a useful service and try to assist the prisoners, as many people already do, by visiting them and setting up centres in which the prisoners can develop an interest in re-establishing themselves.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) has taken much interest in prisons for some years and I agree with what he said. I finally came to the view that it might be better, once again, to make the prison department an autonomous body under the Home Office. This would be in tune with the times and would give the head of the department rather more power and prestige than he has at the moment. The Home Secretary could give him a grant, and instructions to apply the best methods which are used abroad, some of these are very good, especially the method under which prisoners are made to do useful work rather than sitting around for many hours doing nothing.

I eventually came round to the opinion that it might be best to revive the prison department and to get a man of importance and substance to lead it, making sure that he was given the necessary instructions and had the support of the public and this House. That is how the prison department could be improved and could do a great deal of useful work which would be very acceptable in the community.

5.20 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. James Callaghan)

It might be convenient if I intervene now, as is the usual custom. I have listened to the speeches of the members of the Sub-Committee and my thanks and those of the Home Office are due to them for their work. There is no doubt that a review of this sort by the House of Commons encourages the Prison Service itself. Its members feel that the House is interested in what they are doing. It gives them a flow of fresh ideas to have critical and appraising questions put to them and enables them to keep on their toes.

From the point of view of the Minister—I speak only for myself—it is of value to hear another point of view expressed by hon. Members who had the opportunity, as so few of us do, of seeing the inside of our prisons. I found this of the greatest value. Although I did not serve under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short), it is clear that she was in the right place and there is no doubt that she did a good job.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North)

rose—

Mr. Callaghan

I do not think that I have said anything contentious yet, have I?

The Prison Service is a unique responsibility of the Home Office. It runs over 100 prison establishments and has charge of over 30,000 prisoners, with about 15,000 staff.

Mr. Iremonger

I just wanted to intervene, before the right hon. Gentleman got launched, on a point purely of procedure. Is the House to understand that there will be a speech winding up from the Front Bench, since some hon. Mem- bers might want to ask specific questions of the Department during the debate?

Mr. Callaghan

I understand that the usual procedure is that the Minister intervenes, having heard the views of the Sub-Committee. If it is the desire of the House that there should be someone to wind up, my hon. Friend the Undersecretary of State for Scotland is here. As part of the investigation was concerned with Scottish affairs, it might be appropriate for him to speak later.

I come to the central question asked by the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) which was echoed by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke). There is no doubt that the functions of the prison department are extremely wide-ranging and present its managers with the same problems as face any large-scale complex organisation. They have responsibilities for security, treatment, industrial work, provisioning, staff recruitment, promotion, training, and capital investment. There must clearly be defined responsibility at all levels for these various tasks and for effective communications to be established between the field and headquarters. They must combine day-to-day administration and control with long-term planning and development.

It was because it was thought that it was not working very satisfactorily that, in 1963, one of my predecessors, Mr. Henry Brooke, decided to change the system from what it had been to what it is today. It is now suggested that perhaps this is not working satisfactorily and that we had better go back to the system before 1963. I am a little sceptical about the belief that these changes at frequent intervals have the effect which is sometimes credited to them. We must be a little careful before we uproot changes so recently made and return to a system which my predecessor discarded because he thought that it was not producing the results which the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone now says that the existing system is not producing.

But he was right to raise it; this is a central question. This is the nub of the issue and anyone who thinks about it from my chair for five minutes must ask himself the question which the right hon. Gentleman asked. One of the reasons why it was thought to be unsatisfactory then is, of course, because it was considered that the organisation, big though it was—it is not very big in the sense of modern industry, although I suppose that it might be so considered, since it has 15,000 staff—had become isolated, and there was criticism of some of the antiquated and antediluvian accounting systems, which had occurred, in fact, under the old system.

It was thought that, if that isolation were removed and the organisation brought more into contact with the general run of the majority of useful and valuable organisation and methods systems in the Civil Service—which the right hon. Gentleman will remember—one might get a flush of fresh blood through the organisation. I put that side of the case not because I rule out what the right hon. Gentleman said, but because I think that it is something which should be considered very carefully before one decides to reverse a decision so recently taken.

The right hon. Gentleman thought that it was time that I set up a study by management consultants. He is too late. I have set it up. The problems of management and organisation are being studied at the moment, and have been for some months, by a combined team of Government organisation and method specialists and private industrial consultants. They have been carrying out a systematic review. I have, indeed, already had the first of their conclusions on the particular subject.

However, they have not weighed the particular question which the right hon. Gentleman has put today; they have taken that for granted. I cannot say, of course, today what changes are likely to follow, since I have only just begun to receive the first of their reports, but I shall be considering this over the months ahead and hope to reach some conclusions on the central issues. I will, of course, announce the results.

I am very sceptical whether the existence of this autonomous body would prevent the kind of political panic to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, which he attributed to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the escape of a prisoner, because that kind of panic can be engendered by poli- tical parties. If it is taken up by responsible politicians as a means of beating the Government of the day over the head, however wise and eminent and respected the Commissioners are, nothing will stop the Government from getting the thick end of the stick if the Opposition decide to make political capital out of the escape of dangerous prisoners. I merely put that thought to the right hon. Gentleman. He might pause to reflect what happened when those escapes took place. If I thought that that body would stop that kind of occurrence, it would be an additional reason to set it up.

As the right hon. Gentleman said, the Mountbatten Report had a very substantial effect on thinking in the Prison Service, and a great deal of money was spent as a result of it. This was followed by the Advisory Council on the Penal System Report on the régime for long-term prisoners, and some of its conclusions ran counter to the Mountbatten recommendations. I have had to decide between them. But those two reports, Mountbatten and the Radzinowicz Report, plus the Estimates Committee's Report, have enabled us to look, on a pretty broad canvas, at some of the problems which we have to face.

There is no doubt that the biggest question thrown up in the eyes of the public and of the House at the time was the problem of security. There were other problems, like the prison building programme, avoidance of overcrowding, prison industries, proper staffing, and so on, but I should discuss the problem of security. Obviously, the events of the last two or three weeks have shown once again that we can never assume that any prison or any part of it is entirely secure. Indeed, I know that there are some prisoners who would almost undertake to get out of any prison, no matter what circumstances they were incarcerated in. We must strike a balance between the degree of security and protection provided and the amount of money which we are willing to spend on it.

To reassure those who are very concerned about this, I should follow up the statement made by my hon. Friend earlier that escapes from closed prisons have dwindled substantially. Since 1965, up to 4th November in each year, to take a current date, 64 prisoners escaped in 1965, 67 in 1966, only 16 in 1967 and only 17 this year. There has been a substantial reduction in the number of escapes. There is no doubt that that is the result of the measures which were taken to implement the Mountbatten Report—the result of a considerable expenditure of money and the vigilant efforts of the staff. This has helped to reassure the public that the Prison Service is performing one of the tasks of protection which the community expects of it. The public must be reassured about that before the service can get on with what it regards as being its other primary task—not just security but rehabilitation. Unless: he public are reassured about security, the prison staff find themselves handicapped in dealing with rehabilitation.

The cost of establishing the double fences and modern electronic warning systems is considerable, but we shall have to carry on with it and to concentrate on making the perimeter of the prison secure so that we can ease the restrictions inside the prison as the staff gain confidence. The conditions will then be established in which rehabilitation will stand a better chance of success. The public demand for improved physical security has cost a great deal in staff and time, as several hon. Members have pointed out, and the balance of resources has been tilted temporarily towards security and away from other necessary changes. But we can now begin to move the balance again as the security conditions have been built up, and I hope to do so.

The Estimates Committee recognise the difficulty in dealing with long-term prisoners, particularly those in Category A, who have to be kept in conditions of the highest security. This problem was also considered by the Report of the Advisory Council on the Penal System, the Radzinowicz Report, published at the end of March. Perhaps I should say something about the present position and my policy.

At present, some of the Category A prisoners are housed in Durham, Leicester and Parkhurst prisons. Considerable efforts have been made to provide for them a humane régime combined with maximum security. But this is no easy task, and these security wings can be only a temporary solution. I have seen the conditions in these prisons, as have hon. Members—although they have seen only Durham while I have seen the others, too—and I hope that those who have seen the conditions will agree with me that, in as far as it is possible, conditions in the top security wings are as good as and in many cases better than those in ordinary prisons.

We must be aware of focussing too much attention on this handful of 150 men in these top security prisons at the expense of the 30,000 who are putting up with conditions which, in some cases, are not nearly as good. I know that these men are in for a very long period and that, therefore, public opinion demands that their régime should be humane. The public will not, however, recognise that a more humane régime means a less secure regime and that we must constantly make that balance.

I am also sorry to say that a number of the people in these top security wings are extremely skilled and adept at drawing public attention to their so-called grievances, not sometimes because the grievances are very profound, but as a means of destroying authority in the prisons. The manner in which these are sometimes picked up gives the public an impression which is not borne out by the conditions in these wings. I am far from pretending that the conditions are ideal, but, by comparison with the conditions under which the other 30,000 prisoners have to live, great efforts have been made to make them as humane as possible within the physical limitations.

One means of overcoming this difficulty which was put forward by Lord Mount-batten—I hope that this is not regarded as a denigratory term—was the use of the Alcatraz type of maximum security prison to be established on the Isle of Wight. The proposal was that we should bring all these prisoners together from a number of prison wings and put them there. I agree that the arguments for and against dispersal as opposed to concentration are finely balanced. I thought for a long time about this matter. The Advisory Council came out with a different conclusion from that of Lord Mount-batten, and I was faced with two entirely different recommendations.

One of the arguments in favour of concentration is that this relatively small number of men consists of the type who are quite prepared to manipulate situations and grievances and to use any means available to disrupt the life of the prison. They acquire a dominating influence over other prisoners if given an opportunity to do so. If they were concentrated in one small maximum security prison, it is argued, they would not be able to disrupt the work of other larger prisons in a way in which they seem to be able to do now. A further argument in favour of concentration is that it might be possible to do more for prisoners serving long sentences within a small, modern, purpose-built and well-staffed maximum security prison. It would also provide the near-absolute security which the public demand.

On the other hand, the Advisory Council made a powerful case in favour of dispersal. It feared that the atmosphere of a single maximum security prison would be markedly custodial and possibly repressive. Inmates would know that they had nothing to lose and that they had reached the end of the line. It pointed out that American experience of this problem—although I agree that that is not relevant in all respects—suggested that concentration might increase rather than reduce the number of recalcitrant long-term prisoners in the prison system as a whole.

It argued that, viewing the problem in relation to the penal system as a whole, dispersal was likely to afford more flexibility in the treatment of prisoners and to allow transfer between prisons, either to ease the strain of a long sentence for the individual prisoner or to break up a group attempting to dominate an establishment. I have been following that principle up to the moment. When there have been signs of trouble in some wings I have not hesitated to move those concerned to another prison so as to break up their influence. That is a very serious problem to be faced at all times.

I considered the arguments put forward very carefully and in the end came down in favour of dispersal, although I rejected the Advisory Council's recommendation that armed security guards should be used at the dispersal prisons to prevent escapes. That was a powerful recommendation—and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) was a member of the Council. I have discussed the matter with him as well as with other members of the Council. I was reinforced in my decision by the attitude of the prison officers—although, to be fair, they would prefer concentration into a maximum security prison isolated from the remainder of the prisons.

What I am proposing to do is to try to ensure that the prisons to which Category A prisoners are sent are sufficiently secure. I shall stage the process of dispersal from Durham, Leicester and Parkhurst over the next few years. Eventually, I hope to take in the existing Gartree, Hull and Albany prisons, and two prisons which are in our future programme of building—one at Long Lartin, Worcestershire, which is likely to be opened in 1970 and the other at Full Sutton, Yorkshire, which is likely to be opened in 1972 or 1973. That will give a range of secure prisons. When the programme is complete we shall be free to take the security wings out of use for their present purpose.

That will mean that the men concerned will be with other prisoners in conditions of great security, but, nevertheless, not isolated, on their own, in the conditions in which they live at present. I think that this will help—although only time will tell—to break down the anti-hero complex which some of them seem to have, when they pick themselves out, public attention is focussed on them and they become the aristocrats of the prison system. I see no reason why there should not be democracy in the prison system as well as everywhere else. I hope that that will be the result of putting these men in absolutely secure conditions, but in prisons in which they will be mixing with a great many other people and in which they will not be picked out as a special group.

It has been pointed out that the number of prisoners has grown, and fears have been expressed by some people that the number is likely to grow. I am glad to say that there has been a fall in the last few months, part of which is attributable to the provisions relating to parole and suspended sentences in the Criminal Justice Act, 1967. However, it is too early to assess with precision the long-term effects on the prison population of this Act.

It is quite clear—I agree with the Estimates Committee entirely on this and am glad to have this reinforcement from that Committee—that we must make more progress with new prison building to provide both the necessary degree of security and opportunity for the constructive training of prisoners. With this in mind, I will outline the programme. Two more new closed prisons are expected to be completed by the end of 1970 and another three by 1972 or 1973 to accommodate Category B prisoners, as they are called. We are also hoping to be able to complete another three new closed prisons in the next five years and to make a start on three more.

They will all be built to a standard design and are intended for Category C prisoners—that is, prisoners who, while not ready for open conditions, do not have the ability or resources to make a determined escape attempt. Prisoners in this category do not require such a high standard of security as those in the former categories.

Mr. Quintin Hogg (St. Marylebone)

On the question of design, to which I attach some importance, does the design to which the right hon. Gentleman referred mean the end of the disgusting system of slopping out?

Mr. Callaghan

One of the recommendations of the Select Committee relates to that matter, and I will be coming to it shortly.

A former Ministry of Defence camp at Wartling, near Bexhill, is being converted to a Category C prison. The first prisoners will be received there early next year.

On the young offenders' side, a new borstal will be opened by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State within the next fortnight at Onley and this will enable the borstals at Reading and Portsmouth to be closed and the establishments will then revert, as is proper, to prison use.

In 1970, if funds are made available—as I trust they will—I hope to make a start on the development of a complex of young offenders' establishments at Glen Parva, near Leicester, comprising a training borstal, a borstal allocation centre and a remand centre. Plans are also being considered for the replacement of the Wormwood Scrubs allocation centre by a new establishment and for the provision of additional remand accommodation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. E. Rowlands) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East raised an important point and I can inform them that we have been able to improve the conditions a little at Wormwood Scrubs since the "exposure" that took place there. The conditions were well known, but it was a case of getting public attention focused on them. What we have been able to do—we took a deliberate decision and believe that it will have the approval of the House—is to keep boys there for a shorter time and thereby reduce the overcrowding that existed. However, this has been done at the expense of increasing the pressure on the training borstals. In other words, we have shifted the problem somewhat, as there are more training borstals than allocation centres; indeed, there are only two of these. We have eased the problem a little, but I cannot pretend that the position is ideal.

I have been concerned about the balance of allocating resources between new and old prisons. There is always a temptation to say, "We will have one splendid new prison" when only a limited amount of money is available, for one is anxious to get something that really looks good. I agree that there is such a need, and the overall programme shows that it is being done.

On the other hand, one should not go solely for this sort of work when one will never—my predecessors were in the same position—get sufficient money to replace the existing stock of prisons. I have, therefore, shifted the allocation of resources somewhat to fewer new prisons and more for the maintenance of some older prisons. In other words, I can do more good for more people inside our prisons by spreading the same amount of money over a handful of old prisons, rather than by building one new prison which would benefit only a relatively small number of men. This is a matter of balance. I have a substantial building programme, one which is far bigger thas any other this century. I thought it right to push the resources that exist into the older prisons, as a result of my consideration of the problem.

Mr. Hugh Fraser

Can the right hon. Gentleman say something about the conditions of the Prison Service?

Mr. Callaghan

I shall come to that. I promised not to take too long over this speech, as I think I become boring on the subject of prisons when I talk about them for a long time. The service needs as much attention as can possibly be focussed on it and I have found this subject one of the most rewarding parts of the work that I have had to undertake.

The Committee asked me to consider conjugal visits in principle and I said that I would prefer to wait for the views of Professor Radzinowicz. The advice of the Advisory Council was that conjugal visits for high-risk prisoners—men serving long sentences—should not be undertaken at least until a great deal of experience had been gained of conjugal visits in other prisons. As I have not got any experience of that, that recommendation did not take me much further. Professor Radzinowicz and his colleagues pointed out—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool was behind much of this—that there were many emotional, psychological and practical problems involved in this question. It is something on which, until we start, we will obviously not know what the result is likely to be.

Having considered the matter, I have reached the conclusion that the necessary conditions do not exist in our closed prisons, and I doubt whether they are likely to do so in the foreseeable future, to enable this experiment to occur. I do not believe that it is possible for me to arrange for conjugal visits to take place in a way that would combine security with human dignity. I therefore wish to make a different approach—I suggest that it is a very promising one—from that of the conjugal visit idea.

My approach is to extend the home leave system. At present, prisoners serving over five years, and certain prisoners serving between two and five years, are considered for home leave during the last four months of their sentences. The domestic and other inquiries which must be made now put a heavy burden on probation officers, prison welfare officers and their colleagues. It has been difficult to move in this direction while they have been considering the parole scheme consequences. They have indeed had plently to do in that consideration.

Home leave raises difficult issues. In the case of prisoners serving very long sentences, there will no doubt be a temptation for them perhaps not to return. We must, therefore, proceed gradually and learn from experience. I want to make a modest extension of the home leave scheme during the next 12 months. The prison department is now working on the details, but I envisage that the extension will take place, first of all, among those categories of prisoners who are eligible for leave in the last months of their sentences; and for long-term prisoners there will be the possibility of additional short periods of weekend leave in perhaps the last year of their sentences.

I propose, therefore, instead of the recommendation made by the Select Committee, to concentrate on a gradual development of the home leave arrangements. This will enable a prisoner to maintain contact with his wife and family, which he will be anxious to do. It is my experience—and this is borne out by the comments of many others—that this is sometimes the only stable relationship a prisoner has with the outside world. This arrangement will do more than the Estimates Committee recommended, because we have many unmarried prisoners, and the home visits scheme will enable them to go home to see their mothers, fathers and families, to see them in the circumstances in which they are living and to know the background of the home.

I hope that it will be seen that while I am not able to accept the Committee's recommendation, the proposal I am making—which must be gradual and which must enable us to learn by exerience—will go some way towards meeting what it had in mind.

I should, in deference to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East—and I am sure that the whole House would also want me to—refer to the question of women prisoners. The Committee recommended that women's organisations should be involved very much more in work in women's prisons. I fully accept that recommendation, and I have implemented something of the sort but have not yet been able to carry it to the extent recommended.

A standing liaison is being maintained by the Home Office with a group called the Women's Group of Public Welfare—I am sure that it is known to my hon. Friend. A wide range of women's organisations is represented, and we are trying to ensure that they are brought into the prison work. I believe that it can be of very great value. Anything that our women colleagues can do to help with this work will be very welcome. I value very much the public contact that would be involved here.

I have also been trying, in the process of appointing members of boards of visitors and visiting committees, to get a significant number of women. There are, of course, women visitors for the men's prisons as well as on the women's, but I have been trying to extend the range of women visitors to women's prisons. I am trying to bring in more women and spread the class range of prison visitors—it has been, perhaps, a little hidebound up to now. I do not say that they were not all very worthy and good people, but there is a good deal to be said for spreading very widely the range of occupations of those serving in this way, and this I have been doing.

This debate has come just at the wrong time for me to deal with the general question of policy. All I can say now is that I have been making a substantive review of policy for the treatment of women and girls sentenced by the courts. The review has taken place, and I am considering the report resulting from it. I undertake to make a full statement as soon as I can. Perhaps I may be forgiven for not saying more at this stage.

The Estimates Committee made a very substantial number of recommendations about work. I am very glad to find that, in general, the Committee endorses the policy that is being followed, although it does not think that it has been carried out well enough—and, frankly, nor do I. The Committee has been very kind, and I accept any strictures it cares to pass in this respect, because we need a lot more effort on this side. There is a heavy concentration of effort on the im- provement of the efficiency of prison industries and other forms of work, organisations, management training, and the introduction of more modern manufacturing techniques.

The purpose of the reorganisation will be to reduce and rationalise the number of prison industries. They are at present in penny packets, as anyone who has been round the prisons well knows. I hope to reduce the 30 or so manufacturing activities that now take place to a handful of industries—light engineering, and so on—which will promise both a reasonably good economic return and good training for the prisoners. I accept what has been said about farm work in some cases: although it is not wholly useless, there are other occupations that can be of greater value, considering the sort of life to which prisoners will return.

What I had not fully appreciated, I confess, was that so many of the prisoners are not schooled in the habits of regular work. My belief, before coming to the Home Office, that all one had to do was to find these people a job and they would all then be bursting to work from 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock, I now know to be not quite the truth. There must be be a process not only of bringing the work to the workers, but of getting the workers to the work, and getting the organisation put right in such a way that there will be encouragement.

To this end I am trying to develop a system under which the work during the day will come first. We cannot do this in every prison for some time, but at Coldingley, in Surrey, which we hope to open next February, we want an industrial régime which will operate from 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock. That means that other activities in prison will have to take place outside those hours as far as possible, and we will try to get a proper régime going. If we are successful there, and Coldingley is designed for that purpose, we may be able to spread it to other prisons.

The marketing side of management has not kept pace with other developments, and it is now being strengthened following the appointment of a marketing manager who has had previous experience in industry. I see no reason at all why we should not expand output in the prisons very substantially. Prison industries must satisfy both public and private customers that they are capable of producing goods of the right quality, in time, and at a competitive cost.

This needs better machinery and workshops, and the introduction of modern industrial techniques. I have swung some part of the resources allocated to the prison service in this direction. I dare say that it will be my successor who will see the results, but at least a start is being made, and we shall see some improvements there.

My noble Friend Lord Stonham has done a great deal of work on the question of prisoners' earnings, where work study has been applied. I have spoken to a number of prisoners on this subject. They are now able to earn about £1 a week—which may not sound much to us but is nearly twice the old maximum of 11s.—in return for proportionately greater production. This enables them to get their cigarettes and the other things they need in prison, and in this way lessens the influence of those who will supply them by other means.

My hon. Friend referred to building projects, and told the story of Eastwood Park. There is no need for me to repeat that story, but the saving was more than 25 per cent. on the original contract cost. I certainly hope to see this scheme developed in other places.

Fears have been expressed that prison industries might compete unfairly with normal industrial and commercial undertakings, but the output of these prison industries is only a very small proportion of the country's production and is not a serious threat to outside firms making similar products. Nevertheless, where there is competition it must be on the basis of fair prices, and I give the House an assurance, as I have done to the C.B.I, and the T.U.C., that there is no question of advantage being taken of cheap labour by normal overheads being disregarded. These will be taken into account and costed as fully as possible.

I am glad that the Estimates Committee made a number of recommendations on the subject of staff, because none of our plans and hopes and proposals for the future will be of much practical use if we do not have the full support of all grades and branches in the Prison Service. References have been made to the fact that the service is under-staffed. That is true, but we have been improving the position substantially. Let me say, in passing, that these officers are civil servants, so that it is no use, on the one hand, grumbling about the increase in the number of civil servants and, on the other, pressing me for more prison officers because our prisons are understaffed.

The numbers of prison officers have been going up as follows: 1965–66, by 1,000; 1966–67, by 400; 1967–68, by another 700; and I hope to have another 1,200 by January, 1969. We are getting substantial improvements. The ratio of prisoners to basic grade officers is going down. In 1962, the ratio was I prison officer to 5.5 prisoners, and now I should say that it is one officer to 3.8 prisoners. That is quite a substantial improvement, although I agree that we still need more prison officers. I hope to recruit an additional number in 1969, and again in 1970.

The new grade of senior prison officer is being created to enable principal and chief officers to concentrate more on supervisory duties and to give them a better promotion structure. I am considering even wider questions about the future of prison officers now. I am not in a position this afternoon to say anything about that, but I have the question of future status and relationship in the whole Prison Service very much in mind and am working on it at present.

In skipping over the pages of my notes I have missed the point about "slopping out". Although it is out of context, I will deal with it now. We are not able to get rid of "slopping out" as such, but, through an experiment conducted on the electronic locking and unlocking of prisons, it is possible to enable prisoners to leave their cells and this, at the moment, is an alternative to abolition of the "slopping out" system. Here again, it is a question of finance and how much money I can get for these jobs.

A tremendous amount needs to be done in the prison field, but what chance does one get when discussing these issues to decide between, on the one hand, building a new hospital and, on the other, building a new prison? This is where a devoted and informed group of hon. Members can see that resources are devoted to the places where they are necessary. I agree very much with the hon. Member for Twickenham. I go into a prison and see the prisoners there and when I emerge I feel that 99 per cent. are not evil but inadequate people who are quite incapable, or to a greater or lesser degree incapable, of organising their lives. If they could organise their lives properly, they would not be in prison now.

I am sure that the work we can do in prisons, in the Prison Service, in aftercare and welfare in getting prisoners to rehabilitate themselves is a protection for society in its truest sense. It is not just keeping them behind bars, but enabling them to live the life of an ordinary normal citizen. On that basis, I am trying to approach the job I have to do. I say to my hon. Friend that I have accepted no fewer than 36 of the 43 recommendations relating to England and Wales and I have given an undertaking to look at another four, so I think that I have done pretty well.

I welcome this debate and I am very grateful for the opportunity to explain what is going on. I will always welcome any pressure brought on me to increase the allocation of resources in this particular field so that we can do the job that is needed.

6.2 p.m.

Dame Joan Vickers (Plymouth, Devonport)

The Home Secretary said that we must excuse him for being a bore. He was anything but a bore, he has been extremely realistic and has given a great deal of information. In this he has been very generous. I thank him for accepting so many of the recommendations made by the Committee. As the first hon. Member who is not a member of the Committee to speak in this debate, I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) and all those who worked with her.

We had an extremely reasonable answer given to the proposition made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser). In 1963 I contested the change made by the Conservative Government. I want to draw the analogy between prison officers and dockyard workers who have a Director of Dockyards, the Admiral Superintendent of Her Majesty's Dockyards, to whom they could turn directly. This relationship has been very beneficial.

I agree entirely that it will be impossible to have any prison that is quite secure when we realise all the numbers of ways which were found to get out of prison camps during the war. When these are seen on television they may encourage people to think of new ways of getting out of prison.

The Home Secretary spoke of a big building programme, but he did not say how much it will cost and whether he will get the money for it. Perhaps when the Government spokesman replies to the debate he will give us the figures.

There appear to be two main types of prison, the local prison which receives offenders directly from the courts and the prison whose inmates are transferred there from other prisons The right hon. Gentleman has spoken about home visits. One of the difficulties is the fact that so many prisoners are sent to prisons so far from their homes and I do not know whether anything can be done about this. It appears that they are being sent further and further away from home. In the West Country, if they are not sent to Exeter, the distances away from their homes are tremendous, so home visits become very difficult. I am entirely in agreement with the Home Secretary about the importance of home visits, but if we do not try to see that those with short sentences of up to two years are sent to prisons near their homes, visiting will not be satisfactory.

I am, of course, particularly interested in women and girls. I support the Home Secretary in the tribute he paid to women's voluntary organisations, and I should like to praise the Women's Voluntary Service for the work they do, particularly in meeting women and girls when they leave prison. I am worried about very immature girls who are sent from all over the country to Holloway. I understand that they are under 21 and many have an average mental age of only 11 or 12. It is very undesirable to send them so far from their homes, and I hope that the Home Secretary would consider this problem.

The women's wing at Exeter has been closed. What is to happen when Puckle-church is closed? I understand there will be an extension built for remand and borstal treatment of girls. This will mean that women will have to go to London or to the Midlands. This will not help their home life. There should be some accommodation nearer home for women who are doing a six months' or shorter sentence. If they are so far away it is difficult for probation officers and welfare officers to make contact, which is so necessary, when they leave prison.

I am glad that there are to be no more nurses at Holloway Prison, that the strip cells are seldom used, and that prisoners can wear their own clothing. I was depressed to learn of the type of work they do. To have to make 200 tons of jam seems very soul-destroying. The statement they have assembled certain electrical things for us at various places seems patronising. Women should be given work which is of use and of interest. The turnover from knitting is over £1,000 per head per annum, but that seems to be a monotonous business and it is now being extended to Styal. Could there not be more of an educational content in the work? Most of these women who get into trouble have a low intelligence quotient and they are not able to manage their home lives very well. If they could have help with household budgeting and could be given some instruction perhaps in hairdressing and as beauticians—things which give them self-repsect—it would be better than doing all this jam making, so I hope that these things will be considered.

I want to refer to the psychiatric prison at Grendon. I gather that at present it has about 155 prisoners, although it could take 350 and that it was built to be able to include 25 women. It is stated in the Report that young women who would have gone there have instead, because of staffing difficulties, had to go to Broad-moor or Rampton and mix with mental patients. This is most regrettable and quite wrong. I therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman what has happened to the Report of the Joint Prison Medical Services Committee. There was set up a joint steering committee about prison medical services. Has it yet reported and, if so, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us something about its findings? It is undesirable that women who are sent to prison and who are also mentally disturbed should have to go to Broadmoor or Rampton.

The Report says: Many women could remain on probation and children would not then have to go into care. This would keep the family together. I have recently had a case in which the husband has gone to prison and during his time there the wife has got into considerable trouble and debt and then had to go to prison for contempt of court. All the children have had to go into care. The husband is now about to come out of prison, but then his wife will be in prison and they will again be probably 100 miles from each other.

Paragraph 183 says: After-care in women's institutions was said to be 'in a state of flux.' There are welfare officers as in men's prisons, and at present negotiations are going on with a view to women probation officers assuming the Central After-Care Association, responsibility for after-care in girls' Borstals, some officers working partly inside and partly outside the institution. I should be grateful if we could be told where action is being taken in this matter.

Category D prisoners under the Mount-batten Report cannot go outside to work in camps or to open prisons if violence has figured in their convictions. I have had brought to my attention a case which I visited the other day and which concerned a man who had a first-class naval record. Unfortunately, he had hit someone, and his friend stole the man's watch, but both he and the victim were drunk and the victim did not even have to go to hospital. The man is a star prisoner and there is a camp, Hendon Camp, which now holds 50 inmates, but which could hold 150, to which he cannot go although he has an excellent record. The right hon. Gentleman was right to say that some prisons have fewer prisoners than they can accommodate and this is one such example, but it is a pity that this man, just because he is in Category D, cannot go to a local open prison, for which he would be fit, and which would do him a lot of good.

Nothing is said in the Report about Dartmoor. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is able to mention what is happening in Dartmoor, as he mentioned other things which were not covered by the Report. I should like to put in a good word for Dartmoor. I think that it is a good prison. There is only one prisoner to a cell and it has a good atmosphere and gives a good reception to visitors, and women visit to teach handicrafts. The prison has a very high standard and it has 35 farms, which means that the men there can leave the prison confines more frequently than can other prisoners. I do not know whether the lease is up or what is to happen, but I would be grateful for being told something about its position.

Paragraph 185 says: Your Committee has stated that they are unwilling to comment on the parole proposals. I understand that it may be too soon for them to have been able to comment on them. I am informed that they are not working too well, but I am also told that the percentage of people coming up for parole is not high enough. I do not know whether that is because there are not enough people to supervise prisoners when they leave the prisons, but I should like the Home Secretary to look into the parole system to see how it is working.

I gather that in some prisons prisoners come before the examining board only once a year, while in other prisons they come up about every three months. I have already taken up this matter with an Under-Secretary at the Home Office and I should be pleased if it were looked into. I believe the parole system to be excellent. I think that it can be worked and should be worked and that it gives encouragement to the prisoners themselves.

I conclude by thanking the right hon. Gentleman for a very understanding speech. If he can get the money to carry out what he has put before us today, it will be to the benefit of all the prisoners concerned and we hope eventually that, as in some prisons now, there will be fewer prisoners than accommodation for them and that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us that he is cutting down.

6.16 p.m.

Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) and her colleagues on presenting a most valuable Report. She has been paid many justi- ficable tributes, not least by her colleagues on the Sub-Committee and I know that the whole House will warmly acknowledge the high services which she has given in the preparation of this Report. I also congratulate my hon. Friend on her tenacity in ensuring that the Report should receive the fullest possible consideration by the House.

If I am allowed a general comment on our system of prisons, borstals and detention centres, it is that we are still very far from being able to say that their cost to the public is fully justified by the results achieved. Nor can we say that we are very much nearer to a system in which prisoners and detainees can be enabled to make full recompense in the form of useful service to the society which they have offended.

In the introduction to that section of the Report which deals with young people, the costs quoted of prisoners and detainees under the age of 21 show that in the year 1965–66—the latest available figures—were £757 per prisoner, including young prisoners; £841 per borstal inmate, £897 per detention centre inmate, and £840 for remand centre inmates. Such figures represent considerable public expenditure and the Sub-Committee was rightly concerned to express the importance of seeing to it that the treatment of prisoners, and especially of young people, is reasonably effective.

But many of the speakers in the debate so far have seemed to emphasise that we succeed more in inflicting punishment than in providing rehabilitation. The availability of useful work is the most important factor in rehabilitation. For most people, including, I believe, most prisoners, to be denied useful work is to be denied self-respect. And, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has rightly pointed out, most prisoners are not evil but inadequate. We are not likely successfully to tackle the inadequacies of people by denying them the possibility of increased self-respect through useful work.

I shall discuss this and other problems affecting our prison system with special reference to Strangeways Gaol in my native city of Manchester. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East has told the House that the average working week at Strangeways is 25 hours and at Pentonville only 14. Some time ago, I was invited to visit Strangeways to study its problems. I was deeply impressed by the emphasis placed by the governor on trying to obtain more work for his prisoners. The figure of 25 hours a week is, comparatively, a quite respectable one, but I must emphasise the formidable difficulties with which the Governor had to contend in trying to attract useful work to the prison. Notwithstanding all the initiatives which he had taken, he was still unable to obtain sufficient work to keep his men usefully employed.

The Report speaks eloquently of the standard of work done at Strangeways as well as about the insufficiency of work available, and my right hon. Friend made clear again today that there is no question of using prison labour as cheap labour. I am sure that this was a most important point for him to emphasise. Those outside prison who are afraid that prison labour will be used as cheap labour include many who would like prisoners to give full recompense for the offence which they have given to society. But they cannot have it both days. If they want prisoners to recompense society, they should not at the same time erect obstacles to the provision of useful work for prisoners.

Not only was I impressed by the dedication and vision of the governor of Strangeways; I was impressed also by his staff. Thus I note with interest what was said by representatives of the local prison officers' association in evidence to the Sub-Committee. Mr. Hinsley, Mr. Teasdale, Mr. Jones and Mr. Paul, the local representatives, gave some important evidence. When asked whether he would like to put anything to the Sub-Committee (Qn. No. 2234), Mr. Teasdale said: I realise that in 1968 this prison will be 100 years old, but I think it is absolutely deplorable that we are having to put up with some of the conditions we have here at the moment. We have two old-fashioned toilets for 240 officers in the prison…We have to sleep in an old gate-lodge…and we have only had hot water there during the last couple of months. In other parts of the prison the sleeping rooms are cells. There is an inadequacy of furniture. There are no curtains for the windows. The heat is sometimes unbearable, because the prison is centrally heated and we cannot open the windows in the summer. That is disturbing evidence about conditions in which some very public-spirited men have to work.

The representatives of the local prison officers association emphasised difficulties about accommodation, promotion and other problems. What is said in their evidence about promotion implies that there has been far too much delay in bringing people on in the prison service. To expect people in their early 50s to accept promotion when this means that they must move from one city to another—to "up sticks" as one of the representatives put it—is quite unreasonable. Employment policies in other industries and services are much better than those enjoyed in the Prison Service. And men working in the service could do nothing but benefit from any official study of conditions of service in employments of comparable importance.

The Report rightly emphasises the difficulties of accommodation for the prison staff at Strangeways. Mr. Teasdale said in evidence—this is Question No. 2230— The quarters being built now are pretty good, but at Manchester we have quarters which are 43 years old. These are the quarters in Waterloo Road, and they are certainly not in keeping with the status we expect to enjoy. We are not living in the Dickensian age. Mr. Paul, another of the representatives from the local prison officers' association, said—at Question No. 2231— If I receive promotion during the next four to five years—I am 52 now—I shall have to move. I have been on Manchester Corporation's housing list for the last 10 years in an effort to find somewhere to live at the end of my employment. If I move to another prison I shall lose my place on the housing list and I will finish my service at the age of 60 at some place where I do not want to retire to. Like every good Mancunian, he said: I want to come back to Manchester. What do I do? I refuse promotion. This is the position that many officers find themselves in. He went on to say that he thought that the answer is that the local councils should make some provision for people retiring from a job such as this, and they should have some houses available for them. Other useful suggestions were made regarding the housing of staff and their families. I hope that what was said by the local association's representatives will be taken very seriously at the Home Office.

Mr. Callaghan

I am not sure that my hon. Friend is taking into account that, since the Report was published, a new promotion grade, the senior prison officer grade, has been introduced into the Prison Service, which deals with some of the problems to which he is referring.

Mr. Morris

I am aware that there have been many improvements since the Report was prepared, but there must still be many officers at Strangeways who will not have benefited from the new arrangement. As he said, my right hon. Friend has readily accepted many of the Report's recommendations. But we still have a great distance to go to bring those who work in the Prison Service to the status which they ought to enjoy. At Strange-ways Gaol, I found a dedicated group of people working in extremely difficult circumstances and I hope that the evidence given on their behalf, much of which is still extremely valid, will be taken very seriously in the Home Office.

I was troubled to read of the extent of illness among prisoners and of the inadequacy of the facilities available. The Report shows that the dispensary at Strangeways was criticised by the then medical officer, Dr. Ogden, who, I believe, has now moved near to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East. He made other important criticisms of the medical facilities available. Again, if we wish to rehabilitate people, we must give greater attention to improving the medical facilities.

When moving the Loyal Address in November, 1965, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever) referred to Strangeways Gaol as one of Manchester's grim silhouettes. He said: Anybody who goes inside those grim walls must see the gap which exists between the acknowledgement of humane ideas and the putting into practice of those ideas. I do not think it would be right for me not to mention that one of my hopes is to see this great gaol demolished and some sort of building more in accord with modern and humane ideas replace it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th November, 1965; Vol. 720, c. 10.] We celebrated in the City of Manchester early this year the centenary of the T.U.C., and we have recently had another important centenary, that of the Manchester Evening News. I do not know that there has been much publicity about the centenary of Strangeways Gaol. But what my hon. Friend the Member for Cheetham said in November, 1965, is more true today than it was then. My hon. Friend is now Financial Secretary to the Treasury, so I am sure that my right hon. Friend will feel that he has a very good ally in his former Department. Moreover, my hon. Friend was speaking with great sincerity about the need to get rid of Strangeways Goal, and I know he is as anxious as I am to see it replaced. It is in the wrong place. And people who work there are faced with utterly unreasonable tasks. By the time the Report was prepared, it had deteriorated, it is now deteriorating even more, and should be abolished. Only the exponents of Schadenfreud, that is, taking delight in the misfortunes of other people, could derive pleasure from some of the facts about Strangeways Gaol recorded in this impressive Report.

Whilst giving full credence to all that my right hon Friend said about the difficulties for him in trying to modernise prison buldings, I very much hope that special consideration will be given to the present problems and the future of that prison.

6.32 p.m.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North)

I join the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) in one thing at least, and that is in congratulating the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short), not upon the Report, as I may wish to refer to it in more equivocal terms later, but upon our having this debate now. And I should like to thank her for having refused earlier in the year to move the Motion to take note of the Report, when an attempt was made to push it into the fag end of the day because other business supervened. She felt, I think, that to give it that kind of treatment would be an insult to the men and women who devote their lives to dealing with this poignant and intractable subject. Although she and I differ in matters of policy and principle as much as two human beings can differ, as a fellow Parliamentarian I salute her. I hope that she will not be too embarrassed and will be rehabilitated in due course.

I am glad to see the hon. Member for Renfrew. West (Mr. Buchan) on the Front Bench opposite. Although he is Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, perhaps English nationalism may prevail to the extent that he will wish to answer a question I should like to raise about the Report.

Paragraph 296 on page lxxxviii says: Research is at the heart of many of Your Committee's recommendations… and it adds that the hope is that research that has been carried out will be followed up and further support given to it. In this connection I draw attention to a paper delivered to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its conference in Dundee on 26th August. It was a paper on stealing by London boys delivered by Dr. William A. Belson, Director of the Research Centre, London School of Economics. It was the report of a project financed by the Home Office, and it is being published in full in the December issue of the Association's Journal, Advancement of Science. The report explains who are the boys that steal and how much stealing they do. By the far the most important part of the report is its suggestions as to why they do it and how they might be prevented. The suggestions are only tentative and need to be followed up and tested in further work.

Has note been taken of the fruits of this research which the Government have financed, and do the Government recognise the necessity for following through its results and supporting further work on this basis? I think that this is connected with what should be the main theme of the concern of the House in the whole matter of penal practice, and I hope the Minister will be able to let me know.

Before coming to my main theme, may I make a passing reference to Recommendation No. 11 on page xc. It says: The Prison Department should undertake a thorough job-evaluation of the Governor grade, with a view to altering the executive-class linkage if necessary, and to improving the promotion structure. That is a prime example of gobbledegook. The hon. Lady should have said, when it was submited to her in draft, "Take it back!" And she should have told whoever drafted it, "Write out 100 times, 'I must not use filthy language'". This could have been expressed in plain, sound, straightforward English in a way that was much more helpful to the House and the public. In the penal field above all others, one is at the mercy of sociologists. Greatly as I admire them, their command of the English language is such that one needs a very special kind of education to follow it. Having been educated rather simply, I think that it is a great pity that the House should have gobbledegook of that kind put upon it. But that is a trivial and passing point.

Far more important is the main theme about which we should be concerned. In that respect, I say with regret and apologies to the hon. Lady, her Report as a whole strikes me as having got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It has grave failings in emphasis and perspective. Its assumptions are illusory and misguided. I should like to illustrate what I am getting at by first reading two key passages from the General Conclusions. Paragraph 289 on page lxxxvii refers to …the efficacy of prison as an effective weapon against crime. And paragraph 37 on page xvii refers to the …vital need to establish and maintain prison régimes as instruments of rehabilitation. There is a fundamental heresy in both propositions which I hope that the House will not find it too tedious if I try to explain.

The penal system has nothing to do with the prevention of crime. We must get that clear before we can start to think straight about the matter. The penal system prevents crime in exactly the same way as an umbrella prevents rain, or face powder would prevent smallpox. It cannot prevent crime, and we delude ourselves if we imagine that it should even be intended to do so. Very few stragglers from the legion of transgressors come before the courts, and fewer still of those who do come before the courts go inside prison.

If one is talking in terms of preventing crime, it would be as realistic to abolish the entire prison system. But of course that would have certain disadvantages. It would not be attractive electorally. And it would be wrong, first because it becomes us best to hope and strive a little more constructively than that; second, because the penal system manages to remove from society for varying periods a certain limited number of really dangerous and ruthless men; and, third, it has a ritual function. Perhaps this is not the moment to enlarge on that last point, but it adumbrates a very important argument in favour of maintaining it. The penal system, in fact, does not do much to change even one single ruthless, unkind, selfish, wretched and unhappy human being into a comparatively reconciled, happy and harmless one. Therefore, in considering the penal system, it is a mistake to talk about it in terms of its being a "weapon against crime". It is not a weapon against crime at all.

Therefore, we should approach the penal system in a stoical but somewhat sceptical spirit and recognise that the real object of our deliberations should be to improve the nature and quality of society, and at a much more fundamental level. This is usually expressed in penal circles with the saying that it is better to have fences at the top of the cliff than ambulances at the bottom. The best we can say for the penal system is that it performs the function of ambulances at the bottom. Therefore, we should see if possible, without hoping for too much from it, that it should be as good a kind of ambulance as we can devise.

The first thing to do is to decide what we expect the penal system to do. It is very popular outside the House, and to some extent among my hon. Friends, to imagine that the penal system exists to punish people. That is part of the ritual idea. I am not at all sure of the moral or administrative virtues of punishing people. But I think that we all can agree in this—that the function of the penal system is to play a part in protecting society. The best way to protect society from these few people, the small part of the criminal population which comes within the penal system, is to try to see that anyone who goes through the penal system comes out at least no more dangerous than he went in and, if possible, rather less dangerous.

The first requirement in getting the right balance in the penal system, in getting it to start to fulfil its function of protecting society, is properly to classify those who go into prison. I am not sure that the Report gives quite enough emphasis to the extraordinarily difficult task of classification, to the demands it makes upon skilled men and upon buildings, and the fact that however skilful one is in classifying people the results of the classification will be nil unless there are enough men and buildings to provide the varied kinds of régimes necessary to work upon the different kinds of prisoners who will have been classified.

They will fall broadly into three categories. The first are the dangerous men of whom I have spoken. To talk about treatment or rehabilitation of them I believe is pious humbug. I think that the best one can do is to keep them in for as long as the law allows. No longer, for I do not think that there can be an administrative decision that they are dangerous people and should be kept in for the amount of time that society might like. They must only be kept in for the kind of time that the law decides is allowable for the particular job at which they happen to have been caught.

The second class of prisoner is the first offender of normal personality, and for them again the idea of treatment is pious humbug. They are not going to offend again whatever we do to them. They are not going to have treatment anyway. They just want to be given ritual "bird". It should be more or less the kind of punishment that people go through at public schools—and it costs about the same at £600 or £700 a year. Experience shows that when they come out they will not offend again.

Then there is the third class of prisoner to which our attention should be directed—the inadequate. The inadequates range right from the elderly inadequate to the juvenile. It is right that one should think not in terms of juvenile offenders but in terms of inadequate offenders. If one had to isolate one single characteristic of offenders generally it is that they are immature, not that they are chronologically young but that they have not reached the degree of social maturity which enables them to get along passably well with their fellow human beings. It is to this third class of the inadequate that we really should hope that the idea of treatment within the penal system might have some relevance.

The question that the House should ask itself and of the Home Secretary in his response is how we train an inadequate human being, who has not got the will to adjust himself to society, into an adequately adjusted one. The prison rules have the spirit right in saying that the objective of prison treatment is to induce into the prisoner the will to lead a useful and lawful life on release. It is the will which has to be induced. That is the key, and the secret of the whole thing. The question is, how do we induce into anyone the will to do anything?

The answer—and it would be much more healthy to say this than to talk about treatment—is what we just do not know. I do not know what "treatment" is supposed to be. I have spent years studying the penal system—years talking to the first-class human beings who are responsible for administering it—but I have never been able to get an answer to the question, "What do you mean by treatment?".

Mr. Peter M. Jackson (The High Peak)

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech. Would not he agree that the answer to these questions—and I think that they are the right questions—can be provided only by criminologists and sociologists, the people whom he earlier appeared to criticise?

Mr. Iremonger

I criticise everyone, including the hon. Gentleman sometimes. I think one wants to be humble about this. If he had waited for a moment he would have been gratified to know that I was about to say that the answer to this which seems to me to come nearest to the truth has been produced by the man who in my opinion has the most penetrating insight into the problem and has given us the most useful lead and who is, in fact, a criminologist and sociologist—Dr. Richard Hauser.

Nowhere in the Report is the H & K wings experiment which he initiated and carried out at Wandsworth mentioned. I would be interested to know whether the hon. Lady and other members of the Committee heard about it. They went to Wandsworth. Were they told about H and K wings and Dr. Hauser's scheme whereby positive and constructive techniques were used, in which both recidivist prisoners and prison officers were trained to take part, and in which an attempt was made to rehabilitate prisoners, to instil into them the will and the techniques of leading a good and useful life on release?

I saw this experiment. I was profoundly impressed by it. I am sure that it gives a clearer answer to what we are seeking than anything tried in the whole of the British penal system. Yet for some reason I have never understood it seemed to be almost systematically pushed out, killed, buried and forgotten.

The system made these prisoners evaluate themselves by the standards which they were obliged to establish for themselves—namely, their own social age. It made them go through the whole stage of maturation socially together as a group exercise with their prison officers until they themselves judged themselves to be sufficiently mature to lead a harmless life on release. And, even more important, it sought to instil a viable technique for leading life outside. The question of adjustment to society—and Dr. Hauser was followed with enthusiasm by those taking part—was put in this way: "You are going to have very great difficulty when you emerge. You will have four crises. The first will occur when you go out through the gate. The second will occur when you get home—and only 40 per cent. were married, anyway. The third will occur when you start working. The fourth will arise when you are over all this and one day you will be moved to do another 'job'—and will be certain, as you always are, that you will get away with it. That is where you will need most help and support. The support and help you will need cannot come from people who are not subject to these pressures. They will have to come from you prisoners and ex-prisoners yourselves in the same way that Alcoholics Anonymous are able to help one another because they have confidence in one another and know the problems."

Dr. Hauser evolved this technique. I served on the Royal Commission on the Penal System and of all the evidence given to us that given by the Recidivists and Anonymous Fellowship, started in the Wandsworth experiment, was by far the most impressive and most hopeful.

I hope that it will not be taken amiss if I say, with great respect, that I feel that the emphasis and perspective of the Select Committee's Report is not what we need in this House. It would be better to say frankly that the penal system has its crippling limitations and that far more important than what we do in the prisons is what we do about people coming out, and far more important even than that is what we do about those who should be stopped from getting in. To these last I want to draw the attention of the House for a moment, because I am certain that it is quite possible to eliminate to a very large extent the intake into prisons provided the recruits are caught early enough and given the will not to follow a path which is going to bring them into conflict with society.

The answer to this lies not in the penal system but in the educational system. The key to the answer has been given by the Farmington Trust. It has established a research unit which has laid down the principles of what it calls, perhaps rather repellantly, "moral education". The principles are expounded in its first fruits, a book called "Introduction to Moral Education", by John Wilson and others of the research unit.

I say this at the risk of having perhaps momentarily strayed beyond the bounds of order, because I cannot bear to see this Report debated in the spirit of acceptance and complacency in which it has so far been received—as though the penal system were anything more than mere nibbling at the fringe of human failure and the failure of society which is our ultimate responsibility. I want to get to the roots of it so that, in the first place, the recruits can be stopped from getting to prison. If we can do that, we can ensure that we get help to the people we can help and that we help them in the right way.

Mr. Speaker

Order. I remind the House that many hon. Members still want to speak. I will be able to call all of them if hon. Members will be reasonably brief.

6.55 p.m.

Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool)

The events of the last few weeks—the escape from the Durham security wing and the charge against a man of alleged complicity in the train robbery—have predictably aroused great national interest. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has referred to it. No doubt because crime is the price that the community pays for the attempt to civilise man, the average man, who has fortunately achieved the metamorphosis from being a savage, lustful babe to conforming adult, tentatively and precariously overcoming his delinquency and aggression with love, nostalgically and with fascination looks upon the drama of police capture or escapes of our most dangerous criminals.

My right hon. Friend complains that so much attention should be directed to them. It is a temptation for all of us and for the Press, when crime is discussed, to concentrate a great deal upon these criminals who, when in custody, qualify for Category A. They qualify, in short, for that group whose escape would be regarded as highly dangerous to the public, to the police or to the security of the State. Spies, notorious murderers and psychopathic gang leaders are all part of the stuff of television and their emergence out of the magic box into court is clearly very, very interesting to the general public.

I am compelled, with some degree of reluctance, as I am sure my right hon. Friend was, to comment on this category, both because the House may expect it in view of my membership of the Radzinowiz Committee and because I believe that it is unavoidable, even though, as my right hon. Friend said, with some impatience, too much attention may be directed to the problem. I hope that the fact that I do this will not be interpreted to mean that any encounters I may have had with these immature men has caused me to forget that they constitute only a tiny proportion of our prison population—only 0.69 per cent. of prisoners have been sentenced to over 10 years.

Of course, we should never so flatter the uncurbed narcissism of most of these men in Category A by allowing them to distract our attention from the fact that our prisons are bulging with pathetic inadequates or, for example, from the fact that the age of 14 is the age more than any other when offences are committed.

When we talk about Category A prisoners, may be we should have some of the defeatism that was implicit in the speech of the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), because it means that we think in terms of security and how a civilised community can deal with these well-nigh irretrievables. Once we begin, however, to talk about the other delinquents, although they lack the fascination of the Category A prisoners, we are moved more readily to turn back the pages and note where and how, since human beings are at birth naturally wild animals, they failed to become domesticated. It is only then that we recognise when we are dealing with convicted prisoners that we are not—I agree with the hon. Member for Ilford, North in this—dealing with the problem of crime, but, rather, with the result of our failure to deal with the problem of crime.

I therefore hope that no one, when we discuss prisoners, will ever forget that the implementation of the Seebohm Report will do more to diminish the size of our prison population than any régime that the most ingenious of criminologists or penologists may ever be able to introduce into the most modern of prisons.

As of now, certainly, although it may be that only a small proportion of the 3,000 long-term prisoners are really dangerous people whose escape from custody must at all costs be prevented, there is that small proportion. They do exist. They will continue, unless we are very careful, to draw excessive attention to themselves. They include young, violent criminals who, during the course of robbery, do not hesitate to throw acid in the faces of their victims, to use firearms against shopkeepers, viciously to assault private citizens. They include men who have committed, with the most obscure motivations, the most appalling crimes, often against children.

They include a further category. They include a category which is peculiar to Britain, for there is a group certainly, as we found in our travels abroad, which seems to be unknown in foreign countries. We have in our prisons dangerous men who undoubtedly have well-founded aspirations that one day they will be "sprung" as a consequence of direct outside help. The Radzinowicz Committee certainly heard enough evidence, as we hinted in paragraph 55 of the Report, to suggest that escapes such as that of Wilson and of Biggs made with outside assistance are, unfortunately, not unique. The proceeds of a large and successful robbery, it must be remembered, enable members of a gang to command considerable resources. The postulation, for example, of the Mountbatten Report of a low-flying helicopter with a winch and belt attempting a rescue is not an extravagant, over-imaginative theory.

It is perhaps correct that the perimeter security, with manned armed guards, which exists in the United States, appears to have always deterred anyone from attempting a rescue. It is more probable that here, as not always elsewhere, the police—and it is to their considerable credit—track down the leading figures, not only the small fry, in our professional criminal gangs. Because of this, in my view it is incautious to assume that precautions which have been adequate elsewhere are necessarily adequate here. Because of that, among other reasons, the Radzinowicz Committee reached the sombre conclusions concerning perimeter security that aroused much controversy.

As I suspect, however, the result of the present Durham inquiry will reveal, the level of security in the final analysis depends, not on guns, nor on fences, nor on dogs, nor on electronic equipment, but upon the prescience of prison officers. There is absolutely no substitute for an alert, well-trained staff possessed of a good intelligence system, able to anticipate, perspicacious enough to be able to sense any ripple that emerges upon the usual stream of prison life.

I am absolutely convinced that the sensitive antennae which a prison staff must possess is prison security is to be near foolproof withers away if the dominant atmosphere of a goal is oppressive and excessively custodian. There is no greater illusion than that a repressive regime gives greater security. There is no greater folly, as the Federal authorities in the United States have learned from their experiences at Alcatraz, and will freely admit, and as the Swedes are beginning to realise as a result of their experiences in their fortress at Kumla, than the concentration of all those whom the authorities regard as the most evil of men into grim centres, however equipped they may be with modern electronic apparatus; for in my view it leads in the long run to more, not fewer, escapes.

Security, in fact, depends not upon the creation of a centre or centres where a trained staff finds itself not in communication, but in a confrontation, with the inmates. It is inviting escapes, and indeed revolt, if conditions are created where prisoners feel that they are totally rejected by society and that they have, as the Home Secretary quoted from the Radzinowicz Report, nothing to gain by co-operation and nothing to lose by rebellion. In such an atmosphere, as I have observed, the staff can be loaded with anxiety, indeed with fear. They can react with an aggressiveness that exacerbates the problems still further.

In such a prison, divided from the inmates by a barrier of fear, by a barrier of mistrust, there will be a staff which knows nothing about what is going on, going on sometimes in their presence, where the persistent escapers are most likely totally to dominate the whole institution.

There have doubtless been many changes at Durham since I visited there. Doubtless my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has attended to some of the problems, such as the heating problem and the exercise yard, since the days when I was looking at it. I do not doubt that the prison authorities are doing all that can be done to make improvements in the security wing there, as in other security wings containing what may be our most dangerous prisoners.

But these structures, whether ancient or improvised, cannot possibly provide the condition where a liberal régime, of the type that the Radzinowicz Report has spelled out, of the type which I conceive commends itself to hon. Friends who have spoken and to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short), who so ably introduced the Report, could flourish. I do not believe that we can possibly in these structures create the conditions in which an ambience is created where it becomes possible for a prison officer to become not a mere custodian, but an active counsellor, personally involved in the treatment of prisoners, able to engage in conversation with prisoners without fearing that he could face criticism that he was neglecting security arrangements. I do not believe that in such places it is at all possible, however much we improvise and try, to create such an ambience.

The Home Secretary, as I said before he came in, may be exceedingly impatient that we have to concentrate so much attention upon such a small percentage; but however much we may preach that they constitute an insignificant percentage, however much we may ask the community to direct attention to the inadequates within prisons rather than to these evil, manipulating men, in the end, year in, year out, the attention of the community will be directed to them for the dangerous, emotive reasons at which I hinted at the beginning of my speech. It is inescapable.

The public, therefore, should understand that escapes can be anticipated only when, given high perimeter security, we have such an atmosphere in prisons that we are able to have a liberal régime. However hard the staff may struggle, I do not believe that the anticipatory level that can be achieved is possible in our improvised security wings.

If the community wish to endorse the judicial reaction to many types of crime—for my part, I am pleased to see that there are some doubts already emerging within the community as to whether they wish to endorse all these long sentences—then they must accept that, in a prison system where only three out of 41 of our closed prisons were built since the First World War, a heavy price has to be paid. If we are not prepared to shoulder the economic cost, we are not only degrading the prisons but are degrading ourselves and throwing upon the Prison Service an intolerable task.

I sensed that the Home Secretary had a feeling almost of irritation that he had to dwell as much upon problems of security as the clamour of the community demands. So be it. It is a fact of life and it will continue with us. As long as we postpone the movement of these men out of the present security wings, as long as we ask why should we give them higher priority than others, so long, unfortunately, will we continue to have the type of debate which leads to censure of the Government and so long will every escape be regarded as an excuse for mobilising the most repressive action and the most reactionary opinion. The right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser), in criticising the former Home Secretary, was being less than fair, in view of the howling mob which the Home Secretary had to face when a few dramatic escapes took place and the issues were elevated so that they could be used as a political stick against the Government.

The manner in which the Prison Service has the opportunity—and only we can give them the opportunity—to meet the challenge of containing long-term prisoners in conditions of combined security and humanity will have a lasting effect upon the whole of the prison services and not merely upon the segment dealing with that category of prisoner.

Our policies should be made taking into account the inevitable, almost prurient, curiosity which the wider community has in the escapades and antics of these comparatively intelligent and dangerous men. The Home Secretary must accept that often what appear to be irrelevancies are issues which enable public interest in the prisons to be engaged. After all the hard work that has been done by many committees, we sit here today in a comparatively empty House, although the Home Secretary is present and has made an informed speech. The public is not so interested in the prevention of crime; it is really interested in crime. The public vicariously live out their own repressed criminality; although perhaps we can console ourselves this may have some therapeutic value in the community. If we are to have techniques to get the community engaged and interested in penal matters, then we must accept that sometimes the irrelevancies can be used as a bait to engage public attention.

That is why my concluding remarks concern a marginal matter which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East and mentioned by other hon. Members, and which has, perhaps too perfunctorily, been swept to one side by the Home Secretary. He was not giving all the conclusion of the Radzinowicz Committee when he spoke about its recommendations of conjugal visits. That Committee, in its Report, suggested a small-scale experiment with a group of prisoners serving long but not very long sentences who had apparently stable marriages. They had in mind something between home leave with all the risks involved in allowing a man to go back to his earlier environment, and a period of suspended sentence with conjugal visits within the prison itself.

It was suggested that selected prisoners should be allowed two or three times a year to spend a day or a weekend in accommodation which was near the prison, but outside the perimeter wall. I do not minimise what has come out of that recommendation in that the Home Secretary has now said that he is extending home leave. In putting forward our suggestion we on the Radzinwicz Committee knew that it would not be popular among prisoners. The Home Secretary, in rejecting the present possibility of conjugal visits in prisons, will receive great acclaim from the overwhelming majority of prisoners. The demand for conjugal visits will be continually renewed and in the end they will come, but it is not a demand that comes from prisoners.

The Home Secretary adumbrated some disadvantages and difficulties. I could adumbrate even more. No one who has gone into the matter in depth will be unaware of the many administrative difficulties, but the community must understand that when it sentences men to imprisonment for decades it is totally emasculating the man. The community is telling him that, as a result of his sentence, not only will he be put in prison but he must choose between homosexuality and celibacy. That is what is happening, and it is no good people trying to dodge it. The curious thing is that the prisoners will evade the issue because they are immature men.

The Home Secretary, as a good parent, will know that little boys at a certain stage accept that they obey as a price for obtaining security; but equally, when they reach adolescence they must assert their independence and not regress into a situation where they obey any firm authority. They have to learn to be men, to be like their fathers, without fearing their father figures. Our prisoners, especially long-term prisoners, are men who feel a deep sense of insecurity and who, in many senses, when put into prison, regress to the condition where the authority that is there is confirming their immature needs. They are frightened if they are told to "be a man", which means "be adult".

The reason why the issue of conjugal visits, marginal though it may appear to be, is of importance is that if the principal is accepted it will be a declaration on the part of the community that we are not in any circumstances prepared to use a prison as a place where men are put into emotional refrigeration. It means that we take the bold step of saying that we believe that the community outside and the man inside must be linked. Logically, that means he must behave as a man and have the opportunity to be a man. We would then be declaring in firm terms that the object of placing a man in prison is to assist the maturation and rehabilitation process.

However much one may dismiss this suggestion which was made by the Estimates Committee and by the Radzinowich Committee, it has a greater relevance than is fully understood by people who are conditioned to the prison service. I therefore urge the Home Secretary to give this matter more careful consideration. It is a little ridiculous to suggest that we are trying to rehabilitate men when we are in fact emasculating them.

The fact that I have not given to the Estimates Committee as much praise as it deserves does not mean that it has not done a most valuable task. It was of assistance to us in the Radzinowicz Committee when we were made aware of many of the things which it was doing, there is no doubt. I express my thanks to the Home Secretary for having taken note of some of its recommendations and, in the end, with some diffidence and with coyness also adopted tentatively some of the recommendations made by the Radzinowicz Committee.

Several Hon. Members

rose—

Mr. Speaker

I shall be able to call everybody who wishes to speak if the remaining speeches are reasonably brief.

7.20 p.m.

Mr. Niall MacDermor (Derby, North)

I begin by apologising for the fact that I was unable to be present for the first two hours of this debate and consequently missed the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

I wish to raise one small severely practical matter on a rather revolting subject, and I make no apology for raising it. My proposal is that until such time as it is possible to abolish the disgusting practice of slopping out, chamber cupboards should be provided in every prisoner's cell. It is a surprise to people outside who have not studied the subject to be told that it is very rare indeed that there are chamber cupboards in prisoners' cells.

My experience of visiting prisons is rather out of date. I was incarcerated for three years with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary at the Treasury and subsequently in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. However, I am aware of the problem from previous visits, and I believe that it still exists. I have seen chamber cupboards in dormitories; I do not recall ever seeing one in cells.

There is a lot of revulsion at the habit of slopping out. For the relatively short time that it lasts, it is probably the most revolting feature of prison life. But insufficient attention has been paid to the same problem during the long hours before the time arrives for slopping out, namely, during the night when the men are locked up, sometimes three in a cell, for periods of 10½ hours and upwards. If they merely have open chamber pots and then have to endure the filthy stench and conditions which result, I ask myself what is the policy behind it; what are we trying to do? Are we deliberately seeking to degrade these men and to bring them down to the level of animals?

A chamber cupboard is a simple enough thing to provide. Everybody who requires one in the home would regard it as an essential piece of furniture. Why do we deny it to men because we put them in prison? I hope that the question of cost will not be raised. If we are looking for ways of finding useful and purposeful work for men to do in prison, some of them could be put on the task of manufacturing a simple enough piece of furniture of this kind.

I regret that this matter did not appear to have come to the attention of the Estimates Committee. I am aware that slopping out was the subject of a recommendation, and I am delighted that it has been accepted. I hope that my right hon. Friend will look into this matter and consider whether urgent action can be taken to wipe out within a relatively short time this disgusting feature of prison life.

The only other matters on which I want to touch extremely briefly are these. I join in the concern expressed by others at what seems to be a growing tendency of our courts to inflict very long prison sentences. They seem to me to be barbarous and inhuman. I think that they are counter-productive. I do not believe that they achieve the effect which long prison sentences are intended to achieve—to express the revulsion of society at a particular crime. There comes a point when sympathy for the prisoner is aroused at exceedingly long sentences.

There was vivid evidence of this in the very interesting article which appeared in the Sunday Times a few weeks ago, written by a former prisoner and describing the circumstances of the escape of the prisoner Blake. What was remarkable about it was that it showed that the whole prison was on Blake's side at that time—and not only the prisoners. It was quite clear from the article that the prison staff had enormous sympathy for him. All experts in penology have said that from the point of view of the rehabilitation of the man there comes a point beyond which long prison sentences are completely self-defeating.

I am anxious about this particularly now that the new system of parole is coming into force. In the old days, some courts, although they were told not to do so, when estimating what sentence to impose, calculated that normally a prisoner would be entitled to one-third remission and would then give such sentence as would ensure that he would remain in jail for the period which the court thought he should. This defeats the purpose of a remission system. I am afraid that the principle underlying the parole system may be eroded in the same way. It is most important that that does not happen.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will find ways of conveying to prisoners their hopes and prospects under the parole system. The information which reaches me is that many long-term prisoners do not really know whether parole is a starter or a non-starter for them.

Mr. Callaghan

I have taken special pains to ensure that particular groups of prisoners or inmates, where this has been alleged, are informed. I have every reason to believe that full information is given; they know exactly their prospects.

I have just checked on one other point. Chamber pot covers are now provided universally. That is at least one good mark.

Mr. MacDermot

I am delighted to hear my right hon. Friend say that. It is a great improvement on the situation which existed only a few years ago.

I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) said about conjugal visits. This is something which is practised in other countries. I know that it is has been practised in Yugoslavia for many years and, I think, in a number of Iron Curtain countries. It is curious how in some aspects of penal systems the totalitarian countries can give a lead and example to us. We can pride ourselves on the defences which we erect for people not to go to prison. I am not so sure that we can pride ourselves on what we do to them once they get to prison. For the reasons stated, I believe that it would be an enormous improvement if we could arrange conjugal visits for long-term prisoners.

I join in the tributes which many hon. Members have paid to the Prison Service. The other day, I went to see the film which has recently been made of what I think is the funniest book of the century—Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall". I know that it was a humorous film, but the prison scenes were such a ghastly caricature of prison life and of the Prison Service that they made me feel quite angry.

I am sure that any person working in the Prison Service would have been furious at the scenes depicted in that film. To depict our modern warders as moronic, sadistic thugs—as they were depicted—is utterly ludicrous. I wish the public could be better informed, so that they will realise the quality of these men and the devoted service which they give.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Hector Monro (Dumfries)

I am glad to follow the hon. and learned Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot), who speaks with such great knowledge of the law as it affects prisons. I agree with what he said. I am glad to take part in the debate because I regard the Report as a valuable one, and consider that it should be essential reading for anybody who is interested in the subject and for magistrates and any other people who have jurisdiction over those in custody.

I want to refer to the position in Scotland. I have taken an interest in the police and in prisons and have tried to put forward constructive views from time to time. I have visited a number of prisons mentioned in the Report, especially Barlinnie, Penninghame and the Dumfries Young Offender Institution. The Sub-Committee makes special reference to overcrowding; indeed, it would have been incredible if it had not done so, because the position is very serious.

In its recommendations on Scotland, the Committee said that one of the reasons for overcrowding is the increasing length of sentences. This, coupled with the unfortunate delays in providing new accommodation, means that we are trying to put a quart into a pint pot. It cannot be done. It would be wrong to try to resolve the situation by reducing the length of sentences. I take the view that, if anything, short sentences must be stiffened if we are to combat the rising crime rate in Scotland, and especially in the Glasgow area, from which place many of the inmates of Barlinnie come.

The police must have the necessary powers to deal with crimes of violence and the use of offensive weapons in Scotland. I acknowledge what the Government are doing to improve the situation, and I pay tribute to the Undersecretary of State for Scotland—the hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan)—who has assiduously gone round prisons and taken a first-hand interest in the situation. The main difficulty about trying to accelerate the prison building programme is the continuing gravity of our economic situation, which ties the Government's hands behind their backs.

Barlinnie is in by far the worst situation, and the overcrowding there must not be allowed to continue for any longer than is necessary. Paragraph 250 of the Report says: The prison has accommodation for about 950 prisoners. At present it holds 1,530 prisoners, of whom 277 are young offenders…". That shows the gross extent of overcrowding. I saw the situation for myself not long ago. Those who have been to Barlinnie—I am sure that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) will agree about this—know that it is no place for young offenders and that the sooner they can be removed from that dreadful establishment the better.

The Committee said that in Barlinnie, because of overcrowding, there were three men to a cell and some prisoners were having to eat in their cells. That combination of circumstances is quite unacceptable, and it must be dealt with as soon as possible. I pay tribute to the governor and the staff of the prison, who do a very good job in exceptionally difficult circumstances. I am sure that the House will acknowledge what they have done in Glasgow.

The Report brings out an interesting point concerning visitors. It refers to the great difficulty that arises from the fact that facilities are not available for the great number of prisoners whose relatives wish to see them. I well appreciate the point made in the Report that on Saturday afternoons it is like a football crowd going in and out of prison. It is not possible for the staff to cope properly with that situation, and it must add enormously to their already heavy burden. I hope that some arrangements can be made to improve the facilities for visitors who wish to see prisoners.

Observation No. 44, concerning prisons in Scotland, refers to a new large closed prison for adult male prisoners in the West of Scotland". It recommends its inclusion in the building programme for completion in the early 1970s. I should like to know whether that is the prison that may be built at Bishopbriggs and, if not, where it will be built and how soon building will start. If it is to be ready in the early 1970s we should be getting cracking now.

The steady rise in costs causes me some concern. In 1963, it was estimated that the Dumfries Young Offender Institution would cost £140,000, but £315,000 has already been spent on it. That is a dramatic increase. The same thing applies at Glenochil, where the original estimate was £115,000 but has now risen to £348,000. I acknowledge that costs must rise when new facilities are provided. If we are to get anywhere, we must have workshops, sports facilities and libraries. In Dumfries, I saw a very nice chapel. All these facilities help to rehabilitate young offenders.

I hope that in the workshops we shall endeavour to give young offenders training which they can put to instant use when they return to civilian life. We hope that the young lads now in institutions will be able to take their places in society when they leave and develop a constructive interest in the areas from which they come. My constituents hope so, because there have been difficulties in the past owing to isolated escapes.

I hope that that sort of thing is behind us and that there need be no more concern. I hope that we have learned the necessary lessons from these escapes, namely, that the right publicity should be given at the right moment, and that, if there is a balance between the interests of the prisoner and the interests of the public, we shall come down on the side of the public and information about escapees will be given as soon as possible.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will say a word about the development of the parole scheme in Scotland. The Secretary of State answered a Question on 12th November about the number of prisoners allowed out on parole. It was a surprisingly small number. For instance, at Barlinnie, where there are 1,500 prisoners, only one has been allowed out on parole. Even the maximum number, that at Edinburgh, is only 10.

I was sorry that the hon. Lady was not able to visit Penninghame Open Prison, if only because it must be one of the most attractive in Britain. The open prison idea has been very worth while. I would like to know whether it has had a much better record of rehabilitating prisoners because of the improved environment.

I should like to thank the Governors and staff of the prisons that I have visited for their exceptional courtesy and help to myself and other hon. Members. The closer the co-operation between prisons and Members of Parliament the better, since then more of us know what we are talking about.

I must say an important word on behalf of the staff, because they are the most essential people for the future of prisons. We know that it is a calling to enter to the prison service, so we must not fall down by failing to provide a sufficient salary scale. We must give all we can afford. A prison officer's life is not everyone's cup of tea. There is no thanks, there are long hours and, as has been said, a great deal of concentration is required for real alertness when difficulties arise.

I hope that we can bring more officers into the system. If we can provide a good promotion structure and good housing—I notice that it is particularly poor at Barlinnie, but elsewhere in Scotland it is not too bad—if we can provide for work periods of 10 days in a fortnight and can reduce the amount of overtime, these would all be improvements. A happy staff, giving a great deal of team spirit, will do much in the long run to help rehabilitate prisoners, whom they spend so much time watching and helping.

We should pay tribute to the visiting committees and the many bodies which try to help prisoners when they are released. We should thank Alcoholics Anonymous, the Church of Scotland and the Training for Freedom organisation. All these people are doing valuable work, out of which I am sure good will come.

Scotland is a lap ahead of England since we will have the social work departments covering probation, and we have more co-operation and unity to help those leaving prison who may be in trouble for a while to come. Generally, however, we must tackle the prison problem at the roots, which means dealing with crime. The more we can do to prevent crime, the fewer people there will be in prison. I am the strongest believer in supporting the police in every possible way and I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has managed to secure an agreed pay award which will go some way towards improving service in the force. We must give all the equipment they need to prevent crime and back them to the hilt in their arduous duties.

This has been a very valuable Report, on which we should congratulate the Committee and its Chairman. I hope that the Government can put into effect as many of its recommendations as possible.

7.44 p.m.

Miss Joan Lestor (Eton and Slough)

I want to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), who, unfortunately, is no longer here. I agree with a great deal of his emphasis on finding out the reasons for crime, but he was somewhat unfair to criticise the Sub-Committee for not having dealt with that at any length, since that was not the Sub-Committee's function. It dealt with expenditure by the Government on prisons, borstals and detention centres, and it has done this exceedingly well.

I was not a member of the Committee, but I have visited several prisons, the last one being Holloway, and have also kept in close touch with the Sub-Committee's deliberations and recommendations. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) that the implementation of some of the recommendations of the Seebohm Report will do more to keep people out of penal institutions than spending more money on them once they are in. I would add that the implementation of proposals along the lines of the White Paper, "Children in Trouble", will also do much to deal with the problem before it reaches such proportions that people have to go to prison.

My right hon. Friend said that questions about the future of women in prison had come at the wrong time, because a review of this subject is about to take place. I am very interested in that. I assume that it is connected with decisions over Holloway Prison and the future of disturbed women generally. Obviously, I cannot ask him for conclusions tonight, but I want to follow some of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mrs. Renée Short).

If a review is going on, any deliberations at this stage may, I hope, be valuable. As I said, I went to Holloway Prison recently and found it a very depressing experience, particularly the buildings. I saw the improvements which have been made, such as the permission for women to wear their own clothes and use make-up. These are very important and their effect on the women has been under-estimated. I saw the work which some of the women are doing. They make jam for all the prisons and perhaps all the penal institutions in the country.

I also saw the baby unit, where the women keep their babies for about a year. Although this may have certain desirable features, prison will never be the place for young babies. However young they are, I am sure that they never shake off the effects of the depressing atmosphere of a place like Holloway. If this is to continue, as I hope it will, I hope that we will seek to remove from such a unit the feelings and atmosphere of prison life.

I realise that to suggest improvements for Holloway at this stage may be futile, since the matter is being considered, but I would like to remind my right hon. Friend that there are still two wings there without bathing facilities, which involves the women in an enormous interchange system. This could be considered if the prison is to be maintained as it is for any time.

I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East said about women in prison. One thing which strikes me about all the recommendations which her Sub-Committee made, most of which the Home Secretary has already said he accepts, is that they are not grandiose schemes which cannot be implemented, but suggestions for improvements and schemes which can be put into operation without a great deal of money being spent, and which will help enormously to improve the prison service and the conditions under which people are kept in prison.

We do not know why there are fewer women in prison than men. We know that they are more law-abiding, but we do not know why they are. Perhaps there are reasons for this interesting fact. On all the evidence available, large numbers of women prisoners, seem to be so severely disturbed that it is very unlikely that prison is the best place for them.

A recent Home Office research publication dealing with female offenders highlighted some of the things which have already been mentioned in the Report and the debate. This Report showed that only one girl out of every 5,000 in the population in the age group 16 to 20 is received into a penal institution. That means that this person is an unusual person. She is one in 5,000.

The Report adds that a quarter of the girls today received in borstals have already been patients in mental hospitals or have received other psychiatric treatment. If they later become inmates of prisons, clearly there is something wrong with the way in which we categorise people who have already had treatment for mental disturbance. The Report adds that it might be that the environment of a closed borstal is harmful to these girls, and it may well be that instead of helping them with some of their difficulties, we are contributing to some of their difficulties.

As my hon. Friend said, there is a continual flow of prostitutes into our prisons. One thing is certain: putting a prostitute in prison does not prevent her from being a prostitute when she comes out of prison again. Very few are cured of prostitution among those prostitutes who go to prison. I agree with my hon. Friend that some other means is needed of socialising, stabilising, assisting, whatever word we use, prostitutes, rather than sending them to prison. We must remember that prostitution is not a crime. These women are sent to prison for soliciting. Surely one of the ways of sorting out the prison population is to keep people such as these out of prison and to look for other means of dealing with such social problems, which have always been with us.

I also hold strong views about the woman in prison who has children. A survey recently of 480 women prisoners showed that 369 of them had children. Their families ranged in size from one child to 11 children and among them these 369 women had well over 1,000 children. Two-thirds of these women were under the age of 40. An examination of their age distribution and their home conditions showed that very many of their children had already been in the care of a local authority before their mothers went to prison or went into the care of a local authority while their mothers were in prison. We have to consider whether the interests of society and of the children of these prisoners are best served by this double or treble impact on the lives of the children—the mother put into prison, the children put into care.

I talked to one or two members of the staff at Holloway recently. One point which stuck in my mind concerned one woman prisoner who has nine children. Three of her children were born while she was serving prison sentences and she had one with her at that time in Holloway. On making inquiries, I discovered that some of the younger children who are in care while their mothers are in prison are frequently taken to see their mothers in prison by the children's department of the area. Quite apart from the expense to society of this treatment of women prisoners, which my hon. Friend mentioned, there is also the question that these children are at risk.

This is clearly shown in "Children in Trouble" and "The Young Offender". We must look at the problem of women prisoners who have young children and consider whether we are not creating for the children circumstances of disturbance and deprivation similar to those which led their mothers to end up in prison in the first place. The numbers of women in prisons are so small that this is a situation which we could change without a great deal of expense but with a great deal of humanity.

Lord Stonham, who made a most interesting speech to the Royal Society of Arts at the beginning of this year, estimated that we could organise the women's prison system in such a way that of the 400 at present in prison, we should need to keep only about 100 in close security in prison, while the rest could be dealt with by support from the community, particularly those with families. When we have a review of women's prisons, I hope that we shall consider such a proposal.

I was interested in the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool that people were not interested in preventing crime or in prisons, but were interested in crime. There is much truth in that. We must try to involve the public in a sense of their responsibility for these matters. I had a recent experience in my constituency, when it was suggested that an after-care hostel should be established. Great hostility was expressed not to the hostel as such, but to where it was to be situated.

Everybody agreed, "These facilities are needed—but not in my area, not next door to me." We cannot go on like that. By education, by discussion and by persuasion, we must get the public to accept a degree of responsibility for what happens to other members of society. If rehabilitation is to work, we must accept that we have to put up with institutions of this kind in the community.

At Holloway and in other institutions I came across instances of drug addiction. Perhaps the Minister will comment, in his reply, on my suggestion that it is useless to treat young offenders in prison or in penal institutions for drug addiction, to get them off drugs and then to send them back into the same environment as that which was responsible for the addiction in the first place. We ought to think in terms of hostels where such people can be given support and help when they come out of institutions in which they have been having treatment for drug addiction.

It must be remembered that many of these people do not have stable homes to which they can return. They are not returning to a strong family environment which will give them support, but perhaps to a single room and to a very unsatisfactory and inadequate life which results in their quickly reverting to the condition which sent them to the institution in the first place.

I was interested in the thought which has been given to directing magistrates to exercise a little more care and guidance in the type of young boys they send to detention centres. The rate of re-conviction of those who have been to detention centres is depressingly high. That may be connected with the fact that we are not sending the type of boy to the centres for which the centres were intended.

I was interested in an experiment reported in an article in The Magistrate last year, dealing with a system which has been tried in New Zealand which we might be able to consider. A weekend detention centre is set up by the Department of Justice there and young offenders may be sent there for up to 60 hours a week, covering a period of not more than a year. The working programme consists of cleaning, decorating and gardening for old people and clearing common land, parks and open spaces. The programmes are arranged with the help of local authorities, trade union leaders, the employers of labour and others. Failure to report at the centre and to take part in the activities is met with commitment to an institution, such as a detention centre or a borstal.

If we are moving from merely wishing to punish people into an era in which we wish to retrain them and help them back into society, able to adapt themselves to that society, we must keep them in touch as far as we can with what is going on in society. I hope that my right hon. Friend will give consideration to this week-end scheme in New Zealand.

8.0 p.m.

Mr. William Hannan (Glasgow, Maryhill)

I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) referred early in her speech to the Seebohm Report. I agreed very much with her remarks, and with those of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro), who also mentioned the Kilbrandon Report. It is indeed to be hoped that the legislation that has been passed will be the forerunner of other measures which will enable us to ensure that delinquency is limited by preventing crime from taking place at an early age.

Without appearing patronising, I suggest that the speech of the hon. Member for Dumfries was in pleasant contrast to that of his hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Ire-monger). The hon. Member for Dumfries may leave himself open to the charge of wishing to mollycoddle prisoners, but, like him, I merely wish to see sanity introduced into our penal system.

Without being parochial, I wish to concentrate on those parts of the Eleventh Report from the Estimates Committee which relate to Scotland. Hon. Members will appreciate that in many facets of life, including education and the law, the system which operates in Scotland is somewhat different from that operating in England and Wales.

Like other hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies, I am delighted to have the support of the Estimates Committee in referring to the frightful conditions which exist at Barlinnie Prison. Some of the consequences which flow from the overcrowding there cannot be overstressed. Paragraph 247 of the Eleventh Report points out: The total number of prisoners estimated for in Scottish prisons in 1966–67 is 3,500, including 2,460 in adult prisons. The average daily number of convicted prisoners and Young Offenders in custody has risen steadily from 1950, when it was 1,279. The figure for 1963 rose to 2,475, dropped in 1964 to 2,290, and rose again to 2,306 in 1965. It was obvious to some of us during the 'fifties that the prison population of Scotland was increasing. At that time the conditions in Barlinnie Prison were well known. However, despite pressure put on the Government by Questions and in Adjournment debates, little was done. What capital expenditure went to Barlinnie Prison during the 'fifties? Is the problem now being deal with adequately, or will we be left in a year or two with the same dreadful state of affairs, and having to put more pressure on the Government? Paragraph 249 says: Most of the pressure is felt in the provision of accommodation for the under 21's… It goes on: …despite the fact that the accommodation doubled between 1960–1965, increases in numbers have still outpaced the provision of facilities… Ideally, of course, the cure to this problem is to stop the supply, but I fear that our permissive society has gone too far to enable us to expect a decline in the number of prisoners.

A former right hon. Member of the House, Sir Walter Elliot, startled the Scottish Grand Committee one day when he pointed out that the largest proportion of so-called criminals and delinquents in one year were 13 and 14-year olds. The statistics can, therefore, become somewhat distorted when they are applied to prisoners.

Overcrowding in Barlinnie Prison has been notorious for years and the Minister must give a firm assurance that an alternative establishment will be built at an early date. I appreciate that he can reply that his activities are controlled by the Treasury, but I trust that he will at least say that a site for a new establishment is likely to be chosen at an early date.

The hon. Member for Dumfries made an important point when he said that the population of Barlinnie Prison was 66 per cent. above the norm. At present the population is 1,530 and, of these, 270 are living three in a cell and there are six cells with five prisoners in each. These statistics aggravate the position, because this state of affairs leads to further trouble. If the Prison Service is to be both rehabilitative and punitive, we will achieve nothing if we place five men in a cell. The most important feature of the Report in regard to Barlinnie Prison is this reference in paragraph 250: The prison has accommodation for about 950 prisoners. At present it holds 1,530 prisoners, of whom 277 are young prisoners whose particular accommodation is meant for only 175, and so from 55 to 80 young offenders live three in a cell. All reformers and social workers agree that to have elderly prisoners—"lags"—skilled in deceit, imparting some of their knowledge, in joking form or otherwise, to young prisoners is a scandal. This overcrowding is affecting the industrial progress, the feeding and the health of the prisoners. The Report makes it clear that prisoners sent to Barlinnie are meant to stay there for no more than 12 months, but 150 of these prisoners have been there for a longer period.

I want to say what happens at remand homes—we have one at Larchgrove, in Glasgow—and to suggest to my hon. Friend that there is here something worth looking at with a view to saving accommodation, public expense and administration. I have the example of two boys who were ultimately proved to be not guilty of the offence charged. Young people like that are picked up and taken to the local police office. From there they go by police transport to a remand home, where they are relieved of their own clothes and given other garments to wear. All this is done before a charge is made. They are sustained there at public expense for three or four days, and when their case comes up they are transported, again at public expense, to the court. During that period they have been put in the undignified position of being assumed to be guilty. I have raised this matter before, and I only hope that since I last referred to it the procedure has been examined.

What is needed is some kind of remand accommodation where a better assessment can be made of the kind of treatment that may be needed, and providing accommodation more suitable to age and to the alleged offence. There have been instances where young people like these have temporarily been put into Barlinnie Prison. One girl was taken to accommodation south of the Border. There is great need for this type of accommodation outside the prisons where the best treatment can be ascertained. In some cases, these young people would be put under the best protective care if sent to their parents who are sometimes quite ignorant of how their children have been behaving

The Sub-Committee reports that at the time of its visit 20 per cent. of the staff of Barlinnie Prison were working overtime. Conditions of overcrowding and understaffing—in some ways reminiscent of war-time conditions—makes one wonder that more incidents do not occur. This is an urgent matter. An increase in prison staff from 980 to 1,300 in four years is excellent, but many more officers are needed. Just as medicine should be looked at not just as a curative but as a preventive science, so should prison sentences have a reformative as well as a penal intent, but in the present overcrowding of our prisons the reformative character of the treatment is not as prominent as it should be.

Hon. Members who have read recent reports in the United States about the incidence of various illnesses as "killers" must have been as surprised as I was to find that alcoholism is now listed third—the first being cancer, and the second, coronary trouble. Paragraph 268 of the Report reads: The Sub-Committee paid particular attention to the problems posed by drink and drugs. That part of the prison population whose sentences refer to offences in connection with drink are almost a self-contained group. Over 97 per cent. of the male, and 99 per cent. of the female sentences in 1965 were for terms of 30 days or less. The Report does not say that the 97 per cent. of males were in prison because of drink, but when the sentences are of three months duration one may at least make the inference that drink was concerned in the offences.

Is prison the proper social treatment for such cases? We know from the Health Service that alcoholics are a high proportion of the patients who go for treatment in mental hospitals, and are also a high proportion of those who return for further treatment. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary refused a request to institute an inquiry into the relationship between alcoholism and crime, but there is at least superficial evidence to suggest that such an inquiry would be worth while.

With the general thesis of the Report I certainly concur. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) on her presentation. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to answer some of the points to which I have directed attention.

8.20 p.m.

Mr. Peter M. Jackson (The High Peak)

I join with other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North East (Mrs. Renée Short) on the production of her admirable Report.

I shall confine my remarks to one subject referred to in Appendix 2 as: Annual cost of providing spiritual ministration for inmates of Prison Service establishments. Few hon. Members would disagree that organised religion has been, and still is, an integral part of the ideology of the British prison system. Rule 59, I understand, requires every prisoner on entry to prison to give details as to his religious persuasion. These are duly ascertained and recorded. Often this information is inaccurate. I call in aid the study undertaken by Dr. Morris of the London School of Economics, "A Sociological Study of Pentonville". Records supplied by the prison authorities at Pentonville did not square with the information which he received when he interviewed many prisoners.

To indicate the kind of embarrassment which this kind of information causes I quote from page 64 of Dr. Morris's book: So rigid can this religious classification be that on occasion it goes beyond the bounds of common sense; one man, a lapsed Catholic, stated before the D.P.A. board that he wanted nothing to do with the Catholic Welfare Officer but wanted to be dealt with by the usual D.P.A. staff. He was told that as he was registered as a Catholic he would have to see the Catholic officer—or see no one at all. This man had in fact applied for 'change of religion'—which can only be granted by the Visiting Justices". I draw attention to the rigidity of this system of classification. It is very difficult for a prisoner, once he has opted for a particular religion, to opt out of that religion and state another preference. Reasons for this, which have been explained to me, are very tortuous. It is suggested that prisoners will do this for reasons which are not particularly commendable. It is said that they will change to the Jewish religion a month or two before Passover and change back to Christian Science or some other religious grouping when certain advantages can be derived from doing that. This is a matter which the Home Secretary should look into.

The second matter to which I draw attention is the rôle of the chaplain. I do not think I am being particularly partisan when I say that the chaplain is part of the establishment. He is recognised as such. He sits on the discharge and reception board, I think all working in the Prison Service would freely acknowledge this. I call in aid the impeccable authority of the one-time Governor of Holloway Prison, Mrs. Joanna Kelly, who said: The prison chaplain is faced with a difficulty in the first place in that he represents authority. He is one of 'Them' on the other side of the fence. This applies particularly perhaps to the Church of England chaplain whose church is so much part of the establishment in the society which has rejected the prisoner and is punishing her. At one time I believe prison chaplains served a useful rôle in that they acted as welfare officers, but they are ceasing to do that. They are now specialist officers and their principal task is serving the spiritual ministration of those unfortunate enough to be in prison.

The position of the Churches is a special one. It is especially invidious in that it attempts to pressurise people not of the Christian persuasion. I call in aid one or two examples. An acquaintance who has had prison experience and is not a Christian, took very considerable exception to this pressure. He served a short sentence in Brixton and he told me that one Sunday a prison officer told him to go outside as a film was being shown in the assembly room. He went there and found that no film was being shown but that songs were sung and short sermons were read. That man was brought to that religious function through deceit. Old and more experienced prisoners knew very well that the promise of a film did not mean that a film would be shown, and declined to go. This man's information was that they were ordered out of their cells by the prison officer and told that they had to attend.

When he was released from prison he drew the attention of Lord Stonham to this incident. He was somewhat incensed by this deception. The reply he received by Lord Stonham's secretary, presumably with the due authority of the Department, said: As regards the afternoon musical programmes… —religious programmes in other words— details of these are displayed in the rooms for all prisoners to see, generally 12 clear days in advance, which gives prisoners ample time in which to lodge any objection they may have about attendance. Attendance, however, is quite voluntary and the comparatively small number of men who attend these functions is clear evidence that there is no vestige of compulsion. This is a highly objectionable procedure. If non-Christians do not wish to attend these functions it should not be necessary for them to have to give notice that they will not attend. The fact that they have to do this as was admitted in the letter is a clear indication of a rather squalid practice. Men are obliged to attend religious functions clearly against their will.

There are other forms of moral suasion brought to bear of which the Home Secretary should be made aware. There is very little association on a Sunday. That probably is due to shortage of prison staff. Prisoners have their half-hour's exercise. They come together for meals. Others opt for the chapel service because it presents them with a form of association.

This is retrogressive. If I were a practising Christian, which I am not, I would deplore the fact that men with no faith were being brought together under the guise of religious observance so that they could socialise with their fellows.

Again, I am not being partisan. I quote a statement made by two prison governers in their recently published book, "Prison Screw". Talking about a religious service they say: …I am afraid that most of the men who pack the chapel on these occasions go primarily to relieve the monotony of prison life. The rousing choruses, fervent prayers and earnest invitations to come to penitence afford temporary relief from the eternal boredom but rarely, I would think, claim a permanent: convert. Similarly, Mrs. Kelly, in her book on Pentonville, acknowledges that many come only to escape being locked in their cell". Although it is right that devout Christians should be given the opportunity to attend church and chapel, alternative opportunities should be given to those who do not wish to attend.

The same is true in the weekdays. The person who informed me of the previous incident tells me that during the week many prisoners attend the padre's hour out of a sense of boredom. I am told that during the period this person spent in Brixton there were no classes. Many feel obliged to go out of a sense of boredom.

My conclusion is that this £151,000 spent on chaplains is very badly spent. It may not seem a lot of money, but compared with the sum we spend on aftercare services it is by no means derisory. We are putting men on the payroll in a privileged position to promote a corpus of belief which the majority of people in the community do not accept. Doubtless some hon. Members would contest that view, but I think it is true. Sir Walter Moberly, a committed Christian, freely acknowledges that we are now living in a de-Christianised society. No more than 10 per cent. of the population have any real commitment to the Christian church. It is entirely proper that sincere believers be given opportunities to worship in ways which they feel appropriate. It is improper nowadays when we are living in a secular society that the community should be taxed to the extent of £151,000 in respect of the chaplaincy service.

I will summarise my two points. First, will my hon. Friend look at the procedures adopted when prisoners first enter prison to record their religion? Prisoners should be told that they do not have to opt for either the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church and prison officers interviewing them should be taught at least how to spell "agnostic" and "atheist". My informant tells me that when he opted for one or other of these he was asked by the interviewing officer how to spell the word.

Secondly, there should be no compulsory requirement for those who state clearly that they are not members of the Church of England to be interviewed and pestered by the prison chaplain. I am not being contentious. The letter from Lord Stonham from which I have already quoted states that the prison chaplains have a statutory responsibility to those prisoners who are not Christians. If I were in prison I would take considerable exception to this. Some of them are very evangelical in approach and, so I am told by the man who has spoken to me about it—I have not had the experience myself—considerable exception is sometimes taken to it.

I do not think it proper that men on the payroll of the State should have that privileged position. We effectively abolished tithes in the nineteenth century. I think that this is the last legacy of the tithing system, and the sooner it is done away with the better.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Mark Carlisle (Runcorn)

Like all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken in the debate, I congratulate the hon. Lady the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) on the most interesting and thorough Report which is before us. She is not here at the moment, but I know that she has been present for practically the whole of the debate today and, as we all have to do, she has had to slip out from the Chamber at various times. Nevertheless, though in her temporary absence, I put on record my appreciation of the Report and of the speech which the hon. Lady made in introducing it. Also, I congratulate her, as some other hon. Members have done, for her pertinacity in ensuring that, at long last, this debate has taken place.

It has been an interesting and constuctive debate. My only general comment about it is that the average attendance during its course has shown that there is, perhaps, not quite the concern about penal reform, either in the country or in the House, that some of us would hope to see.

It is nearly two years since we last debated prisons, in February, 1967. At that time, we were concerned mainly with the question of security. Since then, much has happened. We have had the Report by the Estimates Commitee. Also, as various hon. Members have reminded the House, we have had the Report by the Advisory Council on the régime for long-term prisoners in maximum security prisons, and we have had the Criminal Justice Act, part of which was aimed at means of reducing the prison population.

Above all, we have had a new Home Secretary in the intervening period. I hope that he will not think it presumptuous if I say that we listened with great interest to what he had to say today. I found myself very much in agreement with almost everything he said, and I am sure that all hon. and right hon. Members who were in the Chamber at the time were grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the general views on the penal system which he expressed.

The opportunity of this debate gives the House the chance, which the right hon. Gentleman himself took, to consider what we aim to achieve through our penal system and to see where imprisonment fits into that system. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) said that the penal system had nothing whatever to do with the prevention of crime. But it seemed to me that he then went on to explain that it did and gave various suitable reasons in describing the part which it had to play. I believe that the penal system has a great deal to do with the prevention of crime, or certainly with the correction of criminals.

If one is considering the position of imprisonment within the penal system, one must ask oneself first, taking the question generally at the moment, what are the purposes of penalty. It seems to me that the purpose of any penal system—this is really what my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North was talking about—must be fourfold: first, to express the abhorrence of society at the act which the criminal has committed; second, to deter others from committing crime; third, to prevent the individual himself, during the period of his imprisonment, from being able to commit further crimes; and fourth, and most important of all, to attempt to reform the individual himself.

The first three of those aims are achieved by the passing of the sentence itself and the deprivation of liberty, which is the real punishment of imprisonment, and, once that has occurred, the whole object of our prison system must be to try, even within the limitations mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North, to achieve the fourth aim of punishment, namely, the reforming of the individual.

If it is not so, and if the person immediately commits further crime at the end of his prison sentence, we have basically failed in the sentence of imprisonment that was passed on him. Not only have we failed, but, as the Committee points out, we have failed extremely expensively. The cost of imprisonment is about £757 per year per person, and with the under-21s it is higher still. In borstal, it is about £1,084 a year, and in detention centres it is just under £900 a year.

What I welcome most about the Report is that its theme is that the régime in prison should be reformative as far as possible, and that no advantage is to be gained by having a wholly repressive régime. The Home Secretary said that he knew that it was the wish of the people that the prison system should be humane. I only wish that I had as much faith in the view of many people about the purpose of the prison system, because often when one talks about the prison system being humane and attempting to be reformative the come-back is that in some way one is talking about being soft to the prisoners. People suggest that in talking of a reformative, humane prison system one is somehow talking of removing the deterrence and fear from prison.

That argument is answered by the Sub-Committee, when it points out that between 80 and 90 per cent of those sent to prison never return. Any hon. Member who has been to the Old Bailey or any other criminal court, where some of us spend considerable periods, and has seen anybody accused of a crime fighting to retain his liberty, cannot doubt that imprisonment, even if it be reformative, is still a place to which people loathe to go. The very thought of going there retains its deterrent value even if one tries to run a reformative régime inside the prison.

If prison is to be reformative, if we are to have a régime aimed at improving people while they are there, it is vital to see that prisoners have adequate work to do, that where possible they have individual responsibility, and that they are at least left with some form of personal dignity whilst they are there. That too comes out in the Report.

This leads me to the overwhelming practical difficulty of running a penal system with adequate work opportunities, namely, the overcrowding in prison today. The Report says that with a prison capacity of about 29,000 we have about 35,000 people in prison. About 6,000 to 7,000 people are living three in a cell. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) and the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) mentioned Barlinnie Gaol, where apparently the situation is worse still. It is very difficult to achieve a reformative régime in conditions as overcrowded as they are now.

There are only two ways in which that overcrowding can be avoided: we must either build more prisons or attempt to reduce the prison population. We must face the fact that not only have sentences become slightly longer, but that that tendency is likely to continue. This is inevitable to a large extent. The abolition of capital punishment is likely to lead to more people being in prison for very long periods. Crimes of violence will continue to deserve to be met with long sentences of imprisonment, and the country will continue to expect that this will happen.

I do not agree with the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), who criticised this trend. When a certain, albeit small, number of people are prepared to wage war on society through crime, they must expect to be treated severely if they are convicted.

At one end of the prison population we are likely to have a slowly growing number of people serving long terms of imprisonment. At the opposite end there are a substantial number of people serving very short terms of imprisonment. One figure which I am surprised has not been mentioned in the debate, but which is pointed out by the Sub-Committee, is that in the year with which it was concerned over 70 per cent. of the receptions in prison were for periods of up to 6 months. Is it possible to reduce the number of people serving short terms of imprisonment?

When the Criminal Justice Act was passed it was said that the aim was to reduce the prison population by up to about 1,750. I notice that the Home Secretary was careful not to give any figure today when he talked about the effect that the Act and suspended sentences had had on the prison population. I think that he said that the prison population was slightly less than it had been a year before. Can the Under-Secretary of State say what impression, if any, it is felt that the Act is having on the prison population?

My other point on suspended sentences is that we must realise that to many it may be only an additional step on the way to prison, and that an immediate drop in the prison population on the introduction of suspended sentences may not necessarily be continued when they have been in force for several years.

The other point I want to make about any attempt to reduce the prison population by doing away with a number of short-term sentences is to say that, in general, I do not believe that we will achieve that aim unless we have available to the courts additional means of punishment to those which exist today. The crux of the problem of overcrowding in prisons is contained in a sentence of the Report which states that the desire should be to take …out of the scope of a prison sentence individuals who cannot possibly benefit thereby, for whom incarceration may not be an appropriate punishment, and from whom society is not in serious need of protection. Many of these people are today still being sent to prison and if we are to reduce overcrowding, as the Home Secretary says he wishes to do, I believe that we must set up some alternatives to imprisonment.

I believe, first, that we should go ahead with trying to produce probation hostels for adult offenders. These do not exist now. I believe, also—and if the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East were here, I would have taken it up at greater length—that we should do what was done in New Zealand, as was suggested by the hon. Lady the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor), and look at the whole problem of periodic detention centres and weekend imprisonment. The hon. Lady mentioned that she had read about this is a report in The Magistrate last year.

This summer, I was fortunate enough to be with a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation to New Zealand and I visited a periodic detention centre. I believe that this means a system whereby one does not remove a person entirely from his job at home, but merely sentence him to so many weekends or evenings reporting during the week. As an additional method of punishment it would be useful to the courts here and might be an alternative to some of the large number of short-term sentences of imprisonment. I know that the right hon. Gentleman will rightly say that this is under consideration by a sub-committee of the Advisory Council, and I hope that something will come out of this consideration.

I want now to deal with the question of parole. The Home Secretary did not deal with the position at the moment. The latest Answer on this subject which I can find was on 17th May. It said that 461 people were out on parole. How does the Home Secretary feel that the system is working? We are all aware of the two extremely disturbing cases—that of Sidney Williams, who was in prison for attempted murder, came out on parole, shot the man he had intended to kill and then committed suicide, and that of the man Clarke, whose case recently came up at Bristol Assizes. He was in prison for sexual offences, was released on parole and committed further sexual offences.

I hope it is not thought that I have been too critical on this aspect, but I am slightly surprised that I have not yet received an answer to a Question I put down eight days ago in which I asked whether the Home Secretary intended to call for an inquiry into this case.

Mr. Callaghan

I can answer the hon. Gentleman at once. I hope that he has received my reply today. The reason he did not receive it earlier was that I wished to satisfy myself about the reports made. I have studied the case personally.

Mr. Carlisle

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I will study the Answer with interest.

My purpose in drawing attention again to these two worrying cases is not that either I or my right hon. and hon. Friends wish to see the system not succeed—we want it to succeed—but because, if the system is to succeed, society must be aware that the Home Secretary is prepared to take urgent action and make personal inquiries in cases where it seems, on the surface, that something has gone wrong.

I return now to the number of people in prison generally. At the one end, we have the inadequate prisoners, and at the other the persons with whom the hon. Member for Pontypool particularly dealt—the small number of dangerous Category A prisoners. Whatever other purposes we may have for these small number, security must be the paramount consideration. The public expects it and has a right to require it and it does not expect to have to tolerate the escape of dangerous people.

I turn, therefore, to the matter to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—the type of régime for these people. As he said, the Mountbatten Report recommended that they should be concentrated in one prison. The Radzinowicz Report recommended that they should be dispersed among four prisons. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has come down on the side of dispersal rather than of concentration. Like him, I think the argument is finely balanced but, in the end, that the overwhelming argument against concentration is the danger of putting together in one prison 120 or so men who have no hope of getting out for a very long time. I believe that the dangers that would lead to within the prison concerned would make the problems of the special security wings of our prisons at the moment pale into insignificance in comparison.

The only thing which surprises me a little in what the Home Secretary said is that he seemed to be talking of dispersal considerably wider than that which the Radzinowicz Committee itself recommended. My only comment about that is that if there is to be dispersal and the degree of perimeter security which will be required, the Home Office will be in danger of finding itself involved in considerable expenditure in making seven or eight prisons up to that degree of maximum security which would be required, when dispersal could be achieved by the use of three or four prisons, as the Radzinowicz Committee recommended.

If the régime in those prisons is to be humane, as I believe to be necessary, there must be as much freedom as possible within the prisons commensurate with keeping security and a safe perimeter. The Home Secretary has said that he has rejected the decision of the Radzinowicz Committee that the guards in the towers on the perimeters should be armed, or have arms available to them. I understand the reasons which led him to that decision. As he said, the prison officers were wholly opposed to it.

But I hope that he will not think that it was a decision which was easily or readily reached by the Committee itself. It arrived at that decision because it was felt that if we were to go for a system of dispersing dangerous criminals while trying to provide a régime in which inside the prison there could be opportunity for movement and opportunity for work, it was essential that the perimeter security should be as secure as possible, and the Committee felt that the present methods of perimeter security did not achieve that end.

Although the Home Secretary dealt with this, I did not think that there was anything in what he said which necessarily showed that a greater degree of perimeter security was now available than at the time the Radzinowicz Committee reported. If there is, I am sure that the members of that Committee and of the Advisory Council would be the first to welcome the fact that guards have not to be armed. However, if there is not that perimeter security, the Committee felt that it was better to have guards in the tower blocks armed than to have to have complete security on movement within the prison.

For the rest, for those unlikely to escape or whose escape would not be a serious blow to the country, security is not so important, and the major problem is that of work. In this country we never send people to prison because they cannot work. The Home Secretary himself made the point that in prison there are many people not used to regular work. Even if the work were taken to them, they would not be anxious to do it. While I appreciate that this is obviously so, surely the one thing we can attempt to do of a reformatory of rehabilitatory nature is to instil into these people during the period they are in prison the habit of regular work, a habit which the Home Secretary himself said they did not earlier have.

Therefore, almost the most important thing of all is to improve the availability of work within prisons. Hon. Members have mentioned the figures—14 hours a week in Pentonville and, when the Report was written, 25 hours in Strangeways, in Manchester. Much of the work done is produced for other Government departments. The report says that much work is now done for outside private concerns. That shows that the standard is high, and my own observations of other prisons have shown that some work is of a high standard. I was glad to hear what the Home Secretary said about work, and I hope we shall soon reach the stage when prisoners will do regular weekly work, which will give them the opportunity of getting used to working regularly and also increasing their earnings so that they can take responsibility for providing for their families outside.

The hon. Lady the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East and her Committee rather ignored the difficulties of conjugal visits. The Committee's recommendation is limited to one paragraph, with no apparent evidence that it had considered the problems involved. There are many problems involved in wives coming inside prisons, and conjugal visits, I believe, would cause more problems than they could solve. I am wholly in agreement with the decision of the Home Secretary in rejecting that recommendation of the Committee and deciding instead to make more use of home leave where practicable.

I was surprised that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontypool suggested that this also was going against the Radzinowicz Report. As I understand, that Report said that if it happened at all it should happen in a limited way as an experiment, and not in prison but in a hostel outside the prison walls. The Report advocated basically what the Home Secretary has now accepted, the wider use of home visits as a means of keeping the family together, rather than the opportunity for wives to come inside the prisons.

The key to penal reform and the achievement of the aims of the Committee is the building programme. We were all grateful and glad to hear what the Home Secretary said about the building proposals over the coming years. Although we welcome those proposals, there is much to be criticised in the record in this sphere of his immediate predecessor. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he now is, was Home Secretary, he paid lip-service to the need to improve the prisons, but during the period he held office the emphasis was more on repression, and the amount of new building was steadily reduced. Although the estimates for next year include provision for the largest prison building programme, during the years 1964–65, 1965–66, 1966–67 and 1967–68, when the previous Home Secretary was in office, a steadily reducing amount was spent on prison building. The key is to build more new prisons and to spend money in improving existing prisons.

I have said nothing about borstals or about detention centres, and I have spoken for as long as I proposed to speak. The hon. Lady the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East called for an urgent review of detention centre policy. As the Home Secretary knows, I am a member of the Home Office Advisory Committee and of the Sub-Committee looking at detention centres and it would, therefore, be wrong for me to comment in advance of the publication of that report. I am convinced that there is room for detention centres and I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) that the problem is that people get there too late.

I said at the beginning of my speech that I believe this had been a useful and constructive debate, if a not very well-attended one.

I welcome the Report. A humane penal system is one of the signs of a civilised society, and it is also an economically sound policy to pursue. In so far as this Report advances the case for such a humane system, it is welcome, and I am glad that many of its specific recommendations are accepted. I hope that it is not too long before the message of this Report—of keeping out of prison those who should not be there and providing for those who are there a system in which work is a normal part of life—is achieved.

9.5 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Norman Buchan)

Like every other speaker, I should like to congratulate the Estimates Committee and, above all, the Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short), on their Report. On reading the Report, one is aware not only of the skill with which she guided the inquiry but of the direct frontal position which she took in investigation after investigation. The success of today's debate is a tribute to the work which she and her colleagues did. Like the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle), I regret that more Members are not present to discuss the Report. I am sure that in part this is due to the fact that so much of the Committee's work, the kernel of the Report, has sunk through to the consciousness of so many people.

A number of questions have been asked, and I wish to deal with as many of the key ones as possible. The hon. Member for Runcorn asked a question about parole and the figures. Before 1st April, the Local Review Committee had reported about 1,000 prisoners as being suitable and 3,300 prisoners as being unsuitable for parole. On scrutiny, about 350 of them were recommended for parole, but—and here I am talking about England and Wales—my right hon. Friend decided that all cases favourably recommended by local review committees should be referred to the Parole Board without the sifting mechanism. He kept the right to reserve his own decision in difficult cases. The inevitable result has been a more rapid flow of cases. To date, in England and Wales, parole has been recommended in about 1,000 cases. The hon. Gentleman will understand if I do not take up his reference to two recent cases. In this matter, as with security in general, one must sometimes accept failures as a natural concomitant of the prison system. We regret the incidents concerned.

The hon. Member for Runcorn referred to the building programme. While I accept what he said about spending in England and Wales over the last few years, the estimate for 1969 is about £6,900,000, which is a big jump up. I shall be dealing with the Scottish problems later.

I was glad to hear the hon. Member for Run corn accept, as we have accepted, the policy of dispersal. I do not want to go into the intricate argument which he put forward. I understand the arguments about perimeter strictness. I know what impelled the Members of the Committee of which he is a member to make recommendations on the strictness of the perimeter in order to achieve the maximum liberality inside. But the compromise which has been produced without an acceptance of the strict perimeter—without as it were the final point—to achieve a liberal régime will probably be the right solution. Perhaps overconscious perimeter security will have its own backlash effects in the régime.

I do not want to go in detail into the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Peter M. Jackson) about organised religion in prisons. My noble Friend Lord Stonham has made very careful inquiries into the question of religious services at Brixton. It would not be right for me to comment on a matter about which I have little detailed knowledge. I will ensure that Lord Stonhams attention is drawn to the points which my hon. Friend made. He will be interested to learn that the standing orders concerning the registration of prisoners' religions are to be reviewed with the object of making it possible, after the first few days' imprisonment or following an interview by the prison chaplain, for a prisoner to alter his original registration without formality.

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) raised the question of the selection of prisoners for open prisons. She described what I took to be an abstract case, but if she knows of an actual case I hope that she will write to us about it. In selecting prisoners one has to take into account the legitimate fears of the local population—I know the difficulties that this can create—and also the pledges that are sometimes given when open prisons are put into operation. In respect of the open prison in Scotland, there have been no failures, but I sometimes wonder whether this should be regarded as a success—because we may have created the feeling that there can be no failures, and if one should occur it may have a disproportionate effect. At any rate, it is important to consider local feelings. Therefore I cannot promise, on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, that the present restriction on the type of prisoner sent to open prisons can easily be altered.

Many hon. Members raised the question of our policy towards women prisoners and the hon. Member for Devonport referred to the question of women remands. My right hon. Friend has said that his intention is to make a statement on our policy in respect of women prisoners. I want to make it clear that at Pucklechurch the women's wing has not been closed and that there is no intention of closing it. Women remands do not go exclusively to Holloway; they also go to Pucklechurch, Risley and Low Newton. This network of remand centres covers the country. The women's wing at Brockhill has been closed. It was the subject of an Adjournment debate last Session, when my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department explained that no immediate plans had been made to provide alternative remand centre accommodation for the Midlands, but that the possibility of providing a remand centre for women and girls in the Midlands would be kept under review. I hope that that information is helpful. The question of women at Grendon will be covered in the comprehensive statement which my right hon. Friend will make.

The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) raised the specific point of Dr. Belsen's research. This is being followed up. A great deal of research is being done within academic institutions. This is strictly a children's problem, but it arises in terms of our present discussion.

The right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) raised the question of working parties organised at Wakefield. Great care is used in selecting men to join these working parties. Prisoners are not now employed on domestic duties in the staff college at Wakefield.

The question of Dartmoor was raised. There the position is unchanged. We have promised to give three years' notice before the closure of Dartmoor. There is no change in the timing, and there is no new basic information to give.

Many hon. Members raised the question of escorts. We are studying this question, along with many others. There is a full organisation and methods study, being undertaken which is well advanced. It is not solely a question whether people other than prison officers should undertake escort duties. We are looking at the problem of journeys and at the question whether some of the movements which take place can be cut down.

The hon. Member for Devonport also raised the question of women's training. I have in my notes the word "jam", in brackets. The hon. Lady does not want women prisoners to have to spend their time in potting jam. She suggested that more interesting work should be provided. I would agree that we should be looking at such things as allowing women to shop and handle things in this way. This is one of the aspects that we shall be considering in the women's review. I was pleased to hear these points being raised.

The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) raised the question of medically unsuitable boys who are sentenced to detention. My right hon. Friend has recently recommended to the courts that they should consider a social report before making a detention centre order, and this procedure should assist them to identify cases in which a medical report should also be done. I know the kind of case which my hon. Friend has in mind.

She also mentioned weekend detention. I do not want to explore too many of these details, but I was glad that they were raised, not only because of the comparison with the New Zealand experience, but because it ties up with the "Huberman" laws in America. It merits consideration, as does our whole policy towards the under-21s. The Advisory Council on the Penal System has therefore been asked by the Home Secretary to look at the whole question of semi-custodial and non-custodial treatment, and a sub-committee, under the chairmanship of Baroness Wootton, has already made a good deal of progress. This is exactly the kind of idea—weekend detention—which they are consider- ing. I will ensure that the kind of ideas brought forward today will be put to the Committee.

The question of drug treatment was also raised. It is true that there are no separate treatment units in the prison system for drug addicts, but there are skilled psychiatric facilities available for the treatment of a variety of psychiatric problems, including that of drugs. The problem here is whether it is the best thing to segregate addicts in this way, and whether they should not mix with others from a more varied background. The image of themselves as people apart is one which we want to destroy. Living with their fears in this way may not assist them. We must consider this, and the experience of the new addiction units attached to the hospitals will help us in reaching a decision on the wisdom or otherwise of separation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East about whose general report I have already commented, mentioned particularly family planning assistance. Of course, problems of sex and personal relationships are dealt with in the form of individual advice, on subjects which include contraception, available as part of a broad pattern of behavioural training to all borstal girls. Some of them are discussed in the form of individual interview or creative discussions with members of the borstal staff or representatives of the marriage guidance organisation and the Family Planning Association, who also regularly visit Borstals.

No one who has ever visited a British prison has failed to mention slopping out, which several hon. Members have referred to today. There is an abhorrence of this practice in all parts of the House among those who have experience of prisons. It is not an easy problem to solve. So far, we have installed what I might call a new technological method in one new institution. Where new institutions are being built, we will use this. It is an electronic-looking device with which many hon. Members will be familiar. In all new prisons we will use it.

I cannot say that it will necessarily be installed in older institutions, unless a really massive reconstruction is taking place, in which case we hope to install it in them as well, and thereby cut down this practice, which my hon. Friend criticised to me forcibly, not only in her Report, but verbally when she returned from Barlinnie.

Several hon. Members have mentioned Barlinnie and I want to spend a little time on this and other Scottish matters. This is not a new problem to us. We know the problem of Barlinnie, but the solution is not so easy. It will come from massive future building. The problem of overcrowding was dealt with by the Committee, who recommended that the prison should be either reconstructed or disposed of and a new prison built. We built this prison to accommodate 950 prisoners and the daily average has now been running at a little over 1,500. The severe overcrowding is in part due to the need to make one hall of Barlinnie available as a young offenders' institution, something which in itself many of us do not like. That hall, with accommodation for 188 young men, is accommodating 350.

I accept no guilt for this problem, since I inherited it. I have been putting a good deal of work into it, but this was one problem among many which I inherited, because of the failure to have capital building in Scotland during the 1950s. We are establishing 120 new places at Edinburgh and Dumfries Young Offenders Institutions later in the year and hon. Members who have been following the saga in the Scottish Press—

Mr. Speaker

Order. It will help the HANSARD reporters if the hon. Member will address the House through the Chair.

Mr. Buchan

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker.

Those who have been following events in the Press know that we have established a temporary prison at Bishopbriggs. There will be temporary arrangements there which will accommodate 100 short-term prisoners in conditions of medium security. We hope to increase this accommodation by early next year to take up to 300 prisoners.

Quite apart from the overcrowding which has given rise to the situation in which there are two and three prisoners in a cell, we have the difficulty which arises through the inadequacy of workshop provision. As a temporary measure, a new 'building which we originally intended as a store is being used for workshop purposes. It is outside the perimeter security wall and therefore can be used only for short-term prisoners who do not present a security risk. The existing security wall is being extended—we are using prison labour for this purpose—and the additional area thus provided will be used for the construction of new workshops and the provision of recreational space.

I sometimes wonder, Mr. Speaker, whether I have to convince my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East or Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker

Order. I can help the hon. Member. He has to convince the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East through Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Buchan

That was my interpretation, too.

These provisions, we hope, will begin to make a start to a solution of the problem by next summer, when we hope that people will be living in a much more comfortable way there.

The building programme now looks forward in Scotland to the provision of additional accommodation on a substantial scale. For women it is proposed to build a new establishment, on a site in central Scotland still to be determined, with an estimated completion date in 1972. Some hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough, ask whether there is now a case for a women's prison. Perhaps there is no case for a women's prison, but I think there is still a case for a women's institution, and therefore we are going ahead with this building. But I take the point which she made that prison has never been the most satisfactory method of dealing with most of the problems which lead women into prison. I accept that totally, and that is why we are building this new kind of institution.

We are building an adult male prison at Shotts to accommodate 540 people, so designed that a second prison using common services with the first can be built if necessary, with estimated completion in 1974. The programme also provides for the erection of a male young offenders institution of 250 places at West-quarter in Stirlingshire with completion in 1975–76. Hon. Members will see that this is a fairly massive programme to deal with the Scottish problem.

Mr. Monro

Will the hon. Member be a little clearer about the Scottish provision? The observation on the recommendation refers to a prison in the West of Scotland in the early 1970's. The hon. Member has mentioned Bishopbriggs and Shotts. Can he explain which is which?

Mr. Buchan

Bishopbriggs prison is a temporary prison. We have made that clear. It is an existing training establishment which we have taken over, and it is not the one referred to in paragraph 44. The prison at Shotts is an adult male prison to accommodate 540 people. It is a permanent prison, and we hope that it will be completed by 1974.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) raised the problem of Barlinnie Prison and asked whether sufficient capital expenditure was going into that establishment. I have pushed the capital expenditure on building up from £29,000 in 1961–62 to £132,000 in 1968–69. While on staff quarters only £10,000 was expended in 1961–62, we will be spending £134,000 next year. We are, therefore, trying to cope with the problem.

The real difficulty—which my hon. Friend the Member for Maryhill appreciated—was the failure of the then Administration to deal with this problem in Scotland in the 'fifties, For example, in 1954–55 capital expenditure totalled only £82,000. In 1965–66 it was only £64,000. This has forced me in the coming year to spend about £983,000, more than 10 times as much as we were spending in the 'fifties—yet I still feel responsible for the state of some of our prisons in Scotland. I regret that we inherited this difficult problem, but we are doing our best to cope with it.

A number of hon. Members referred to the problem of detention centres and the treatment of the under 21s. We have been looking at this problem in Scotland, too, and I accept the remarks of the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone about our needing to look very carefully indeed at the selection of the type of institution to which the young offender is sent. It was pointed out that magistrates can often go wrong in the type of youngster sent to a detention centre and that an adequate judgment along these lines is not always possible for a magistrate in the time available to him.

There is some truth in this. Indeed, the range of establishments available allows for adult offenders to be treated progressively—from the strict to the less strict establishment—so that we have a flexible approach for the adult offender, who, under this régime, can ultimately go to an open prison and then, perhaps, to a hostel. In such cases there is a better chance of rehabilitation, and much the same is true of borstal training.

For other offenders, particularly those under 21, there are fewer options. Under our law, the regulations say that in cases where a custodial sentence is appropriate, the young offender must be committed to a specific type of establishment. This may be unduly restricting the capacity of the penal system and may not be providing the form of training that is best suited to the young offender.

It has been suggested in Scotland—this was discussed a year ago at a one-day conference of interested parties, including sheriffs, governors, criminologists and sociologists—that more effective use could be made of the available resources if the courts fixed the duration of sentences and left it to the administration to determine the programme and the nature of the institution for the youths and their period in detention. This would, of course, involve an assessment being made in each case. The various aspects of such a scheme—post-release questions and so on—would require close scrutiny and supervision. But the concept may be worthy of further study and I hope that the suggestion will be looked into closely within the system in Scotland.

We have been discussing a key problem tonight. The hon. Member for Ilford, North felt that the present arrangements were not contributing to crime prevention. I do not know if they are. Indeed, I am not sure that we know very much about this whole sphere. We certainly need to know a lot more and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I have noted his comments about the need for research.

These offenders are in our care for a period of time and, as long as they are in our care, we must do what is right for the individual, no matter whether it helps from the point of view of crime prevention. I believe that, in the long term, crime prevention will be achieved, because we are all part of a society in which the people for whom we must care in this way are being produced. We are trying: to understand the reasons why people turn to crime and we want to send them out of our institutions equipped to take their place in society. To that extent we are all taking part in the exercise of shaping a society in which crime of all kinds will begin to decline.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House takes note of the Eleventh Report from the Estimates Committee in Session 1966–67 and of the Fifth Special Report from the Estimates Committee in the last Session of Parliament relating to Prisons, Borstals and Detention Centres.