CATEGORY C PRISON (RANBY ARMY CAMP) (Hansard, 6 November 1969)

§ Mr. Joseph Ashton (Bassetlaw)

I should first of all like to thank my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office, for the courteous way in which she has kept me fully informed on this question of Ranby Camp.

1312 Ranby is a temporary hutted camp which used to be used by the 19 Transport Squadron which vacated the camp and closed it on 1st October. The camp is situated on the main A60 road three miles from Retford and five miles from Worksop. My constituents in Bassetlaw are responsible people and appreciate that there is a need for more prisons, but they ask me to point out that already in this area we have Rampton special hospital, which contains many violent mental patients under top security, five miles west of Retford, and there is a Borstal institution at Gringley five miles north of Retford, and a remand home at Worksop.

The site is no ideal for security if a prison is established there because it is one mile from the Al and only three miles from the main Glasgow-London railway, and it would be comparatively easy for any escaping prisoner quickly to vacate the neighbourhood and be many miles away when the alarm is raised.

Objections have also been raised on Retford Borough Council, and at a council meeting on Monday a resolution was passed by 18 votes to 4 asking for a public inquiry. In particular, objections have been raised in the villages of Ranby and Babworth just about a mile away. These villages have no street lighting and there is naturally a feeling of apprehension. There are also many scattered houses in the area. It is an area which often has fogs in winter and there is a natural tendency, as there are in so many other penal establishments situated in my constituency, for residents to view with some alarm the prospects of another one being added.

There are many alternative uses to which the site could be put. Nobody in the area wants the site to become derelict or to have vandals taking it over and smashing the place up, as has happened in other vacated camps in the region, but there is a feeling that it would be a very good site for a light industry, especially connected with farming. Intensive farming could take place there in the buildings available. They could be used for the manufacture and storage of fertilisers and even the storage of materials in use by the Nottingham County Council, such as grit and salt for the Highways Department.

1313 There are 40 excellent houses on the site which used to be married quarters when it was in use as an army camp, and there are excellent sports facilities there, including football and hockey pitches, a gymnasium, showers and changing rooms. This is in an area where, although it is an agricultural area, there is a shortage of playing fields. In agricultural areas there is always an attempt to use the available land for agriculture. Nevertheless, as the President of the Retford Boys Club Football League, I realise that there is a shortage of pitches and there is a great demand for these facilities. The facilities would probably be lost if the camp were turned into a prison.

I have contacted the Minister of Health, from whom I had a reply this week, on whether this site could be used as a training centre for mentally handicapped children and adults or put to some similar use. My right hon. Friend replied that this is the responsibility of the Nottingham County Council. The Nottingham County Council is to build a centre of this description at Worksop in 1971–72. While I realise that this does not concern her Department, I should like my hon. Friend the Minister of State to say whether it is still too late to change the designation of use of this camp and build the centre at Ranby instead.

In my constituency, as in all other constituencies, there are children who are educationally subnormal. Unfortunately, these children have to travel to Rossington in Yorkshire, 13 miles away, which is not an easy journey, and for any child, in my opinion, it is rather too far to travel. Could the camp be used as a centre for E.S.N. children, or might there be some sort of sheltered employment for them there when they leave school? Jobs are not easy to find in the area. The nearby labour exchange district at Worksop has been granted designation as a grey area, which we debated yesterday, and the people of Worksop are very pleased to have that concession. I make those suggestions for alternative uses to which the camp could be put.

It is only fair to add that there are some people who are not altogether opposed to the use of the camp as a category C prison provided that certain guarantees are given. The conversion 1314 would be acceptable to them if guarantees were given, for example, with regard to the landscaping so that the prison and its buildings were not out of place in the environment. The countryside is very pretty roundabout. If the prison could be screened from the road, and a guarantee given that only single-storey buildings would be erected, that would probably help it to be more acceptable. Obviously, there is some fear in people's minds about what might happen if there were outside working parties in which prisoners were employed. We should wish to have a guarantee that there would be proper safeguards taken with regard to such working parties.

I have already pointed out that the nearby villages of Ranby and Babworth have no street lighting. The only lighting in Ranby comes from the light at the local public house : it belongs to the public house and is used to illuminate the car park. If we could have an assurance that the problem of street lighting in these two villages would be examined, and, perhaps, a grant given towards the cost, that would go some way to pacify my constituents' fears.

Another guarantee we should like is that the prison would remain a category C prison for 350 men. There is a fear that in time the prison would be expanded and that the category C designation would be changed so that it might even become a top security establishment like Rampton and grow to much the same size. A guarantee that it will remain of the size at present proposed would be of some assurance.

I have already referred to the existing sporting facilities. Is there any chance of those sporting facilities still being used by outside bodies even though they are within the prison area, or could the prison be laid out in such a way that many of the sporting facilities could be retained for outside use by my constituents?

I am very pleased to have the opportunity of this debate, and I look forward to my hon. Friend's reply with interest.

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mrs. Shirley Williams)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) for the extremely reasonable way in which he has expressed the understandable concern 1315 of his constituents about the proposal for a category C prison in his constituency. I hope to be able to answer some of the detailed points which he raised and at the same time set some of his understandable concern and that of his constituents at rest.

First, I think that I should establish the general background against which the Home Office proposal to use Ranby camp as a possible category C prison must be viewed. This general background is, I think, familiar to the House—the serious overcrowding in our prisons today.

To give some indication of the scale of overcrowding, I can tell the House that, since January, we have had an increase of 3,000 in the number of prisoners, and on 15th October there were no fewer than 35,971 people in custody in prisons, borstals, remand and detention centres. I very much hope that this rate of increase need not be taken to indicate that it will inevitably continue, but it is possible—I should make this clear to the House—that there may he as many as 40,000 people in prison by 1972 or 1973.

I should add, since this also is a matter of considerable seriousness, that of the 35,000 persons at present in prison nearly 10,000 are sleeping two or three to a cell. We are not talking here about cells in purpose-built modern prisons in which one might contemplate the possibility of the multi-occupied cell ; we are talking about the situation in prisons which were built in the Victorian age, which were built with a very different concept of what one can do with prisoners in mind, and in which it is not possible to offer proper living conditions even if men were kept one to a cell and if the overcrowding were not as serious as it is. This means that the Home Office feels very strongly that it must establish a number of new prisons. and we envisage that about a dozen will be started in the next five years. They are expensive and take time to plan and build. It also takes time to obtain agreement on their sites. So what we have to do, and feel that we must continue to do, is to supplement our building programme by looking at other suitable accommodation, much of it given up by the Defence Department and other Ministries, to see whether they might be taken into immediate use as prisons. One such case is Ranby, which is typical of 1316 the redundant Army camps we have had to turn to for some of our prisons.

It is our intention that this site, if we obtain the agreement of the local authority, should be used for category C prisoners, and for the sake of my hon. Friend and his constituents I would like to state what a category C prisoner is. They were defined by Lord Mountbatten in his recent Report on prison security. in which he said that category C prisoners were :

prisoners lacking the will and resources to make escape attempts, but lacking the stability to be trusted in an open prison. To make the position clearer, perhaps I should add that category A prisoners are those for whom the requirement of security is greatest and category B prisoners are those for whom it is somewhat less. Category D prisoners can be kept in open prisons.

Category C prisoners are largely prisoners who have not committed extremely serious offences. We are talking about a great many people who may be serving a sentence of less than 18 months and who do not require the elaborate security precautions which obtain in category A and B prisons. We believe that these prisoners should be kept within a secure perimeter—that there should be a secure fence to prevent any movement outside the prison, but that within that secure fence they should be given humane living and working conditions.

My hon. Friend asked me for an assurance, which I will give him in a few moments, that Ranby Camp would be used only, as we envisage it, for a category C prison. He can quite reasonably tell his constituents that there is no intention suddenly to change it into a top security prison for category A or category B prisoners.

I would like to refer briefly to the method by which we obtain new sites or a change of use of land held by another Government Department. Basically, when a Government Department no longer needs for its own purposes a site that it owns it offers it in the first instance for the use of other Government Departments. My hon. Friend knows this, because he has consistently made inquiries about the matter on behalf of his constituents. The Select Committee on Estimates endorsed the policy that wherever possible use 1317 should be made of such land for new prisons rather than providing them by the purchase of land in private ownership.

We do not simply take over the site at that point. It is perfectly proper that we should go through the normal planning procedures. In some cases we do not continue our request because we recognise that a prison is unsuitable on planning grounds. If we decide that a site would be suitable—and we have so decided about Ranby Camp—we have informal discussions with the local authorities before reaching any conclusions about the use we shall make of a site. If it is found that on planning grounds it is suitable, we make a formal application to the local planning authority under the "Circular 100" procedure. If the planning authority raises objections, or, as sometimes happens, there is strong local opposition, it is open to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government to say that a public local inquiry shall be held. It is a matter for him and not my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to decide whether or not there should be any inquiry.

I now come very quickly to the particular question of Ranby. We have already held discussions with the local authorities involved that is to say, Nottinghamshire County Council, which is the planning authority, East Retford Borough Council and East Retford Rural District Council.

Last month the Home Office made formal application to these authorities for their agreement to use the site for a category C prison. I do not yet know, nor does my hon. Friend—because neither of us has had a reply—what the reaction of the authorities will be, and I cannot yet say whether it will be decided by my right hon. Friend that a public inquiry should be held. But, clearly, he will bear in mind the views of local people and of my hon. Friend in making his decision.

May I state what we regard as the use to which we should like to put Ranby if we receive such permission? First, the site is in very good condition at present. I assure my hon. Friend that, generally speaking, when a site of this kind passes into the hands of the Home Office for prison purposes, it is improved and not allowed to deteriorate. My hon. 1318 Friend asked about landscaping. It is our view that we should want to take special steps to landscape the site, and we should watch very closely the planning requirements in this respect. We should therefore want to know what the local authorities required and what they wished to see done in respect of the screening of buildings. I assure my hon. Friend that we should do everything possible to meet their wishes, subject to our in no way weakening the security of the prison. I am sure that my hon. Friend appreciates that.

Within that prison we should hope to house in the first instance 100 to 200 category C prisoners who would be used as a labour force—which is now the policy of the Home Office—to make further adaptations to sleeping accommodation and workshops. We should hope to build up the camp to a total population of about 350 category C prisoners. That is the kind of figure which we are approaching in two other category C prisons, one at Haverigg in Cumberland and the other at Northeye near Bexhill. We should wish to use the prisoners to develop the camp.

But we think that the immediate need is for category C prisoners, and for 350 of those prisoners, on the site. Although I cannot say for certain what might happen in the future, because none of us can predict that, the whole basis of our consultation is on a figure up to 350, and we should certainly wish to return to consult the local authorities if at any time there were any intention to go beyond that figure. That is our present intention, and I cannot say fairer than that.

I would make a reference to a point raised by my hon. Friend about the security of the prison. I have referred to the sort of men who are in category C. On the whole these are not dangerous or violent professional criminals. They are not the type of offender contained at Rampton. Many will be in prison for less than 18 months and a few for less than 12 months.

My hon. Friend raised the question of outside working parties as a possible source of escapes. I want to make it clear that it will not be the case that prisoners would be regularly used for outside working parties. They would be 1319 used largely in the prison, except where the maintenance of the prison itself required it. In all situations where there was an outside working party of that kind, they would be properly supervised.

May I refer to the question of street lighting? I fully understand, though we are not talking about dangerous or violent prisoners, that people with young children or perhaps wives at home alone when husbands are on night shift will be worried if the streets are dark. It is not the case that the Home Office can provide lighting, except in roads leading directly to the prison. It may be that some of the roads will lead directly to the prison, in which case we should undertake the task of lighting them. But I point out that the prison will make a substantial contribution to the local rates. Again, this is a matter which we should be prepared to discuss with the local authorities, although I must make it clear that we could not make a direct subvention for this purpose.

My hon. Friend referred to the possibility of the site being used for a school for educationally subnormal children. This is a fairly large site and the number of educationally subnormal children in the area is very much less than the site could accommodate. Moreover, I believe that it is the intention of the local authority in any event to build a centre at Worksop, which would probably be more convenient for the parents of children in this category.

My hon. Friend also asked whether part of the site might be used for purposes of sport and recreation by local inhabitants. I am conscious that if we can show that we are willing to go some way to meet the needs of local inhabitants they may well feel a little better about having the prison in their midst. In any case, good local relations are important for the rehabilitation of prisoners as well as for the establishment of the prison. So far no proposal of this kind has been made by the local authority, but if it is raised with us we shall be very 1320 willing to consider such a suggestion. We should certainly do all we could to try to make sure that this need could be met—obviously, it would have to be outside the perimeter fence—if the site were large enough to accommodate such a requirement.

As I said, we very much appreciate the fact that my hon. Friend's constituents understand the dilemma in which we are placed. We realise that people always feel uncertain and sometimes rather anxious about the possibility of a prison being developed near them.

We should like to stress that particularly a category C prisoner is the kind of prisoner who, we feel, could, given the right circumstances, be rehabilitated and returned to the normal community. We are very anxious that this should take place. If we do not have new prisons and if the existing prisons are desperately overcrowded, this cannot happen.

Finally, I should like to assure my hon. Friend that we are grateful for the extremely understanding way in which he has approached this matter. We are grateful, too, for the understanding of his constituents. We understand their worries, and we will do everything possible to meet their understandable needs and requirements.