HC Deb 14 May 1970 vol 801 cc1655-66

Motion made, and Question proposed,That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dobson.]

1.26 a.m.

Mr. Michael O'Halloran (Islington, North)

The purpose of this Adjournment debate is to discuss the rebuilding of Holloway Prison. The London Borough of Islington is one of London's inner boroughs and was one of the first parts of London to be developed. When Holloway Prison was originally built in 1888 it was right on the edge of urban London, overlooking fields and pastures. By the end of the 19th century, Islington had been built up. There were no more fields. Ever since that time all new construction has involved redeveloping and renewing out-dated and unwanted buildings. The pace of development has been very rapid and brought with it large numbers of people.

By the turn of the century Islington was suffering from the problem which has plagued it ever since—a very large population, poorly housed with no room to build new homes or provide vital facilities, such as open spaces without first demolishing and clearing areas. Moreover, it invariably became necessary to move out more people than it was possible to rehouse on the same site. As a result of modern health regulations 19th century standards cannot be tolerated today. Islington was built up before local authorities could build council homes, before proper open space standards were introduced, before the motor car had arrived and before services such as day nurseries, libraries and old people's homes had been established.

Much progress has been made, particularly since the election of the present Government. Locally we have benefited from high council building subsidies, rate support grants, the Rent Acts and the urban programme. But problems still remain. There are nearly 10,000 families on the waiting list for council homes. People in desperate circumstances. Families of seven people in one damp basement room are told that nothing can be done to help. In any other city they would be rehoused immediately. There is less open space in my constituency than in any other in London.

Not one Islington football team, with the notable exception of Arsenal, has ever enjoyed a home match. There is not a single footpath pitch available. A total of 236,000 people are living on 5.3 square miles and the shortage of land is desperate. Nor should anyone imagine that Islington is a community of affluent people, able to travel freely to enjoy facilities not available in their own borough. A council survey of families on the waiting list showed that the most earned between £16 and £18 per week.

As I have outlined it, the problem facing Islington is one of a shortage of available land. It is very scarce in the borough. Every decision to use it or redevelop it must be measured against this background. This is the problem which determines our priorities for action. It is against this background that the decision to redevelop Holloway Prison on its present site in Islington should be viewed and seen to be the public scandal which it is.

Should this plan proceed, it would permanently deprive nearly 1,300 people of a decent home, and their children of somewhere to play. The opportunity for Islington Council to build homes on land where it has not first been necessary to rehouse more families than will be able to return is the only sure hope that it will be able to solve the many problems arising from its earlier development.

One opportunity has already been lost. Railway land at Monnery Road, which had not been in use for years, was not passed to the council for the good of the community, but was leased by British Rail to Shell Mex and B.P. as an oil storage depot for the whole of North London. The heartless and temporary Tory majority on Islington Council actively assisted this company to proceed with this despicable scheme, to the detriment of my constituents. This must not happen again.

Such is the pressure for land in Islington that it is costing the council between £80,000 and £100,000 per acre to buy residential land. In addition, it must meet the cost of rehousing those living there, together with the building costs. On this basis, the Holloway Prison site is worth over £1 million. Can the Home Office really justify spending £1 million for a site for prison facilities? I suggest that it would not try, because there would be a public outcry. Yet this is, in substance, what it is trying to do at present, although it is cloaked by statements about the original purchase price of £1,000. I hope that we can be told the price of the last site purchased for a prison. I cannot imagine that it was anywhere in the region of £1 million.

No one would question the urgent need for modern prison facilities. The issue that I want to raise is the location of those facilities. No doubt, remand facilities for women are needed in the London area, but there are 31 other London boroughs in addition to Islington, although few have problems approaching the magnitude of that borough's. We all know that prisons are not popular, but, equally, there can be no doubt that Islington has more than a fair share. There are five London prisons and 32 London boroughs. But at present Islington provides land for two prisons, not just Holloway but Pentonville, too. This situation cannot be tolerated any longer. An enlightened prison policy does not depend on using the Holloway Prison site. Decent homes for Islington cannot be built without it. The need to rebuild to modern standards is a good opportunity for the Home Office to make this possible. This opportunity must not be lost.

The key question turns on the reasons that the Home Office can give us to justify the use of this site. It is difficult to think that there is any other reason than sheer administrative convenience. It is easier to redevelop a site that they already own than search for a more appropriate one. Home Office interests seem to be riding roughshod over the housing needs of my constituents. We have been told that other sites have been considered. If that is so, I hope that we shall be told the names of those sites and the reasons why they were rejected in favour of Holloway. Any unwillingness to disclose this information will only confirm my belief that this was the only site considered. It will then be clear that administrative convenience is to be ranked higher than contributing to the solution of desperate human housing problems.

Before going any further, I must ask the Minister to assure himself and the House that he does, in fact, have a legal right under the Prison Acts to redevelop Holloway Prison without planning permission from the local authority and without first securing the local authority's agreement.

No doubt the Minister will sympathise with my case and with the plight of my constituents. I hope that he will look again at this proposal, reconsider the scheme and match his sympathy with action.

1.35 a.m.

Mr. R. W. Brown (Shoreditch and Finsbury)

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. O'Halloran) has kindly allowed me five minutes of his time to support him in his plea. I was privileged to lead a deputation from the local council to the Home Office in April, 1969. The Home Office frankly expressed its views and the council expressed thanks to me for having tried to do my best. It is, therefore, with regret that I record that the council is not making the best use of the land it has.

One would have more understanding of the council's problems if it was using the land in my constituency and in other parts of Islington to the full. The council has wilfully refused to do so. Land which was purchased by the council in 1968 is being sold, and for two years—

Mr. Speaker

Order. This is a matter which the hon. Member must raise with his local council.

Brown

I was trying to illustrate to the House that whilst one can argue that it is too much to have two prisons in the Borough of Islington, it is deplorable that the local authority, while the fight is going on, is not using the land it has and, what is more, is selling it.

Mr. Speaker

Order. The use or misuse of the land by the local authority is a matter for the local authority.

Mr. Brown

I have done my best to raise the matter of the prisons and their siting. When the House was discussing the Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill a site at Rainham, in Essex, was mentioned. The leader of the Rain-ham Conservative Council has shown no interest in persuading the Islington Council to ask the Minister to site Pentonville or Holloway in his area. It is all very well for an area to say that it does not want a prison, but when it has to designate the area where it is to be interest breaks down.

I hope that my hon. Friend will reiterate the undertaking given by the Home Office to the deputation which I presented. Although Holloway, for the specific reasons which the council at that time said it understood, cannot be moved, I hope that the Minister will reiterate the undertaking given by the Home Office to the deputation that Pentonville Prison will be moved from Islington. Pentonville occupies 11.3 acres and Holloway 12.9 acres. The size of site that the Islington Council is asking for will be available if Pentonville can be moved.

It is unreasonable for a borough council to have two prisons within its area. This matter has been going on for years. It ill behoves a Conservative council to complain when a Conservative Government for years failed to take any action. I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing in an enlightened policy for prisons to make them less wretched than they are.

1.40 a.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Elystan Morgan)

In the course of my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington. North (Mr. O'Halloran) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. R. W. Brown), it will be my duty to explain to them, and through them to their constituents, the reasons why the Government have been unable to relinquish the prison site at Holloway for local authority purposes. But I must say at once that the Government have every sympathy with the motives of the local authority and the hon. Members in pressing for the acquisition of this site.

The Government are fully aware of the pressing housing problems in Islington. This was an important factor to which fullest consideration was given by the Home Secretary before he reached the decision announced to Parliament in December, 1968. Prior to that date, and subsequently, there were a number of discussions at all levels with the local authority and the Greater London Council at which the situation was fully explored.

In the full knowledge, therefore, of the need in Islington for sites on which to build houses, the Government have been reluctant to be unable to respond to the request for the surrender of this site. But the Home Secretary has a responsibility, that goes wider than local interests, for the custodial treatment of those women and girls who are sent into the care of the prison service by the courts.

Before coming to the specific reasons why it was decided to redevelop the Holloway site, it is necessary to put the proposal into its full context. The policy for the custodial treatment of women and girls that was announced to Parliament in December, 1968, was the result of a comprehensive review of the problem. The conclusion that was reached was that by devoting a reasonable amount of the total resources available to the prison system it should be possible, within a decade, to provide the necessary facilities for a custodial system for women and girls that would serve for the foreseeable future.

Those hon. Members who have visited the prison at Holloway will know that, although it has served the country exceedingly well for more than a century, the buildings are out of date and are deteriorating. They are quite unsuited to the modern methods of treatment that the prison service of today is trained to employ. The new policies demand an entirely new establishment suitably designed and equipped to deal with existing and new problems according to our latest knowledge and in an acceptable environment.

The new policy, now being put into effect, for women and girls in custody is based on the premise that most of them require some form of medical, psychiatric or remedial treatment. The female establishments in the prison system are, therefore, being reorganised to provide the necessary facilities. Because of the relatively small numbers of women and girls—less than 1,000—who are received into penal custody and their geographical scatter, it is not possible to locate them all near to their homes. This creates problems not only for the women in custody, but for their families, legal advisers, the probation service and others concerned with welfare and rehabilitation.

The system is, therefore, being redesigned to provide a complex in the north and another in the south, each with a full range of facilities for all penal purposes, of establishments both closed and open in character. Holloway will be the principal establishment and, apart from providing the closed prison and remand centre facilities for the southern complex, will serve a country-wide purpose through the provision of certain facilities that it is not at present possible to duplicate elsewhere. As such, Holloway will form the hub of the female penal system being by far the most important establishment within it.

But, we have been asked, not unreasonably, why it is necessary to redevelop the new, medically orientated establishment, at Holloway. It has been suggested that the new establishment might be better located elsewhere, thus releasing a valuable urban site for development by the local authority. Hon. Members who have read the Adjournment debate last night about the closure of the women's wing at Brockhill will have learnt something about the insuperable problems that arise from trying to manage even a very small establishment for women in an area only 15 miles from the centre of Birmingham.

Experience elsewhere has confirmed the impossibility, as at Brockhill, of maintaining the essential basic services for a female establishment of the kind envisaged in a rural area or one even marginally remote from specialist resources. Given, also, that Holloway must serve the London courts, there was no alternative but to redevelop the new establishment at a site fairly near to the centre of London. The new establishment will be basically a secure hospital and will make considerable demands on medical and psychiatric resources which must be reasonably near to it.

By far the most difficult problem that the Home Office prison department faces in pressing the development of new penal establishments is the acquisition of sufficiently large sites, suitable for its purposes, in the face, frequently, of local opposition, or of competing demands for other laudable social objects. When, therefore, the decision was faced to redevelop the Holloway site, the Home Office had to recognise that it was virtually impossible to expect to secure a site of sufficient size in a suitable location in the capital.

Mr. R. W. Brown

There was such a site—the Barbican site in the City of London. They will not cater for housing in their area. They house in our constituencies. Why did not my hon. Friend persist that they should have the prison within the boundary of the City of London?

Mr. Morgan

It is well known that whenever a borough in London, or elsewhere, suggests that a prison site should be established in another borough, that borough, in turn, suggests a site in a third borough, and so on, until there is a chain of possible sites running across the whole country to be examined.

Hard experience has shown that years can be wasted in pursuing suggested sites only to be frustrated at the end of the day when the planning interests are resolved. It would have been impossible to say when, if ever, a suitable alternative would have become available. I am sure that both my hon. Friends appreciate how very much time is of the essence in this connection.

In view of this difficult situation and our responsibilities there was no alternative, therefore, but to redevelop on the site we possessed at Holloway. We have had to accept, because there is no alternative accommodation for most of the women and girls at Holloway, that the establishment must remain fully operational throughout the rebuilding period. I need hardly emphasise the technical and operational problems inherent in that decision which we should have avoided if it had been at all possible.

All of this has been explained many times to the authorities at Islington and to the Greater London Council, and I think that they are not unsympathetic to our problems and would be anxious to help if they could. But they have their responsibilities, too, and it is entirely understandable, therefore, that they should press the interests of the people of Islington and London in regard to the use of prison sites. Islington, despite having, as has been said, one of the most difficult housing problems in the capital has two prison department sites within its boundaries. They are, therefore, obviously interested also in the removal of Pentonville Prison elsewhere.

This, in the long term, may be possible since its function, and its demands on specialist resources, are different from those of Holloway where there will be the most modern and sophisticated medical and psychiatric facilities for the treatment of a much wider range of people. But in acknowledging the needs and interests of the people of Islington, I must ask the House to look at these against the general background of the severe and increasing pressure on the penal system and of the special needs, in regard to women and girls, that I have mentioned in respect of the redevelopment at Holloway. I must ask the House, also, to accept the assurance that my right hon. Friend has given that we would not have decided to proceed with the redevelopment at Holloway except after the most searching examination of all the issues involved.

The House will wish to know what progress has been made on this project since this is relevant to the issue now before the House in so far as we have reached a stage where it would in any case be too late to turn back without serious loss and disadvantage. Moreover, no significant new factors have arisen or been mentioned in this debate that were not present and taken fully into account in the original decision.

The Holloway Redevelopment Project, which has been the subject of regular consultation with the planning authorities, has passed from the briefing to the design stages and we now envisage work on the main redevelopment starting on the site at about the end of the year. There has been a considerable investment of technical and professional resources which have been heavily engaged on the major exercise of preparing the ground and organising the resources to launch a project of this scale and complexity. The collateral planning which is involved in the retraining of staff and the redeployment of people and resources has also reached an advanced stage.

If we were to turn back now there would be no saying when, if ever, a suitable site and opportunity would recur to complete the task to which we have now set our hand. The morale of those concerned in the prison service would be seriously damaged and we should be failing in our duty to those in our care not to press on to a successful conclusion the project upon which we have embarked, and upon which we must rely if we are to fulfil our responsibilities in the future.

I hope that in due course the people of Islington will come to feel some pride in what is being created at Holloway. In place of an out-of-date, gaunt and deteriorating ensemble of prison buildings there will rise a modern, hospital-type, institution, with its ancillary buildings and staff quarters, which will ensure that our staff and the people in their care are housed and work in a pleasant and satisfying environment. In its conception the new establishment will embody the best in contemporary penological, medical and psychiatric thought. We believe that the new buildings will enhance the town-scope of Islington in an imaginative and desirable way. Socially, they will represent an achievement of international significance, of which we who are responsible for the penal system and, I hope, the people of Islington, will be justifiably proud.

Mr. R. W. Brown

Islington has been known for a century and more as a place where there were two prisons. People in my constituency are not anxious to perpetuate that situation.

Mr. Morgan

It is not a question whether we add to the number of prisons in Islington, but whether the increase in our prison population that we are now suffering is such as to allow Islington to have less than two prisons. I have told my hon. Friend that if there is a possibility of the development programme for prisons proceeding at such a pace as to allow Pentonville Prison not to be used as a prison at some time in the future that will be done.

Though we are unable to meet the request of the local authority for the surrender of this site, I trust we may expect its co-operation in establishing this important new institution. I know, in fact, that it does not question, indeed it shares our belief in the moral values and social merit of the forward-looking policies that have promoted this project. We talk of a caring community; we aspire to higher moral standards and social progress. Here at Holloway we aim in a practical way to develop the advanced therapeutic treatments in an environment that will help us to realise the full potential of our skilled and devoted staff; and to give them the benefit of the best facilities and practice that experience and planning can contrive.

If, as I firmly believe the way in which a country cares for its needy and delinquent people is a measure of a civilised society, the social attitudes inherent in the redevelopment of Holloway will make a worthy contribution to the achievements by which we shall be judged.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Two o'clock.