PRICE SISTERS (Hansard, 23 May 1974)

§ The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins)
As the House will be aware, the Price sisters were sentenced to life imprisonment and to concurrent sentences of 20 years' imprisonment in November 1973 for their role in the bomb outrages at the Old Bailey and elsewhere.
They have been on hunger strike in Brixton prison since December last. This action has been a matter of grave concern not only to the medical and other staff at the prison but, I believe, to hon. Members on both sides of the House. But the view has long been taken that a prison medical officer would be neglecting the duty laid upon him by Parliament if he let the health of a prisoner in his charge on hunger strike be endangered without attempting to help. Accordingly, the decision to feed a prisoner compulsorily has always been regarded as a medical matter for the judgment of the responsible doctor. It is on this basis of medical judgment that artificial feeding of the Price sisters began on 3rd December 1973 and continued until Saturday 18th May.
Although the procedure is commonly described as forcible feeding, it depends in practice on a certain minimal degree of co-operation from the subjects. The medical officers have decided that the degree of non co-operation that the sisters had displayed in the previous few days made it dangerous to continue with the feeding at present. The sisters remain under close medical supervision and will continue to receive all possible care and attention.

§ Mr. Stallard
I thank my right hon. Friend for that detailed reply. Will he accept that I am in no way condoning 600 the crimes committed? On grounds of humanity and compassion, and for good security reasons, does my right hon. Friend believe, as I believe, that these prisoners should be transferred to Northern Ireland? Is he aware that many transfers have taken place from Northern Ireland to this country and that there are precedents? Great distress and hardship is being unnecessarily inflicted on the relatives of these prisoners.
Will my right hon. Friend answer two short questions? First, may I infer from his remarks that it is now to be Home Office policy to allow hunger-striking prisoners in British prisons to die rather than to force feed them? Secondly, in the name of humanity and compassion, and for sound security reasons, will my right hon. Friend consider the transfer of these prisoners to Northern Ireland to complete their sentences?

§ Mr. Jenkins
On the first of the two specific questions which my hon. Friend asked—is it now Home Office policy to allow prisoners to die rather than to force feed?—I point out again that, firstly, the decision has been, is, and should be a matter of medical judgment. It is not subject to a direction from me or from the Home Office. Secondly, the decision not to continue at present with compulsory feeding, which was taken on Sunday, was based not on a policy of allowing the prisoners to die but on a fear of the dangers involved in continuing with compulsory feeding in the new circumstances.
In reply to the second part of the supplementary question on transfer to Northern Ireland, I indicated in the letter which I wrote to my noble Friend Lord Brockway in March—which was widely publicised at the time—that I would keep this matter under review and that when in the course of a few months a decision for a transfer from Brixton became necessary in any event I would consider that on a combination of compassionate and security considerations, weighing both together. I do not think that at the present time in present circumstances I could add to the burdens of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State by asking him to accept them in Northern Ireland.

§ Mr. Lane
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we appreciate the difficulty 601 of the decisions that he has to take in this case, and that we very much support the spirit of what he said in the last sentence or two of his supplementary answer. Will he make absolutely clear that he will not be influenced by any form of coercion and that, in any decision whether, when and where to move the Price sisters, the paramount consideration must be security?

§ Mr. Jenkins
I have made clear that 1 will have regard to both legitimate compassionate and security considerations. I do not think that it would be right for any Home Secretary to decide dispositions of prisoners under duress.

§ Mr. Russell Kerr
With a matter as politically sensitive as this, does the Home Secretary not agree that it is dangerous to leave the power of decision exclusively in medical hands?

§ Mr. Jenkins
Decisions about the movement of the prisoners are, of course, not in medical hands. The decision as to exactly when to give compulsory feeding must be a medical judgment, and I would hesitate greatly before I said that any layman should attempt to issue directions even if it were possible.

§ Mr. Biffen
If at some future date the Home Secretary considers transferring the Price sisters to Northern Ireland, will he give an undertaking that he will first have consultations with Mr. Faulkner and with the SDLP member of the Executive?

§ Mr. Jenkins
The position is as stated in my published letter to Lord Brockway to which I have referred. By the very nature of the case there would have to be the closest consultations between myself and my right hon. Friend, but I think that my right hon. Friend would be the correct channel of communication with the other two gentlemen to whom the hon. Gentleman referred.

§ Mr. Beith
Will the Home Secretary accept that the majority of people in this country consider that he has a duty to ensure that the British public is protected from the Price sisters, that he should use his discretion in that way, and that their interest in wanting to be in Ireland should have been thought of when they first came here to carry out their activities? Does he further accept that there is an increasing 602 number of us who are doubtful about forced feeding and would like this practice to be reviewed, and that many of us feel that if people refuse to take food in prison it is their business and they must take the consequences?

§ Mr. Jenkins
I note what the hon. Gentleman said in the first part of his question. As for the second part of his remarks, there are considerable difficulties about the whole process of compulsory feeding. There are many countries which do not use the process, and I believe it is correct to say that it is not used in either Northern or Southern Ireland. The position when I came into office was that compulsory feeding was taking place, and I did not think it right to call off that process in the middle. On the wider question, I think it is a matter for consideration whether compulsory feeding is a process which serves a useful purpose; but this is not the time to consider that matter in relation to this particular case.

§ Mrs. Renée Short
May I make it clear that I do not condone anything that these two girls have done, but could I press my right hon. Friend in terms of his statement—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ask a question."] I wish you would shut up with your stupid interruptions. May I ask my right hon. Friend, as a reforming and compassionate Home Secretary, whether he does not think that forced feeding should now be banished completely from our penal system? Is he aware that over 50 years ago we were force feeding suffragettes and that it is astonishing that this process still takes place in our prisons? Will he therefore, irrespective of pressure in this particular case, consider whether he should decide that since this is a distasteful procedure—distasteful for prisoners and for doctors and prison officials who have to administer it —it should be banished from British prisons?

§ Mr. Jenkins
Of course it is a distasteful process, and nobody is in the slightest doubt about that. The question at issue is whether the alternative is not still more difficult to accept. I have indicated that I am willing to look at the broader question of compulsory feeding, but our problem at the moment is not that forced feeding is continuing but that temporarily at least it has had to cease.