HC Deb 02 February 1978 vol 943 cc674-5
8. Miss Fookes

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any plans for the non-custodial treatment of mentally disturbed persons at present in prison owing to the lack of alternative facilities.

Mr. John

I do not think that it would be appropriate to provide for the treatment, in a non-custodial setting, of mentally disordered offenders whom the courts have decided to sentence to imprisonment rather than, for example, place on probation. But we are concerned about the number of mentally disordered people in prison, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services are considering what can be done to improve the situation.

Miss Fookes

As it costs at least £78 a week to keep each prisoner, would not the money be better spent on setting up suitable establishments, and quickly?

Mr. John

That is one of the simplistic accounting procedures that appeal to me, as I have a poor grasp of arithmetic, but the fact is that unless we make enough room in a prison to close it down, we effect no saving on the prison budget, whilst increasing public expenditure elsewhere. I am interested to note that the hon. Lady is making yet another special case for increasing public expenditure whilst advocating decreasing public expenditure in general.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon

Is my hon. Friend aware that the situation in British prisons is becoming extremely dangerous as a result of the very high incidence of mentally disordered people who should be in hospital rather than in prison, but who cannot be in hospital because the judges cannot send them to Rampton and Broadmoor, as those establishments are too full? Is it not time that we acted on the Butler Report, with the full consent of the House, and told the Treasury that money should be available for some kind of establishment where such people can be kept safely but out of the normal mental hospital?

Mr. John

No precise estimate of the numbers involved can be given, but in the opinion of prison medical officers there are hundreds of such prisoners. As for the Butler Report, and particularly the question of secure units, the Government are very concerned about the slow progress being made, but for once that cannot be laid at the Treasury's door.

Mr. Nelson

Is the Minister aware that in Brixton Prison, for example, there are numerous mentally disturbed prisoners for whom the appropriate treatment is most certainly not in Her Majesty's Prisons? Is not the resistance of certain trade unions and the Health Service to providing adequate facilities for such prisoners the real restraint on dealing with them properly?

Mr. John

I would make two points. First, Brixton is a remand prison, and therefore one would expect dispositions about mental health to be made at the trial. Secondly, problems arise on the question whether hospitals have the appropriate facilities and whether the offenders are treatable. There are some cases of mental disturbance which are not treatable in the present state of modern science. It is that rather than blind trade union resistance, as the hon. Gentleman calls it, that causes the problem.