HC Deb 13 June 1986 vol 99 cc732-8

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

2.20 pm
Mr. Roger Moate (Faversham)

I am glad to have the opportunity to raise a matter of some importance to a small but important number of my constituents. I refer to the right of prison officers to buy service quarters at discount prices.

Some time ago I was approached by several constituents who are prison officers at Standford Hill prison, which is located at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey. I very much welcome the modernisation of Standford Hill prison and the construction of the new Swaleside prison. That will make the prison complex at Eastchurch even more important, both locally and nationally. It also involves a substantial increase in the number of prison officers and other staff on the Isle of Sheppey. I warmly welcome that just as nearly everyone on the Isle of Sheppey does. Indeed, the good relations that have existed between the community and the prison service are a tremendous asset to us all.

I very much welcome those developments, because they are an indication of the superb expansion of the prison building programme that the Government have carried through. The projects on the island are substantial and represent part of a quite dramatic programme that has been introduced by the Home Office. Thus I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on the part that he has played in that.

The very fact that such developments increase the number of local prison officers emphasises the importance of the subject under debate. It is vital that prison officers should have the right housing arrangements. I am concerned, in particular, about the right of prison officers to buy their own homes and their eligibility for discounts. Until 1979 prison officers were required to occupy quarters provided by the prison service, but in 1979 they were released from that obligation. The Home Office and Ministers should take pride in the fact that two thirds of prison officers now live in private accommodation with the assistance of a housing allowance. Thus, there has been a tremendous change.

I believe that virtually everyone accepts that as a matter of fundamental principle those in public services such as the police, fire and prison services, the Armed Forces and others should be encouraged to buy their own homes. In the past many have suffered greatly by living in tied accommodation or public quarters for much of their careers. They have found themselves out of the housing market for most of their lives and have depended, in retirement, on the public sector. However, we have taken great strides forward, as illustrated by the changes that I have already mentioned, with regard to prison officers.

Thus any minor criticisms that I make must be seen in the context of a major improvement which, I hope, is recognised by prison officers as well as by politicians and the whole community.

As a part of that policy, the Government have already sold many houses in the prison service to prison officers at, I understand, full market price. The issue that I am raising is that of eligibility for discounts on the price of those homes for prison officers who are currently occupying homes which, by definition, could be or would be available for sale.

The principle of giving a discount is part of public policy and is an important plank of Conservative party policy. Discounts are offered by many public authorities in addition to local authorities. That means that in the public sector discounts of up to 60 per cent. can result. I understand that police authorities may at their own discretion—many exercise it—sell off any police houses that are surplus to operational requirements. I understand also that the authorities who do that operate the same terms and conditions as those that apply to local authority house sales. In other words, some police officers have been given discounts of up 60 per cent. I do not think that there is any dispute about the principle of selling houses, especially those surplus to requirements, and giving discounts to the occupants.

Unfortunately, the discount facility has not been available and is not available to prison officers. Whatever practical difficulties might face my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of' State for the Home Department, I am sure that he will appreciate the feelings of my constituents and others who wish to buy their own homes. They are seeing other tenants in other sectors receiving large discounts when they have to pay the full market price.

I recognise fully that the Home Office needs to keep a stock of prison quarters to recruit staff and maintain staff mobility, and to provide for emergencies, but that is not the issue. By definition, we are talking about houses that are surplus to requirements. I understand that such houses are already available for purchase by their occupants. Once sold, whether at full market price or at a discounted price, they would cease to be part of the prison service's stock of houses. They would probably be sold, and what we are talking about is the price at which they would be sold. It is a matter of whether the occupants receive a discount, as many police officers are given a discount. In all equity, I believe that prison officers should be given a discount.

The Prison Officers Association raised this issue in 1983 and the Government responded with a package that provided for discounts, but it would have meant the end of prison officers' entitlement to the provision of prison quarters. That package has been rejected by prison officers in a number of ballots on a number of occasions. I am sure that the officers are not against discounts in principle. In my view, they were rejecting the package as offered by the Home Office. I must ask whether such ballots are the right way to approach this subject. If two thirds of prison officers already live in private accommodation and receive a housing allowance, they are most unlikely to accept a scheme that robs them of the valuable advantage of quarters entitlement, should it ever be necessary for them individually or collectively.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the prison officers rejected the Government's package, but the minority have been left in an unfortunate position. I do not think that the majority want the minority to be deprived of the possibility of a discount. Should we sit back and accept the results of the ballots as the end of the matter? I hope not. I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to ensure that the Home Office continues to search for some way of providing some form of discount to the small number of officers who wish to buy prison service homes which are, by definition, surplus to requirements.

This is not an open-ended proposition as the stock of houses is limited and the number of officers affected is. I suspect, relatively few. That should make it easier, not harder, to find a solution. I should like the Government to try again.

It seems that we have allowed a relatively simple matter of discounts to become unnecessarily bound up with other pay and allowance-related questions and with quarters entitlement. I suggest that that is not the best way to approach the matter. A courteous letter, dated 27 March, which I received from the Home Secretary said: Now that the question of discount sales has been settled"— I hope that it has not— we are considering whether, while retaining quarters to meet present and future demand, we can find a way to give further encouragement to those who wish to own their own home.

It being half-past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

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

Mr. Moate

The letter continued: We hope to be able to make an announcement shortly. I received a letter dated 11 April from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury which stated: The Home Office is considering whether any further encouragement can be given, and is looking into the possibility of an advance of salary scheme, similar to that currently available to Governors. As yet no details have been worked out and if an acceptable scheme can he put together, this too will need to be put to the POA membership for their approval before it can be implemented. I welcome those statements. It is quite clear that my right hon. and hon. Friends are anxious to promote home ownership within the prison service. There can be no doubt that if we are to continue to attract people of high calibre and dedication to the profession, it is fundamentally important that they have an opportunity and an advantage in securing a place in the housing market. That is fundamental to anybody planning a professional career. Whether that can be done by some other means of promoting home ownership, such as giving discounts. or both, I hope that we shall take some encouraging steps to help prison officers.

I stress that it ought to be possible to find a way of giving discounts or assistance in terms of costs, such as moving and legal expenses, to that small minority of prison officers who feel that they are disadvantaged. If my hon. Friend cannot give me complete answers, I hope that he can give some hope to those affected.

2.32 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Mellor)

My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) is proud of his constituency's association with the prison service. He spoke warmly of the work that has been done in his constituency. I know, from my perusal of the files in my Department, that nobody has been more assiduous than my hon. Friend in pursuing the rightful interests of his constituents in the prison service. He has made it clear, by quoting from letters, that there is a history to the matter. He has for some time been a distinguished advocate of the policies he set out today. The Adjournment debate is merely the latest stage in what has been an appropriately vigorous campaign that he has waged.

I appreciated the warmth of my hon. Friend's tribute to successive Home Secretaries who have won resources for the prison service above and beyond anything contemplated for decades. Therefore, it is all the more sad that I suspect I shall not be able wholly to satisfy him this afternoon. Of course, I should like to be able to do so because his presentation was fair-minded and obviously committed to a common sense approach to the matters which we are trying to pursue, as he recognises.

To someone with my hon. Friend's commercial acumen and interest in the spread of wealth throughout the community, I can understand why he thought it was a straightforward matter for the Government to introduce a scheme to make it possible for the discount purchase of prison officers' accommodation. As my hon. Friend knows, although he was kind enough not to advert to it, it was possible in slightly different circumstances in 1981 to introduce just such a scheme for officers in Scotland. I appreciate why my hon. Friend feels that our position is a little exposed.

Our difficulty is that all of this is bound up, whether we like it or not, with long-established conditions of employment. We have to take the greatest care to ensure that any changes with major implications for the longer term are broadly acceptable to all staff. I understand the point made by my hon. Friend about all staff being consulted, but that is not so much a matter for us as one for the internal regulation of the Prison Officers Association which plainly sets great store by its accountabilty to its membership as a whole. In a broader context, we can understand why that is.

My hon. Friend has given an account of some of the alternative points that we have advanced. My Department, like every other Department, honours the Government's declared policy of encouraging home ownership. I take pride in the fact, as does my hon. Friend, that 62 per cent. of our fellow citizens own their own homes. There has never been such a high home ownership figure in our country's history. It is one of the Government's many major achievements. As the election approaches, the public will become aware of how much we have done and be all the more reluctant to make any changes.

My hon. Friend has gone into detail, and I should, too. For some time we have been involved in considering the conditions of employment of prison officers. All prison officers, other than auxiliaries and night patrols, are entitled to a free quarter if one is available. Until 1979 they were allowed to live in private accommodation with the benefit of an allowance only for as long as a quarter was not available. That was a restrictive rule. When a quarter was available, they were compelled to move into it or they lost their allowance.

In 1979, when the Conservative party came to office, we thought that that was not appropriate, so we negotiated a major change in conditions which gave prison officers a reasonable degree of choice between occupying free quarters and drawing an allowance to live in their own house. That was part of our policy of promoting the growth of home ownership. My hon. Friend has already said, but it bears repeating, that as a result the number of staff living out of quarters has increased over a seven-year period from one third to two thirds—a greater increase than the growth in home ownership in the community overall.

While operating against the background of increasing recruitment to the prison service, we have been able to retain sufficient quarters to meet demand. Where the new agreement resulted in a real and permanent surplus of quarters at a particular prison, and they were not needed by another prison within daily travelling distance, the surplus houses have been sold on the open market or to staff at full market price. About 2,500 houses have been disposed of in that way, most of them, however, in the valuable lower-cost sector suitable for first-time buyers and the like.

Apart from basic provision at new establishments, it has not been necessary to add to the general stock of quarters, although we are refurbishing some older properties, especially in the London area, to bring them back into use to meet a growth in demand. There is no doubt that some staff, particularly when they join the service and when they want to transfer, find quarters attractive as a condition of employment. Decoration and maintenance—internal and external—are carried out by the Department, and most quarters now have central heating and are of a good modern standard.

The conditions of employment of prison officers also include a notional addition to pay for pension purposes called the pensionable value of quarters. This addition is also taken into account in calculating rates of overtime and in fixing a percentage enhancement of pay called a shift disturbance allowance. The pay, earnings and pension of the two thirds of prison officers living in private accommodation with the benefit of an index-linked housing allowance also attract these additions. My hon. Friend will, I hope, understand that if a scheme for the discount sale of quarters had been agreed, it would have meant the end of quarters provision as a condition of service. We could not both retain an entitlement to a quarter and at the same time sell off at a discount, as we would have had to do, the very stock of quarters that enable us to make that entitlement a reality. The associated conditions of service would have no longer applied. This leaves on one side, of course, the operational and mobility problems which might be posed if no quarters were available, especially in view of the remote location of some of our prisons.

There have been considerable discussions and negotiations about discount sales with the Prison Officers Association from 1983, when the matter was first raised, and when my hon. Friend, quick off the mark, took it up. We have all been involved for three years. In 1980, when two thirds of prison officers still occupied quarters, consideration was first given to a scheme of interest-free advances of pay to help with house purchase by those who wished to exercise their newly-acquired freedom to live in private accommodation with an allowance. Unfortunately, a national dispute arose at that time, and until it was finally settled we were not able to offer that scheme to prison officers. It was, however, introduced for governor grades and chaplains in 1981.

In 1983, before the terms for the final settlement of the 1980–81 dispute were conclusively resolved, the national conference of the Prison Officers Association instructed its national executive committee to seek an offer of a discount sales scheme of some kind. I should emphasise that the initiative in this matter was taken by the association and that we made it clear from the beginning of the negotiations that then ensued that we could only consider a scheme of discount sales that recognised and dealt satisfactorily with the entitlement to free quarters and the various linked benefits.

The negotiations then led to an offer of discount schemes, an enhancement of pay and a lump-sum payment to staff to take account of the end of the entitlement. That offer was put to the 1984 annual conference of the POA and rejected, but there was sufficient interest in the matter for the POA to return to ask for negotiations on a different kind of offer. The main objection of the conference was to the lump-sum arrangement, and following further discussion a second offer was made, which included a larger increase in basic pay, which in turn fed through into rates of overtime and other payments. The POA put that matter to a national ballot of its members, but the result was against acceptance of the offer. The voting indicated, however, a continuing interest in an agreement, and after the 1985 conference we were asked to consider a further and final offer. Negotiations then led to two final and alternative offers, one of which provided for a residual allowance. These were again put to a national ballot by the POA, and this time the results were heavily against the acceptance of either offer.

We have since been asked about the interest-free advance of pay scheme, which has the advantage that it can apply either to the purchase of a surplus quarter or to a move into private housing. We are currently considering such a scheme for prison officers, although my hon. Friend will understand that the POA is currently in dispute with us over another matter, and the resolution of that is being given priority. We hope that that will soon be out of the way. We have, however, been told by the POA that the following motion was overwhelmingly adopted at the association's 1986 conference. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has seen it, so I shall read it. It states: This Conference is of the view that entitlement to quarters should remain a condition of employment for prison officers and that quarters disposal should be limited to those quarters which can be recognised as being genuinely surplus to foreseeable demand.

The passage of that resolution suggests that the offers made and the two national ballots have caused prison officers to look very carefully at the long-term value of a quarters entitlement and the linked pay, allowance and pension benefits, which are so tightly bound.

Before 1979, when prison officers were obliged to occupy quarters and could not easily get permission to live in private accommodation, quarters were seen as a mixed blessing, but when we changed the rules in that year to give greater freedom this major disadvantage was removed. Quarters seem now to be perceived as a valuable condition of employment, and this is borne out by the following second conference motion, which also attracted overwhelming support: Now that discount sale of quarters has twice been rejected by the membership this Conference authorises the NEC to negotiate with the Home Office for married quarters to be treated as a priority matter and sufficient quarters to be purchased to give a good living standard to all members who wish to live in quarters and that blocks of flats gradually be phased out.

I appreciate that that is the collective view of the membership of the POA, with the structure that my hon. Friend has suggested. I know that some members of staff would like to be given some sort of discount if they are allowed to purchase quarters. But our difficulty is discriminating in favour of an individual in a matter that is part of the conditions of employment of the whole group. That is why it has been impossible to recognise the distinctions that my hon. Friend made about the positions in which different people find themselves.

My hon. Friend was careful not to be parochial in his speech, for which I commend him, but some facts were looked out for me on Standford Hill prison. It might be helpful if I explain that about 15 vacant quarters there are being kept for staff at the new Swaleside prison, also in my hon. Friend's constituency, when it opens in 1988. If, as might be expected, some Standford Hill staff move into private accommodation between now and the opening of the new prison, that will release more quarters for incoming staff. Our current forecast is that all the Standford Hill stock of 54 quarters will need to be retained for use by staff of the two prisons. That is why it seems unlikely at this stage that any of those quarters will be released for sale.

I understand the disappointment of individual members of staff who have been placed in a position of uncertainty because of the protracted negotiations over the past three years. We have tried honestly and sincerely to get an arrangement that would be acceptable and would lead to a successful outcome to a difficult issue. But it has been conclusively demonstrated that the view of the majority of prison officers is against the change in their conditions of employment that a discount sales scheme would involve. In the light of that outcome, we believe that a scheme of interest-free advances of pay for assistance with house purchase, similar to that introduced for governor grade staff in 1981, is probably the best way forward.

Mr. Moate

indicated assent

Mr. Mellor

I am glad that my hon. Friend agrees. That links us.

We think that is the most viable way in which we can give further encouragement to those who want to become home owners. I assure my hon. Friend that we shall explore that possibility with the POA in the coming months. We know that he will continue to take an interest and that we shall have to give an account of ourselves regularly, which we welcome, because there is nothing like interest from the House of Commons for stimulating officials and Ministers to keep their teeth in a problem, however thorny it has proved to be.

I hope that what I have said has not been too disappointing. The history that I have charted has shown that the matter has not been straightforward. If it had been, we would have resolved it. There is now a further window of opportunity, which we shall do our best to get through.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes to Three o'clock.