HC Deb 24 July 1987 vol 120 cc696-702

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

3.35 pm
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South)

When I applied for this Adjournment debate on the crisis in the prison system the situation was somewhat difficult. I note that, in the days that have gone by since that application, the situation has not improved to any great extent.

The Minister, who has been kind enough to come here today to reply, no doubt anticipates that what was said in The Times today is the basis upon which I wish to address the House. That is not entirely so. I would not dream of boring the House by repeating what has already been printed. Perhaps the Minister will deal, en passant, with the points raised in The Times as he answers the points that I wish to raise.

The truth of the matter is that, in the United Kingdom, we send to prison far more persons per head of the population than most of western Europe and, indeed, most of the civilised world. Indeed, the conditions into which we dispatch those persons would, I believe, disgrace even a developing country. If we are to solve the problem of imprisonment and the crisis in our prisons, the time has come to ask a series of fundamental questions.

The other day, Lord Chief Justice Lane, speaking at a judges' dinner, decried the practice of the press of seizing upon items of sentence and creating a great hoo-ha about them. I entirely agree with him; he has made an extremely valid point. In this country, in any one year, thousands, if not millions, of people are sentenced in various courts for various matters. The vast bulk of those sentences are absolutely correct and are never commented upon. However, in any massive sentencing organisation there must, from time to time, be some sentences that are either too severe or too lenient. It does not behove the system for publicity hungry politicians to seize upon those sentences and create the sort of hoo-ha that is then taken up by the press. All that does is, on occasion, to create stiffer sentences in other courts when such sentences need not be imposed.

The crisis in the prisons has been caused simply because the prison system is incapable of dealing with the number of prisoners it has now or will have in the weeks, months and years to come. It has meant that, time after time, those who work in the prison service find that their particular function nowadays is simply to incarcerate and hold prisoners. Very often that means incarcerating persons for 23 hours a day—consider what that means—for weeks, months or years.

I pay credit to the Minister for the beautiful way in which he dodged questions that I tabled to him at the beginning of this Parliament by saying that the prison-building programme was being kept under continuous review. Given that answer, it was obvious to me that the Department, for which the Minister answers, was carefully thinking about what to do. In those questions, I offered a series of alternatives; and when the Home Office failed to answer them, it was obvious that an announcement was about to be made.

We eventually saw the palliatives, as I described them, which included increasing remission time on sentences of fewer than 12 months. It will let out a number of prisoners and it may reduce the prison population a little, but the Minister may recall that I raised the subject some years ago when the total number of persons in prison was in the low 40,000s. Shortly thereafter the Home Office introduced new parole rules. Instead of having to wait until almost half of his sentence before he was reviewed for parole, the period for which a prisoner had to wait was reduced to one third of sentences for some categories of offence; and in the following year 7,000 or 8,000 people were released. It was equally interesting to note that, of those released early, the amount of re-offending or breach of parole was minute. That little exercise proved that we do not need the long sentences that have been imposed. We also discovered that, notwithstanding that exercise, which let about 7,000 to 8,000 people out, the prison population increased.

The time has come when, if we are to solve the crisis in our prisons, we must ask two fundamental questions. First, why do we send people to prison? Secondly, under what conditions do we want people to remain in prison? The time has come for a commission to be set up to answer those questions. Perhaps on this last day of term, the Minister will join hands across the Chamber in the simple pursuit of solving those fundamental questions which have bedevilled society.

The reality of life is that our prisons are overfull and conditions are deplorable, with three to a cell, lack of exercise, poor diets, poor facilities, lack of education and lack of any rehabilitative programme. We should not blame the prison officers for that. They have to deal with the number of bodies sent to them. They have to live in contact with people who have been locked up in squalid and sordid conditions. When asked about the current overcrowding, the Prison Officers Association gives the civil answer that prison officers are now merely the Gagers of men rather than the protectors and guardians of society. In the old days, the object of the exercise was to rehabilitate the prisoner. Nowadays, we send in a raw recruit for his first sentence and we let out an experienced criminal at the other end. That serves none of us.

The position gets even worse. We do not have enough places for prisoners. We are extending the system into the police cells of our major cities. Why are London remand prisoners held in Bristol, Norwich, Windsor or a dozen other places? The simple answer is that there are no places in London. That must have an effect on the police. Police officers are necessary to look after and guard them 24 hours a day. Whether because of overtime or for other reasons, those officers are not performing the role of the police; they are performing the role of gaolers. They and their senior officers do not want that. One feels that there is a little hypocrisy on the part of a party that is dedicated to law and order, as every action taken by it has been to lessen the force of law and order that we need to keep our streets safe.

Police officers have had to work increasingly long hours. Prisoners are not being brought to the courts and justice is being delayed, which has meant that people are not being delivered from various places of detention to their second and subsequent trials after being convicted in their first. All in all, this means an increasing cost to our society, due to the delay in the judicial system, the misuse of police manpower and the increased costs of lawyers. I must declare an interest at this point as a practising barrister. I am well aware of the increased costs, because barristers now have to travel halfway around the country trying to find their clients in order to get instructions. That increases legal aid fund costs.

I ask the Minister to go with me down the path that leads towards an investigation into how we propose to use our prisons in the future. This is a serious matter and I shall no doubt return to it time and again in the months ahead. I ask the hon. Gentleman, in the short term, whether he will look back to the written questions that I submitted and to the alternatives I suggested—including temporary release. In the interests of humanity, if nothing else, might not conditions be improved for the 51,000 people now in custody? I think especially of those with psychiatric illnesses. In that way those who serve our society, prison officers and police alike, will return to their former roles, and our prisons will not be the disgrace of Europe that they now are. Our prison officers will have a worthwhile role again.

Does the Minister realise that conditions in our prisons today, particularly for those who are detained on remand, may well fly in the face of the European convention on human rights? In this country, we used to have a proud record on the way in which we treated our prisoners. Today, we do not enjoy that proud record. We have made our prisons the scandal and shame of Europe.

I propose not to take my full allotted time so as to leave time for my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford. West (Mr. Madden), who wishes to raise certain points.

3.48 pm
Mr. Max Madden (Bradford, West)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) on securing the Adjournment debate and thank him for allowing me to contribute briefly to it.

Society needs to ensure that proper arrangements are made to prevent crime, that the victims of crime are given proper support—sometimes long-tern support—and that those who are taken out of society and put in prison for society's protection are treated in a civilised way.

I want to report to the House the experience of my former constituent, Mr. Robert Swindells, who recently served five days in Armley prison for refusing to pay a £25 fine for obstructing the highway during a London peace demonstration. That experience was recently described in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus as follows: As a law breaker, he shared a cell of 96 so ft with animal rights protestor Ronnie Lee and a jewel thief from Liverpool named Lopez. There were 60 prisoners on the landing, sharing one toilet and one water-pipe. They had two 20-minute periods a day to use the toilet. Swindells was quoted as saying the following: 'If you didn't you had to ring a bell. The answer might be 'yes' or 'do it through the door', depending on the officer on duty. In Victorian days that toilet was for 20 fellows and t hat cell was for one. Conditions in Armley are three times as harsh as they were in Victorian times. Other prisoners told me it was the worst prison in England. It's not the fault of the people running it. I didn't find the screws too bad. I didn't encounter any sadists. We were locked up for 23 hours a day, which is very boring. The cells stink of urine. The slop bucket is emptied twice a day. It's pretty vile, especially in warm weather, very hot and stuffy. My predominating memory will be of that bucket. And you have to bear in mind you have to eat your meals in that atmosphere as well. After 8 pm. they don't answer the bell for people to go to the toilet. You have the choice of doing it in the slop bucket and stinking out the cell, or doing it in a piece of paper or rag and chucking it out of the window. Every morning a prison officer goes round with a gang of men collecting them up. Since that experience, Mr. Swindells has written to me saying that he made two friends among the long-term prisoners in Armley and that the thought of their plight breaks his heart.

It is appropriate that our last debate before the recess should be on overcrowding in our prisons. Society can be judged by the way in which it treats those whom it wishes to deprive of their liberty. In Armley they are treated disgracefully. I have sent the article to the Home Secretary. I hope that the Minister, in replying to this debate, will have some message of hope for the people enduring those disgraceful conditions, which are of great concern to many of my present and former constituents, as well as to solicitors and many others.

3.51 pm
The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr. John Patten)

I listened with care to the brief intervention of the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) and I shall bring his remarks to the notice of my noble Friend Lord Caithness, who has ministerial responsibility for prisons. I also listened with great care to the comments of the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham). We are all aware of the considerable interest that he takes in prisons and prison welfare. I hope that it will not damage him in the eyes of his general management committee if he is praised by a Tory Minister, but his interest is remarkable and we certainly listen to what he says.

I welcome the opportunity to set out again the record of a Government who continue to demonstrate their commitment to improving the quality and quantity of prison accommodation. We have been going hard at that very necessary task since 1979. We are, of course, concerned about conditions in prisons and the conditions in which prison officers work. We are equally concerned with the proper course of justice and for the victim. I was glad that the hon. Member for Bradford, West also mentioned his concern for the victims. We should always remember to balance our concern about what goes on in prisons with concern for the victim.

Mr. Bermingham

indicated assent.

Mr. Patten

I am glad to see that the hon. Member for St. Helens, South agrees.

The prison population has risen extremely rapidly, and to record levels. Last Friday, 17 July, there were more than 51,200 sentenced and unsentenced prisoners in our prisons — 4,000 more than there were a year ago — and 735 mostly unsentenced prisoners were held in police cells awaiting transfer to prison department establishments. Those 51,000 people are held in accommodation designed for fewer than 42,000, which clearly causes us great concern and induces a considerable strain on prison service staff, who perform daily miracles of management and control to keep the system working. There is also a strain on the police, who are needed to fight crime on the streets and to detect and clear up serious crime in particular as well as to turn their attention to the important issue of crime prevention.

Overcrowding is not a new phenomenon that has suddenly occurred since 1979. The average prison population in this country has grown steadily and sometimes dramatically since the second world war. As the hon. Members for St. Helens, South and for Bradford, West, like me, came to the House after 1979, I cannot blame them. [Interruption.] I am sorry—I forgot that the hon. Member for Bradford, West was a retread, but his second coming was after 1979. Perhaps I can partly blame him for the considerable cut in the prison building programme between 1974 and 1979—a cut of some 35 per cent. in real terms. Those hon. Gentlemen on the Labour Benches who were in the House before 1979 who protest about conditions inside our prisons and about overcrowding should remember their share of responsibility for the present-day circumstances in our prisons. It has taken a long time to make up that savage cut in prison building between 1974 and 1979.

Since 1979 the Government have introduced the biggest building and refurbishment programme this century. It is designed to produce 17,500 places at least by 1995–20 new prisons, with three already opened. There has been an increase of 3,600 prison places since June 1983 and there will be nearly another 2,000 by the end of this calender year. The programme will produce 3,000 new places in the 12 months from September and five new establishments will come on stream to give much needed relief to the prison officers and to those who are locked up, sometimes two or three to a cell. The building programme is matched by a refurbishment programme in other parts of the already built prison establishment that will help to improve both the quality and quantity of accommodation.

In his statement last week my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced his intention to accelerate and expand the prison building programme beyond the extra 17,500 places that will be achieved by 1995. This will mean more prisons and more places in prisons to relieve overcrowding and to make it possible for those who receive sentences to be received in prisons and for them to have better conditions which hopefully will enable more of them to be released and not reoffend.

Capital investment is an important issue. Spending on prison building has risen by over 100 per cent. in real terms, taking into account inflation, since 1979. We will set up a prisons building board to ensure that we set about the business of building new prisons efficiently and quickly to a high standard. That is something that we need very much. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will make a statement in due course about the composition of that board, but I can tell the House that it will be small and compact, that it will have a chief executive, who will drive forward the prison building programme, and that it will have representatives from those in the private sector who have been the customers of major building projects who are able to help and advise on how to make sure that we get prisons put up much more quickly than hitherto.

There is no reason why prison buildings should not change in the way that hospital buildings have changed inside the National Health Service under the basic nucleus concept of design that is being used. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, there has been a huge rebuilding programme in the NHS.

We will need to turn to the expertise of the building and construction industry, with its fast track and design and build techniques, which will enable us to get those prisons built much more quickly than hitherto. The prisons building board will have a fundamental part to play in the next two or three years in making sure that the increased number of prisons that my right hon. Friend will announce in due course will be built as speedily as possible.

The other side of the coin is what we are doing to try to keep people out of prison, and that is very important. We may have a chance to debate this on another occasion, but I think it is fair to say that we have the widest choice of non-custodial sentences available to the courts anywhere in Western Europe. Yesterday, I spent some time at the Inner London probation service visiting just such a facility, where it is clear that the criticism that one sometimes hears, which may sometimes be true, that non-custodial sentences are a soft option is simply not the case. They can be a punitive option.

We also encouraged, and issued guidance on, cautioning by the police. We are trying to help magistrates' courts to improve their performance by issuing guidance on efficiency, reducing delays and bail practices, all of which are most important. Since 1979 we have built 48 more court buildings. The number of circuit judges has gone up from 315 to 390, and we are looking, in three police areas, at statutory time limits to the period that the accused may be remanded in custody before coming to trial. When we get the results of those inquiries, we shall consider whether we should introduce the statutory schemes across England and Wales.

We have increased the resources for Crown courts. We have introduced various provisions to speed up the delivery of justice. All these measures have helped. They are no substitute for the pressing need of new accommodation, but that takes time. The Government have consistently shown themselves to be willing to get to grips with the problem of the growing prison population. We are not concerned with the short-term treatment of difficulties in response to problems in our prison system, but are taking a much longer view.

The hon. Member for St. Helens, South wants us to take a big hang long-term view. He wants us to have a Royal Commission. It is said that patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel. I think that suggestions for Royal Commissions are the last resort of politicians who have run out of intellectual steam. I do not believe that of the hon. Gentleman and I do not intend him any discourtesy. However, to think that one can whisk a Royal Commission out of the air and that that will make things better is mistaken.

The hon. Gentleman knows full well what needs to be done. He has his own views, and he is a man of some influence in the Labour party nationally. He could do an enormous amount to help if only he would speak to some Labour-controlled local authorities with police watch committees—for example, nine inner London boroughs and Manchester. Rather than harrying the police and making their already difficult task worse, such authorities should be doing all that they can to work with the police on crime prevention. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not seem to think that crime prevention is important.

In places such as Manchester and inner London, the police and the general public should work together to make sure that crime is prevented, so that people are not tempted to commit crime and then, if charged and found guilty, end up in prison. That would be a more constructive attitude, and we do not need Royal Commissions to tell us that it was a disaster when, between 1974 and 1979, the Labour Government cut the prison building programme. We do not need a Royal Commission to tell us that we are struggling with the after effects of that.

I suspect that this will not be the last time that I answer a debate on this subject, although it is unusual to find oneself doing so towards teatime on Friday. Anybody in my constituency listening to this afternoon's proceedings on the wireless will know that I am telling the truth when I am late for my constituency advice centre this afternoon and explain that I was kept later than expected in the House of Commons. It is unusual in our procedures for a statement to be made at 2.30 on a Friday afternoon.

In the dying moments of the term, before we leave for our summer holidays, I conclude by saying that I hope that Opposition Members and you, Mr. Speaker, will have a very enjoyable and happy summer holiday, and I wish our retiring Clerk of the House of Commons, Sir Kenneth Bradshaw, who has made his last appearance at the Table this afternoon, a very happy retirement.

Mr. Speaker

I thank the Minister, who has pre-empted me. Before I adjourn the House, may I also take the opportunity to wish the Minister, all hon. Members and all members of the staff a happy and restful recess. As this is the last occasion when the Clerk will be at the Table, I want to say how much we appreciate his long service to the House. We all wish him well on his retirement.

The motion having been made after half-past Two o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order, till Wednesday 21 October, pursuant to the resolution of the House of 13 July.

Adjourned at five minutes past Four o'clock.