HC Deb 04 July 1996 vol 280 cc1039-41
5. Mr. Nicholas Baker

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about the incidence of escapes from Her Majesty's prisons and from prison escorts since April 1993. [34521]

The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Ann Widdecombe)

The percentage reduction from the financial year 1992–93 until the financial year 1995–96 is 79 per cent.

The number of escapes from establishments has fallen from 232 to 52, and the number of escapes from escort has fallen from 115 to 36 over the same period.

I congratulate the Prison Service on this considerable achievement.

Mr. Baker

Will my hon. Friend accept the congratulations of the House for the entire Prison Service? Is it not justification for the policy of contracting out services therein; and is that not yet another way in which prison works, because according to a secret document that has come into my hands, a copy of which should be placed in the Library, new Labour believes that the Tory policy of prison works is an absurdity?

Miss Widdecombe

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is also right to draw attention to the operation of private escorts. It is a fact that much of the reduction in the rate of escapes from escort is due to the privatisation of escort services. In the first year of operation, in the initial area contracted-out, there was a reduction of 45 per cent.; in the second year, 71 per cent.; and in the third year a further improvement resulted in a final reduction of 82 per cent. My hon. Friend is also quite right to point to the absurdity of the Labour party's position: that prison does not work. If it does not work, at the same time as we have a rise in the prison population, why do we have a fall in the rate of crime? Why is the rate of reconviction better for prisons than it is for community services? Is not it a fact that every single time we have become tough on law and order, that has been opposed by the Labour party? Will it now admit at last that it was wrong?

Mr. Alex Carlile

Will the Minister tell the House why the Government have been so lacking in openness about the cost and feasibility of implementing the Learmont proposals on prison security? Will she also tell the House how, if the Government are not prepared for that implementation, we can believe anything that they say about paying the price of building new prisons for their sentencing proposals?

Miss Widdecombe

I made it extremely clear to the hon. and learned Gentleman when he asked me about our response to the Learmont report, in a written answer, which he has now had plenty of time to read and study, that we will, in due course, produce our response to the Learmont report. At such time as we produce that response, I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman will have no reason to complain of any lack of openness. All there is at the moment is a lack of patience. I suggest that he learns a bit more patience.

Mr. John Greenway

Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr. Baker) about the lack of prison places, would it not be sensible to rethink the £2 billion price tag to implement Learmont—if that is the figure, as has been trailed today—and look at spending capital resources on creating more prison places, and in the process of doing so ensure that we build into those prisons at the design stage all the features that will prevent escapes? As my hon. Friend rightly said, the crisis is likely to be prison places, not escapes, because the Prison Service has, as she has said, reduced the number of escapes from prisons by a very substantial amount.

Miss Widdecombe

Not only have we reduced the number of escapes, but precisely because we have concentrated on supplying prison places we have rectified much of the abysmal situation that we inherited from the Labour party. The Labour party saw a rise in the prison population of 15 per cent., to which its response was to cut its capital programme by 20 per cent. By contrast, we have built 22 new prisons. We have eliminated the practice of trebling. We have eliminated the use of police cells. We have reduced the percentage of prisoners sharing two to a cell designed for one. We have done all that because of our determination to get the number of prison places right. The Opposition should admire us and congratulate us, but I have a feeling that they will not.

Mr. Straw

I congratulate the Minister on her preparations for Opposition, but she will have to do rather better than she has in this Question Time.

On the crisis in the Prison Service, to which the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) referred, can the Minister confirm that, while prison numbers are rising by more than 300 a month, the Secretary of State is cutting the Prison Service budget by more than £6 million a month, every month, for the next three years? Instead of wriggling and prevaricating, will she admit that, in the Home Office annual report, the Secretary of State promised that a report on Learmont's cost implications would be tabled in spring this year? Where is that report? How much will the Learmont recommendations—that will cost new money—come to in total? How many of them will the Secretary of State accept?

Miss Widdecombe

I can only conclude that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to my previous response to the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] Since the Opposition are calling for the answer, they shall have it again. We shall produce our response to the Learmont report in due course. When we produce that response, we shall give no grounds for any complaints about openness. That is what I said and I am sorry that the Opposition could not understand it the first time. Now that I have painstakingly repeated it, I presume that they can understand it the second time.

There is a very simple answer to hon. Gentleman's question about the rise in the prison population: the reductions are in budget restraints. If he conducts a study, he will find that the prison population has been rising constantly since 1993. He will also find that, during that period, we have reduced the cost per prisoner place, and have managed to combine that rise and that reduction with more purposeful activity, more refurbishment, more high secure places, and all the things that the Opposition do not want to hear. We have managed to do that through efficiency savings, and that is what we shall continue to do—

Madam Speaker

Order. We must move on.