APPLICATION OF PROVISIONS WITH RESPECT TO EARLY RELEASE (Hansard, 29 January 1997)

§ Mr. McFall
I beg to move amendment No. 132, in page 28, leave out lines 6 and 7 and insert '"prescribed minimum standard" means an absence of proved misconduct reports'.

§ Madam Speaker
With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No 145, in page 28, line 7, after '(rules);', insert '"prescribed minimum standard" means an absence of proved misconduct reports'.

§ Mr. McFall
The Scottish Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, among other bodies, was very concerned about the Government's approach, and believed that good behaviour should be the minimum standard required of all prisoners. The absence of misconduct reports considered and proved at a disciplinary hearing should be all that can be reasonably expected from most prisoners.
Given the patchy availability of programmes, education and work in the prison estate, it is suggested—I seek the Minister's comments on this—that it would be unfair to require prisoners to demonstrate positive good behaviour and that they are making constructive use of their time in prison to address their offending behaviour. As appropriate, that might mean participating in a programme on drug addiction or anger management, as well as working productively in the prison workshops."—[Official Report, First Scottish Standing Committee, 28 November 1996; c. 294.] Those are the Minister's comments in Committee.
Will the Prison Service have the capacity to make available to all the estimated 40,000 prisoners eligible for assessment of early release the opportunity to participate in programmes designed to address offending behaviour? Any extension of current programmes would require significant additional resources. The Government have not faced up to the issue.
One of the Opposition's serious concerns, which is shared by Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons, is the state of our Prison Service at the moment. We all recognise that if the Bill is enacted, within one year, the prison establishment will increase by 2,200 prisoners. I recommend the comments on Edinburgh prison in the chief inspector's report, which was released on 16 January. He said that if it was not overcrowded, it could be doing an awful lot better in guarding the public by reducing crime.
Let us consider just what is involved in the Government's approach to the extra prisoners. Under the Bill, every prisoner will expect the prisons to run 419 programmes to address offending behaviour. This year, the Government will require all prisons to commence a programme of mandatory drug testing for prisoners. All that will have to be done without additional resources.
At present, the Prison Service is required randomly to test a minimum of 10 per cent. of the prison population. With follow-up tests and tests for other reasons, that figure could be almost 15,000—or more than 1,000 drug tests per month. That will have to be done within a budget that is constrained at the moment. If prisoners are to be offered an educational programme, it is important that the Government address that issue. How can the Government offer programmes to 6,000 of the anticipated 8,400 prisoners who might be serving appropriately long sentences? If we do not have the resources for that, the Government will be letting the Prison Service in for a deluge of prisoner appeals, lawyers' letters and judicial reviews when prisoners are denied the opportunity to earn the early release provided for in the Bill.
Let us examine how such a system would operate. Each of the 6,000 prisoners from the predicted larger population would be entitled to a review every two months, or six times a year. That is a total of 36,000 reviews a year. In Committee, the Minister told us how early release would be calculated. He said: assessments will not be made on the whim of one individual officer. We envisage that the governor or another senior manager will convene an assessment board to consider carefully reports from relevant staff on each prisoner, according to a range of criteria which would be set out in prison rules."—[Official Report, First Scottish Standing Committee, 28 November 1996; c. 275–76.] 7 pm
Each prisoner will receive a report every two months from his hall or gallery officer, his work or party officer and a programmes officer. Those reports will have to be requested, collated and processed. In addition, the assessment board will have to consider behaviour and misconduct reports. The board will have to be staffed, taking up valuable senior management time, to assess 36,000 reviews with perhaps more than 100,000 bits of paper. Each decision will have to be communicated to the prisoner and his new release date entered on to computer records and warrants. A prisoner may have his release date changed every two months.
In addition, staff will be required to make retrospective reports on untried prisoners, who are presumably considered innocent until found guilty by a court, when sentences are backdated to cover the period on remand. Decisions will have to be taken on them. Presumably they will not be expected to address their offending behaviour while maintaining a not guilty plea at court.
The Government are setting up a bureaucratic nightmare. They do not realise the practical effects on prisons. Do we want to end up with prisoners who are denied an early release programme to address their offending behaviour having judicial reviews and making the system even more chaotic than it currently is? The Minister should take note of the reports of Her Majesty's chief inspector on the state of prisons. He should be ashamed about what is happening in our prisons and should remember the need to keep public order in prisons. The people who offend and are a danger to society should 420 be in prison, but we do not want to return to the mid-1980s and the Peterhead prison riots. The amendment was designed to help avoid that.

§ Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland)
I shall speak to amendment No. 145, which is phrased in almost identical terms to that moved by the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall). I do not wish to detain the House long, because the hon. Member for Dumbarton made the pertinent points about the Government's proposed scheme for early release.
The Government will require prisoners to show positive behaviour rather than an absence of bad behaviour. The hon. Gentleman has underlined the scale of that undertaking and the number of reviews that will be needed. The system will also lead to pressure in prison. The fact that officers will be responsible for filing reports could put them in the way of intimidation and pressure from prisoners or could open the way to favouritism. I do not believe that to be satisfactory. It may not happen, but the concern has been raised before and has never been properly allayed by Ministers.
The other important point relates to the recent report by the chief inspector of prisons in Scotland, referred to by the hon. Member for Dumbarton. If prisoners are to be obliged to show positive behaviour to achieve early release, the resources ought to be available for them to follow various courses that might lead to early release. Under the present regime, many courses that would lead to rehabilitation are not possible because of a lack of resources. That problem will become more acute under the Government's proposed new early release regime.
I do not believe that the Government have thought through the practical implications of their proposals. That is why the system proposed by the two amendments, under which the prescribed minimum standard would be the absence of proved misconduct reports, is more practical and would, in the long term, lead to less tension in Scotland's prisons.

§ Mr. Gallie
I should like to make a quick contribution, picking up on some of the points made by the hon. Members for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace). I accept some of their points, but do they honestly believe it right that someone who is sentenced to four years should be released automatically halfway through that sentence? The Bill addresses that and I believe that people in Scotland will warmly welcome it.

§ Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
The prescribed minimum standard defined in amendments Nos. 132 and 145 is: an absence of proved misconduct reports. We discussed a similar proposal in Committee on 28 November, when I explained that we thought the proposal unhelpful.
The earning of early release should require more than simply not breaching prison discipline. Prisoners should have to demonstrate positive good behaviour and that they are making constructive use of their time in prison to address their offending behaviour. For the first 12 months of a sentence, the prescribed minimum standard of behaviour will be set out in the prison rules.
421 Examples of behaviour that might attain the minimum standard are: conforming with the prison rules; avoiding violent or threatening behaviour, intimidation and aggressive language; co-operation with staff; respecting others' property; and abstaining from drugs and alcohol. That is no less than should be expected of prisoners. I invite the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) to withdraw the amendment.