Feltham Young Offenders Institution

HC Deb 26 May 1999 vol 332 cc313-20 12.30 pm

Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham)

I have been fortunate in winning ballots for Adjournment debates, but this is the first occasion on which I have had the opportunity to introduce a debate on what is, frankly, a substantial public scandal. Feltham young offenders institution is in crisis and has occasioned one of the most critical reports on a public institution to have been written in recent years.

My interest in the matter goes back about 18 months. I received a letter from a constituent who was on the educational side of the establishment, which is not in my constituency but in that of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Keen) who, I note, is present today. The letter drew my attention to the deficiencies in education provision, and I asked parliamentary questions to which I received full and helpful answers from the Home Office.

The impression of an institution in crisis was reinforced by two subsequent visits and by discussions with visitors and members of staff, and it was confirmed by the chief inspector's report. The report's introductory paragraph is more eloquent than I could ever be. It says: This report on an unannounced inspection … is, without doubt, the most disturbing that I have ever had to make in my three years as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. I have to disclose to the public not only that conditions and treatment, of the 922 children and young prisoners … are, in many instances, totally unacceptable. They are, in many instances, worse than when I reported on them two years ago and reveal a history of neglect of those committed to their charge and a failure to meet the demands of society to tackle the problem of offending behaviour. The report goes on to say: A picture emerges of an institution and staff overwhelmed. Whatever the cause, it must be tackled root and branch now. I asked for this debate in the context of the report and the strength of that conclusion. The report says everything that needs to be said on the subject.

The start of the problem is chronic overcrowding, which originated in the early 1990s with a massive build-up of Feltham to serve the whole of London. The number of inmates increased by about 150 per cent. between 1992 and 1996. The premises and number of staff are not adequate to cope with so many prisoners.

When I visited the centre about three weeks ago, I was told that the official staff ratio is 5:1, but that, because of recruitment difficulties and unfilled vacancies, it is frequently far worse. Staff are often sick and there are simply not enough staff on the premises to provide supervision for recreation and association, so, for much of the time, many prisoners are on what is described as a basic regime: they are locked in their cells for 22 hours a day. That applies to unconvicted remand prisoners as well as convicted prisoners; to juveniles of 15 as well as young men convicted of serious offences.

The Minister has been to the prison and will know that often two young men spend 22 hours a day in a small cell, eating, using the toilet and sleeping within a few feet of one another. Doubling up has become routine practice. There is a protocol to manage the situation, but the inspector describes one case of a 16-year-old on remand for a relatively minor offence, sharing a cell with a hardened young criminal with a violent record. Such mixing of criminals and remand prisoners appears to be common and can only perpetuate many of the difficulties that young people have in the institution.

Another problem is the simple physical squalor. The Minister will recognise that there is a contrast: when one goes into premises with attractive gardens and relatively modern buildings one is not prepared for the sheer filth that is recorded in graphic detail in the report. Young men who frequently have no change of underclothes for a week use blankets and mattresses that are filthy, while clean blankets and mattresses stay in the cupboards.

For some reason, no one in the institution seems to know how to repair showers. Two or three weeks ago, I visited the wing on which the chief inspector had reported, and the showers were still not working, so people were still not washing. There is an overriding feeling of physical squalor. With 900-plus adolescents and young men in an institution, there are bound to be hygiene problems, but those are compounded by the way in which the system is managed and by the sheer lack of resources and staff.

More serious than the overcrowding and the dirt is the neglect of the special needs of many of the people coming into the centre. Many are no doubt difficult criminals who need to be locked away to protect society, but many are seriously vulnerable. The report shows that about 25 per cent. of all those entering the prison are users of the highly addictive crack cocaine. Many are in serious difficulties with drugs, but there is no organised detoxification or rehabilitation programme.

Many of the inmates have serious mental health problems. A separate Home Office study showed that roughly a third of prisoners in young offenders institutions need some form of psychiatric attention, but the number of psychiatrists in the prison was cut in the early 1990s and has not been restored.

One of the most damaging sections of the report relates to conditions in the medical unit. There are supposed to be 13 members of staff, but there are nine vacancies and four members of staff are on long-term sickness, so there are simply not enough nurses to look after the patients. I believe that a typical ratio is 30 patients to two members of staff. There is no supervision, so the wards are locked, and the problem is getting worse.

Education—probably the most important requirement of many of the young people—is seriously deficient. I do not want to be wholly negative, and the improvement in the number of hours of education provided is a positive angle that I would like to put on the record, but the report makes it clear that the education is often totally inappropriate. There is virtually no provision for the more academically gifted inmates or for those with moderate learning difficulties.

A comparison between Feltham and a comparable centre such as Aylesbury, which has more money but about half the number of inmates, shows the poverty of Feltham's education provision. That cannot be wholly illustrated by statistics. When I visited Feltham, something happened that many of the inmates recognised as typical. A rehabilitation programme to help people not to reoffend had been long prepared for and there was a great deal of expectation about it, with staff working enthusiastically; but a message came through from the Home Office that there were new priorities and the programme was cancelled at the last minute. One cannot measure the demotivating effect of such decisions.

Many of the inmates indulge in what is rather archly called self-harm. A few years ago, the institution had a reputation for suicides. Fortunately, there have been no suicides for a couple of years, but there is almost one case a day of self-harm of varying degrees of seriousness.

The inspector's report gives the figures on violence. I think that there were 78 assaults on prison officers and about 200 on fellow prisoners in the last year for which figures are available. That is a very high incidence of violence. That is one reason why the prisoners are locked away. There are not enough staff to supervise them and prevent violence. One of the most damning statistics that I discovered in my background work was that almost 90 per cent. of young offenders in the institution reoffend. There is virtually no success in preventing repeat offending. The phrase "the university of crime" is often misused, but it seems an appropriate description to use in this case.

The report asks who is to blame: who is responsible and accountable? It makes some damning comments about management with a big "M"—I am not sure who the operational manager is. The report states: A senior manager shared his view of the establishment with us. He considered that there were examples of good staff and volunteers doing good things with young people in many departments but that the core of the institution was rotten. Who is responsible for that? The report is understandably reluctant to blame the staff, who it says are overwhelmed and are doing an impossible job. I met many officers who are genuinely idealistic and hard working. However, they cannot cope. Management at the centre is a problem. For example, a Minister should not have to intervene to solve hygiene problems: that is a matter for management on the ground.

If, as the report says, the problem is not with management and staff, is it with the Home Office? Who in the Home Office is managing this institution? Who makes the decisions about funding and priorities? Who ensured that the 1996 recommendations were not implemented? There is a serious problem of accountability, which has implications for Ministers. The present Minister inherited this problem so it is not reasonable to saddle him with the responsibility, but the fact is that conditions at the establishment have deteriorated over the past two years. Somebody made decisions at a ministerial level to freeze the budget of the young offenders institution since 1993–94 in nominal terms—its budget is falling in real terms at a time of crisis. Who is making those decisions?

There is a failure not just on the part of the centre and at Home Office and ministerial level, but in the system as a whole. I was shocked to discover in the report that only 29 of 200 inmates interviewed had been told about bail provisions while in the magistrates court. Many remand prisoners should not be incarcerated: they should be out on bail. However, they do not know about bail provisions. Many of them are young blacks—about half of the prisoners in the institution are from ethnic minorities—who are going straight from the streets to prison and into a life of crime. That is often a result of the workings of the magistrates court system and the total failure of the bail system. The report pointed to a key failure in local authority homes and produced an enormous amount of evidence to that effect. It found that some 40 per cent. of inmates passed through local authority homes, which failed them utterly. There is evidence of a lack of care, and of abuse. It is a catalogue of disasters in Government decision making at all levels.

I do not know whether other hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate, so I shall conclude. What should be done now? First, there is a clear need for new premises to separate the juveniles from the adults and the remand prisoners from the convicted prisoners. I know that the Government have plans for a new centre, which I hope the Minister will describe today.

A second, more serious, problem is staffing and resources for staffing. There are not enough people on the ground—whether they are warders, medical staff or teachers. Where is the wherewithal to rectify that problem? It is easy to ask for more money, but there is a problem of priorities within the Home Office. Why does a centre such as Medway receive roughly 10 times as much funding per capita as the young offenders institution in London? Somebody has their priorities totally wrong. How will that staffing and resources problem be rectified?

Thirdly, there is an issue of joined-up government here: the relationship between the Home Office and both the health service and the education system. For example, we must ensure that money directed to local authorities for education is passported to the prison so that young prisoners get some basic education.

Fourthly, what plans do the Government have to try to keep people out of prison in the first place? We know that pilot programmes are being conducted in Scotland and in the Thames valley to ensure that many young offenders—whether remand cases or not—do not enter the prison system. What is being done to achieve that objective?

Finally—and perhaps most important—the most shocking thing about the report is that its findings were made two years ago. The situation has got worse and nobody appears to be responsible. Will the Minister confirm who is responsible? Is the Home Secretary or a named individual in the Prison Service willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring that the recommendations made in this report—described in most trenchant terms for a document of this kind—are implemented?

12.45 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Mr. George Howarth)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing this Adjournment debate and raising this important matter. The chief inspector of prisons, the board of visitors and others have raised serious concerns about the operation of Feltham young offenders institution, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising some of those concerns and for giving me the opportunity to respond to them.

I shall answer briefly the points that the hon. Gentleman raised in the concluding part of his speech. The first responsibility for Feltham or any other institution for that matter, lies with the Prison Service and the new Director General of the Prison Service, Martin Narey. Responsibility is then devolved through the area management structure to the governors. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made it clear almost as soon as he came to office after the election that Ministers are no longer prepared to make an artificial division between policy and operations, and pretend that it is someone else's fault. Unlike the previous Government, we accept that, in the final analysis, we are responsible for what goes on in the Prison Service. We take that responsibility very seriously.

The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to mention that I have visited the establishment. It is also significant that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State visited that institution on 13 February 1998, as did the then Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), on 6 April 1998. There has been a high level of ministerial interest in the establishment.

The chief inspector's report of his short, unannounced inspection of Feltham young offenders institution last December is highly critical—I have no wish to pretend otherwise. It is particularly critical of the fact that few of the recommendations in the chief inspector's report of the full inspection of Feltham, which took place in 1996, have been dealt with. My noble and learned Friend the Minister of State, the Home Secretary and I found aspects of that report shocking, and I well understand the anger and concern expressed by the hon. Member for Twickenham about what has been done and what needs to be done. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not cover in the time available all of the issues that he has raised. I give an undertaking to write to him about any of the areas that I am unable to touch upon.

The Prison Service and the Government are determined to turn the establishment around and to make further substantial progress on the serious concerns that have been raised. The newly appointed governor, Niall Clifford, who took up his post in April, and the new area manager responsible for Feltham have been charged with that task. However, in recognising the problems, we should not overlook the successes at Feltham as reported by the chief inspector. They include the Nightingale pre-release course and the Quail murder charge project, both of which received recognition recently in the form of Butler trust awards.

The chief inspector said that "virtually nothing" had been done to action the recommendations in the 1996 report. I do not believe that that statement is wholly true; nor do I accept that there has been a marked decline in conditions as suggested. However, it is true that progress has been too slow in improving conditions in some areas. Fundamental problems undoubtedly existed at Feltham, and the Prison Service published an action plan addressing all the chief inspector's recommendations—almost all of which were accepted in principle.

Some recommendations, however, would be very resource intensive, and implementing all 181 recommendations immediately would have been prohibitively expensive and, perhaps, physically impossible. Where action on recommendations was not taken, the reasons are almost without exception related to population pressures, to which the hon. Gentleman referred; funding and recruitment difficulties, or industrial relations issues. That said, some areas in Feltham have improved since the chief inspector's 1996 visit, and the additional resources that have been made available through the comprehensive spending review should, if they are used properly, ensure that further progress can now be made.

In response to the most recent inspection report, the Director General of the Prison Service established a task force, led by a senior governor when the report was made available to the Prison Service. The task force has charted a plan for improvement that we intend will be implemented over the next six months. To that end, an additional £320,000 was immediately made available for 1998–99 and a further £500,000 is available for 1999–2000.

Further additional funding has been made available through the comprehensive spending review, and that includes £700,000 for extra education, the drugs strategy and a bail information scheme, all of which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. The drugs strategy and bail information scheme are particularly important. The Government have made available £2 million for a new regime for prisoners under the age of 18. The task force has also commissioned a scoping study to consider long-term problems and their underlying causes.

I shall turn now to the specific and important concerns raised by the chief inspector and echoed by the hon. Gentleman today. Concern was expressed by the chief inspector about the lack of practical support from senior Prison Service management. The director general has recently agreed in principle with the area manager an outline strategic development plan for Feltham which will not only directly address many of the chief inspector's concerns, but chart the establishment's direction for the next three years and provide for the separation of the site into dedicated under-18 and young offender establishments.

More specifically, the plan rightly addresses the treatment of remand prisoners and changes the way in which the Kestrel unit is operated to ensure, as far as possible, that remand prisoners return from court to the same unit and staff, thereby satisfying one of the major criticisms made by the chief inspector. The change in the operation of the Kestrel unit is planned to start on 7 June.

The strategic plan as a whole illustrates clearly the commitment that Prison Service managers are making to the future development of Feltham. The new area manager regularly visits the establishment to monitor progress on the action plan and, importantly, to lend support to the improvements that the new governor is already making.

The hon. Gentleman referred to hygiene. Conditions at Feltham are described by the chief inspector as disgracefully impoverished and filthy. The hon. Gentleman made a similar point in his speech. The general cleanliness of the establishment is being improved. Immediate improvements to cleaning schedules and mattress and blanket provision are in hand. Since December, 600 mattresses have been replaced and more are being made available. New cleaning schedules and arrangements for inspections have also been introduced to ensure that cleaning takes place, and senior managers have a direct role in those inspections. In addition, new laundry facilities are being made available at another prison. Funding was made available almost immediately to undertake a backlog of small repairs. It appears that the shower has been overlooked, but I hope that progress will now be made on that.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the level of regime at Feltham and time spent out of cell, which were covered in the chief inspector's report. As the hon. Gentleman conceded, Feltham, along with the rest of the prison estate, has experienced pressure from the increase in the prison population, particularly the extra remand prisoners. That has inevitably put a strain on the provision of productive regimes for the young offenders in its care.

That said, the staffing and operation of some units requires improvements in certain areas, and the governor and Prison Service senior managers are working hard to achieve those. As a result, plans are well advanced to reduce the number of remand prisoners at Feltham by using accommodation soon to be available in other establishments closer to prisoners' home areas. That should also significantly reduce the number of prisoners sharing cells.

Efforts to improve time out of cell have also been affected by staffing problems, including an above-average level of sickness and difficulties in recruiting good-quality staff. Remedial action has been taken to improve recruitment at Feltham, and, as a result, 10 new officers started training in April.

Mr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam)

Some of us have been concerned because there seems to have been a slowdown in the provision of local authority secure accommodation for remand prisoners. The Minister just said that he expects more places to be available. Does that mean that more local authority secure accommodation will be coming on-stream?

Mr. Howarth

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I do not want to go into the facts and figures on that issue. I will perhaps respond to his question by letter. That lack of accommodation is clearly a problem, as he as pointed out, and we are trying to tackle it.

I have already mentioned that £2 million has been made available to provide a new regime for prisoners under the age of 18. I shall return to that matter on another occasion, when I will perhaps be able to deal with it in more detail.

Feltham is the only young offender remand centre serving London. The number of prisoners at Feltham has already been reduced by 57 to ease pressure on the establishment and facilitate the opening of a new health care centre. The number of prisoners will be further reduced by at least 90 to allow for the refurbishment of other units and to end overcrowding. There will be an overall reduction in the proportion of remand prisoners as a result of a reduction in court catchment areas.

The Prison Service has for some years been looking for a site to ease the pressure on Feltham and has recently purchased a site next to Belmarsh prison. A planning application to build a young offender establishment serving east London and Essex is being taken forward. Unfortunately, however, it is unlikely that the new establishment will open before late 2002, at the earliest.

The hon. Member for Twickenham expressed concerns about health care. Those have been addressed in the existing Prison Service plan to move the in-patient facility to the newly refurbished health care centre which was implemented at the end of March. A shortage of health care staff and lack of staff continuity is being addressed in a number of ways including recruitment campaigns and secondment of nurses from a local NHS trust. It is not true to say that nothing has been done to improve health care at Feltham. Progress is being made, and we hope that there will be more progress in future.

On 29 March, we announced that, for the first time nationally—this is the joined-up government to which the hon. Gentleman referred—the Prison Service and the NHS will take a joint and systematic look at prisoners' health needs, the quality of the services available and the delivery mechanisms that are needed to meet those needs.

In conclusion, the director general, my noble and learned Friend the Minister of State, the Home Secretary and I all accept that much needs to be done at Feltham. I hope that the measures that I have outlined today—particularly the setting up of the task force, the commitment of additional funding and the improved health care arrangements—will go some way towards reassuring the hon. Gentleman that we are committed to ensuring that the required improvements will be made. We take our responsibility seriously. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter.