HC Deb 20 January 2004 vol 416 cc1289-304

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Jim Fitzpatrick.]

5.27 pm
Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon)(LD)

I have a growth industry in my constituency in that I have three prisons of different character. A private young offenders' institution at Ashfield in Pucklechurch has experienced serious problems of disorder and management since it opened in 1997. I am pleased that it appears to be on a more even keel after a recent change of management, but it has had its fair share of negative publicity.

Her Majesty's prison Eastwood Park is a women's prison that has also had its fair share of unfortunate news. Any prison suicide is one too many, but far too many have occurred at Eastwood Park and there have been questions about the quality of care, especially for prisoners with mental health problems. That prison has therefore hit the headlines for some of the wrong reasons.

Until recently, however, the third prison in my constituency, Her Majesty's prison Leyhill, an open prison, hit the pages of the local newspapers only when the inmates won prizes at the Chelsea flower show. They do that with pleasing regularity. However, it is regrettable that Leyhill has been in the news more recently for some of the wrong reasons: two prisoners have absconded or failed to return. I want to use the debate to consider those specific cases and, more generally, to press the Minister on the wider issue of who gets sent to open prisons and what happens when they are there.

I stress that the purpose of the debate is not to bash Leyhill or to attack what is, in my view, a good open prison. It is not meant to attack staff and management who are doing a good job. I strongly suspect that Leyhill is one of Britain's best open prisons, so my purpose is not to undermine its work.

I want to avoid my only regular contact with the prison being when a journalist telephones me to ask, "Have you heard who's got out of Leyhill this week?" From the point of view of the press, the more sensational the escape the better. I try not to contribute to sensational headlines but to point out that the nature of an open prison means that there is always a risk that a prisoner will abscond, and that that must be weighed against the benefits of the open prison system. I am equally aware of the risk of complacency in saying that occasional escapes are the price that must be paid, which would be irresponsible. Instead, I want to put to the Minister, for whom I have great respect, my concerns and those of other hon. Members about changes to the open prison sector, changes at Leyhill, changes relating to the kind of prisoners who are sent to Leyhill and other aspects of the process.

Two recent cases of prisoners failing to return to Leyhill highlight what can occur if risk assessment is unsuccessful. Michael Purcell absconded from Leyhill while serving a life sentence for rape, attempted rape and indecent assault. Convictions for sex offences are not uncommon among lifers at Leyhill, but in this case, Michael Purcell reoffended. He indecently assaulted one woman and was convicted of falsely imprisoning another. Last autumn, he was convicted again in Oxfordshire, when the judge said that Purcell was a danger to women and clearly posed a risk to the community.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We can all say now that clearly Purcell should never have been sent to Leyhill, but where risk assessment has gone wrong, we must be certain that the authorities take it seriously. A significant number of those who abscond from prisons such as Leyhill are recovered, but a minority are not. Of those, some go on to commit serious offences. Cases where absconding is not a temporary aberration that can be corrected but represents a determined attempt to escape must be fully investigated and lessons learned. Is the Minister confident that a full investigation was undertaken in the Purcell case, that lessons were learned, that it is known how that individual got through the system and that there is less chance of something similar happening again?

More recently, there was the high-profile absconding from Leyhill of Roddy McLean, described by the press as a drugs baron. It is difficult to capture the essence of his offences, but suffice it to say that in March 1997 McLean was sentenced for drug offences to 28 years' imprisonment, which was reduced on appeal to 21 years. I am talking about not a minor drugs dealer but someone with international connections. He was imprisoned as a category A offender, having been identified as a potential escapee. There were strong feelings held in Scotland at the time, because a customs officer was killed while apprehending McLean. Although he was not convicted of murder or manslaughter, one reason for the long sentence was the serious nature of his offences.

McLean was described at the time as one of Scotland's most dangerous prisoners. Yet within seven years, he found himself in the lowest of all risk categories—not category A but category D. He is now on the run, having failed to return to Leyhill from a community visit.

Some weeks ago, the Home Secretary made a statement to the House on plans to reform the Prison Service and the probation service. In a question on his statement, I asked him about that specific case. Clearly, the success of open prisons depends on the consent of the community: the community needs to be confident that people who are placed in open prisons have been properly vetted. I have looked at the documentation on the vetting process, and it is important to stress that the idea of risk to the public includes not only the risk that a person would be dangerous or violent if they escaped, but the risk that they might abscond. That is part of the risk assessment. Someone with a high risk of absconding is high risk, and should not be held in category D conditions.

I challenged the Home Secretary on Roddy McLean, and he responded that it is patently obvious from the fact that he has absconded that a mistake was made. An investigation of that individual case must inform the way in which we approach the broader issue…of revising our approach to open prison." —[Official Report, 6 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 181.] For reasons that I shall give in a second, I am not convinced that many general policy implications flow from what I sense is a very specific, even unique, case.

However, the case was clearly serious. I hope that the Minister can confirm that the investigation is under way and approaching a conclusion—it is some months now since Roddy McLean absconded—and that he will place its conclusions in the Library of the House or otherwise make them public.

I should perhaps bring to the Minister's attention a further aspect of that case, which was reported only this morning in the Daily Record. When Roddy McLean absconded, the police apparently did not understand the seriousness of the offences for which he had been convicted. The local police force understood that he had committed Customs and Excise offences, but did not seem to appreciate their gravity. Although the local chief inspector said: We made inquiries immediately to trace this man", he went on to say that those inquiries were made on the basis that he was a category D prisoner serving a sentence for customs and excise evasion. We did not know of the link with international drugs dealing. As soon as we became aware of this, through the media, we stepped up the level of inquiries. It concerns me greatly that a person can abscond from prison in my constituency, or anywhere for that matter, and that the local police do not know or do not grasp, for whatever reason, that they are a convicted drugs offender with a 21-year sentence, and in an international drugs ring. I hope that the investigation will establish exactly what went wrong in that regard, as well as in respect of the wider issue that I am seeking to raise.

Having said that, I think that there is always a danger of hearing that someone has got out and simply jumping to conclusions. I have made inquiries of my own, and it seems that there were some particular features to Roddy McLean's case, including the move from the Scottish to the English system and the fact that some of the offences with which he was charged are unique to Scotland and do not have an obvious English counterpart. The fact that he found himself at Leyhill just seven years into a 21-year sentence is, I understand, quite atypical. His seems to be an unusual case, but I cannot help but reflect on how the law enforcement authorities must feel when they finally apprehend a drugs baron, who has been involved in serious drugs offences, only to find some years later that he has walked out of prison and not returned. One cannot help but wonder how the family of the customs officer who died in the attempt to apprehend that man must have felt when they learned that the man who was partly responsible for that death is now free, albeit on the run.

I stress that although the case is serious and warrants careful investigation, it does not illustrate a general issue of the sort that I want to raise this evening. There are more general lessons that need to be learned and more general questions that must be asked. I shall therefore turn to wider trends at Leyhill and similar open prisons, before asking some questions on where we should go with open prison policy.

The size of the inmate population at Leyhill has increased by about one third in recent years, which is a dramatic increase. From the taxpayer's point of view, I suspect that that is potentially better value for money because the prison's capacity is being fully utilised. There are now about 500 inmates, whereas some years ago there were barely 300.

The nature and composition of those inmates has clearly changed. Barely a quarter of those now at Leyhill are serving life sentences. The traditional role of the open prison was as the final phase of such imprisonment—the deinstitutionalisation of someone who had been in prison for a very long time. Instead, the majority of those at Leyhill are serving sentences whose total duration was less than three years to begin with, and they can expect to be released within a year. Clearly, that is a very different challenge. Someone convicted of a serious robbery, burglary or driving offence, who has served two or three years and who goes to an open prison with a year to run, is completely different from someone with a life sentence, who has been in prison for 10 years or more and is a completely different category of offender or even a completely different type of person. Clearly, the statistical evidence is that younger people who have been in the prison system for shorter periods are more likely to have drugs problems—again, that is more true of shorter-term offenders—and are far more likely to abscond.

Leyhill prison therefore has far more prisoners, and far more short-term prisoners and prisoners of a different category or different type. Even if the proportion of absconders had not changed, merely having a third more prisoners would mean more abscondence, and the change in the mix of prisoners would lead to more people absconding. I therefore caution against inferring from the bare statistics that more people are walking out of Leyhill that there has been any relaxation in the regime. I am not convinced that that has happened. Nor do I believe that those responsible for Leyhill are failing in their duty. However, when more than one person a week, to use the phrase, walks out of Leyhill and does not come back, we must ask ourselves whether the assessment of risk, in terms of the risk of absconding, is being done properly.

Far from criticising my constituents who work at Leyhill, in many ways I am speaking up for them—they have not asked me to do so, but I am doing it in any case. For them to do their job properly, they need to know that the people being sent to them are appropriate for open conditions. Once we get to the stage at which more than one person a week is walking out, we must ask ourselves whether that job is being done properly.

Having focused on my local open prison, I want to turn to the wider issues about policy on open prisons and pose some questions to the Minister. When the Home Secretary responded to questions on his statement a few weeks ago on 6 January, he said: We are not entirely satisfied that we have got the system right".—[Official Report, 6 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 180.] That was apropos of open prisons. He said that a review had been commissioned and was under way. Can the Minister tell us more about that review, what its terms of reference are, who is undertaking it, when it will be finished and what chance we will have to scrutinise its results?

As the Minister will be aware, the chief inspector of prisons has today published her annual report. The section on open prisons makes uncomfortable reading. The chief inspector has based her report on her wide experience. Clearly, however, it has been coloured particularly by the one open prison that she investigated for the first time last year, and the three that she re-investigated. Many of the quotes and examples that she uses are based on those four institutions, of which Leyhill was not one. I therefore stress that some of my remarks may not—and probably do not—apply to the open prison in my constituency, but, clearly, this debate draws more widely on the position of open prisons.

The chief inspector begins by echoing the fact, and my observation, that the role and nature of open prisons is changing. She highlights the traditional role of open prisons as acting as a bridge between custody and the community", particularly for prisoners serving longer sentences, lifers and others. She also says, however, that they too are now receiving different kinds of prisoners for shorter periods". Were I to summarise my concern, which led me to seek this debate, it would be that the changes going on in open prisons have not been the result of a conscious, careful plan or a decision that it will be a good way forward for open prisons to change the mix and that penal policy and rehabilitation should be moving in that direction. There may be an element of that, but my worry is that the numbers, overcrowding and pressures elsewhere in the system are driving the problem at least as much as positive policy decisions. I do not say that this has happened completely by accident, but my feeling is that the pace of change might be faster than those who thought this a good idea anyway would necessarily have wanted.

So my first question is: is this change in the composition of the open prison population being driven by overcrowding elsewhere in the system? In particular, is that pressure leading to the wrong sort of people—those who are not suited to open conditions—being sent to open prisons? The chief inspector says that population pressure"— overcrowding— has meant that open prisons are receiving prisoners who would not formerly have been sent to open conditions at that point in sentence. So the independent inspector is observing that this change is going on and believes that it is driven at least in part by population pressures elsewhere in the system.

Returning to the local situation, in last year's annual report, the then board of visitors at Leyhill said: We have comments from staff that the recategorisation of prisoners from 'C' to 'D' is not always appropriate and that we are receiving prisoners whose security category is not suited to open conditions. So the board of visitors has fed back the concerns of prison staff that the wrong people were going to open prisons. In the summer of 2002, the board of visitors reported that Leyhill filled up with 'overcrowding drafts'". I find that term slightly ominous, as is the concept whereby people are moved, perhaps en bloc, to an open prison in which there happens to be some space, because they will not fit anywhere else. The report says that Leyhill filled up with 'overcrowding drafts' as Population Management"— we should note the use of capitals— sought to relieve pressure on local prisons. The board of visitors proceeds to refer to Inappropriate transfers identified by staff". The staff say: Some prisoners recategorised to 'D' on the drafts were more probably 'C' or even 'B'". Thus the feedback from prison staff is that, on getting to know the people coming in, their thinking is that they should not be there. Some were reported with mental health problems and needed specialist care, and others had only recently been taken off self-harm watch in a local prison.

This situation gives me cause for concern. I hope that the Minister can offer some thoughts on the extent to which it is happening, but the chief inspector, the board of visitors and staff have provided clear evidence that the wrong people may be being sent to open prisons because there is not enough capacity elsewhere in the system. That concern has been heightened in recent months by the apparent setting of management targets for the governors of category C prisons, in order to get more people into category D institutions. If the result of such management targets is that the assessment of someone who is perhaps borderline is tipped over the balance, I would be worried. If an essentially category C prisoner is being reassessed as category D because the target has to be reached, that would clearly be unacceptable.

Of course, that may not always be the case. It might be quite convenient for local prisons to hold on to a few category D offenders, because they can make the place work better. Perhaps prison governors in category C institutions should be prodded not to go for a quiet life but to re-categorise at the right time, or to move people already categorised as category D into open conditions. But I am not clear what the nature of the target is, and I hope that the Minister can offer some clarification. Do governors of category C prisons have a target for moving people from category C to category D, or for moving people already independently categorised as D into open conditions? I hope that the Minister can clarify that question, because if the answer is the former, there is a danger that what should be an independent judgment on the merits of a given case is being biased by the effect of targets. We do not want that to happen.

The second question is: when people are sent to open conditions, are they properly prepared? The chief inspector says that in her experience, some who arrive in open conditions are ill-equipped. She says that some…arrive without sentence plans, let alone work to address offending behaviour. Some also arrive barely detoxified". The experience for the receiving establishment is very different if those coming in are barely off drugs and have no plan of work or sentence plan. I am not sure that open prisons should have to deal with that wholly different experience, or that they provide the right environment in which to do so.

The chief inspector's report highlights one prison at which some prisoners arrived with only a week of their sentence left to serve. That seems extraordinary. In view of the disruption that that entails, it is difficult to see the point of it. Another open prison had nearly half of its community work places unfilled, because the wrong people were there. Without the right people being there, it led to the extraordinary situation where employers were willing to take people on from the open prison, but not enough of them were suitable to fill the vacancies.

I must stress again that that is not true of Leyhill, which could do with more employers in the local community willing to take people from the prison. I also believe that any available employment opportunities are taken up, and I stress the value that I attach to that. If an inmate can get a job with a national chain such as Tesco's or a similar company with outlets across the country, and can secure an employer's reference on release, it can provide a fantastic start for someone going home from prison. There is tremendous potential when such initiatives are run well, and Leyhill is certainly trying to make use of them. However, if the wrong people are sent to open prisons, that will not happen.

I wish to raise a couple of other issues before concluding. The open sector must have the right approach to education and training. The chief inspector encourages prisons to take a more proactive approach and not regard inmates as easy prisoners, who can manage themselves". The potential of open prisons is easy to see. The governor of a closed prison cannot send young people out to local colleges for courses, whereas the governor of an open prison has that possibility. Provided that the right people are sent to open prisons, the potential for broad training and education is evident. If they are not, the opportunity is missed, so we must ensure that open prisons can take the right approach to education and training by being sent people who are ready to take advantage of it, not people with more fundamental problems that should have been dealt with elsewhere.

My final point about the allocation of offenders to open prisons is the thorny one of sex offenders. Inevitably, they are one of the most controversial and difficult groups in the prison system, and it is important that institutions such as Leyhill have the right expertise to deal with them. I believe that the prison has about 60 sex offenders serving life sentences. There is also the question of whether other institutions should be developing that sort of expertise—for example, whether there should be somewhere in the north of England where officers have such skills, or whether sex offenders should be clustered in smaller groups and other open prisons given the training and support that they need.

There are obvious problems with clustering large numbers of lifers who have committed sex offences. If they have lost contact with their own local community, a specific area can become a focal point for them when they are released. Where sex offenders are deemed not to pose a risk to the public, it makes sense to spread them through the open prison regime, rather than focus too heavily on one or two institutions.

I hope that I have made it clear that I believe open prisons to be a valuable part of the prison system and that viewing them as a "bridge" between custody and community, as the chief inspector puts it, has to be right. The alternative of letting someone out from closed conditions back into the community is a recipe for disaster. If we want prisons to prepare people for reintegration into the community so that they will not reoffend, the open prison process, the transition, the work experience, the community involvement, and the slightly less institutional environment must all be good things.

I do not rule out the possibility that shorter-term offenders —people who perhaps pose a low risk and do not have long to serve—may also be dealt with appropriately in open conditions, thereby taking advantage of training, education and work opportunities more flexibly than in closed conditions. It may also be helpful that such people do not associate with prisoners in closed conditions who would not be such a good influence. I see the possibility there, but given that more than one person a week on average fails to return to one local prison, I wonder whether the change in the balance of open prisons has happened too quickly, whether it has been planned as much as it should have been, and whether the risk assessment is really working. For law enforcement agencies and the victims of crime, that must be hard to deal with.

I salute the work that is done in the three prisons in my constituency and I believe that my constituents need help and support in that task. I also believe that Government policy must ensure that the right people go into open prisons for the right reasons. I hope that when the Minister responds he will be able to offer me those reassurances.

5.54 pm
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire)(Con)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on securing the Adjournment debate. I wish to take advantage of our extra time, and I rang the Minister's office earlier this afternoon to warn him. He knows that I have tabled a number of questions over the past few months about an open prison, Her Majesty's prison Sudbury, in my constituency.

I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Northavon said about the role that open prisons can play, and my speech tonight is not against open prisons. However, there is growing concern about the kind of people who are being sent to open prisons and some of his parliamentary answers have added to my concern.

As the hon. Member for Northavon said, the matter is no reflection on prison staff at a particular prison. They have no choice in who is sent to them. They have to deal with the categorisation, which is carried out elsewhere in the Prison Service. There are 15 open prisons in England and Wales. I am concerned to see that 1,173 prisoners absconded from them between November 2002 and October 2003. Absconded is the right word because prisoners do not have to escape from an open prison; they simply fail to return after they have gone out.

The Minister will know that there have been some disturbing cases involving Sudbury prison. On 7 January, I asked him how many of those who absconded from HM Prison Sudbury during (a) 2003 and (b) 2002 committed further offences for which they have been charged during the period of time they were away from the prison; and with what offences they were charged. His answer stated: Information on offences committed by prisoners during their period at large is not held in the form requested. As prisoners recaptured after absconding from Sudbury would immediately be sent to a closed establishment, Sudbury would not be informed of the subsequent convictions of those who had previously absconded."—[Official Report, 7 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 422W.] I am sure that that information must be available somewhere within the Prison Service. Although it may not be available directly from the prison, I would be surprised if it were not available to the Minister in the form in which I tabled the question.

The written answer also revealed that 67 people absconded from Sudbury prison in the year from April 2002 to April 2003. Two of them had been convicted of murder and three of grievous bodily harm. At this point, the matter became really serious: from April 2003 to 1 December 2003—a seven-month period—56 people absconded from Sudbury, of whom five had been convicted of murder and six of GBH. Those are the most serious crimes for which one can be sentenced in this country. We can all expose individual cases, which are not always the best evidence on which to base decisions, but the case of Mark Leicester is horrendous. While absconding from prison, he committed another murder in Derby.

I have another point for the Minister. He may not be able to address it today, but perhaps he will give some thought to the reaction of the police when prisoners escape or abscond. The hon. Member for Northavon said that the police were not fully aware of the true nature of one of the people who absconded from Leyhill prison. Derbyshire police refused to release the photograph of Anthony Craig of Preston, a convicted murderer aged 56 who absconded from Sudbury on 27 July and is still on the run. They said that they had no photograph and no publicity was given to the fact that he had absconded. The truth was that a photograph was available from the Prison Service, but the police decided not to release it.

That decision was wrong. There should be clearer instructions—possibly from the Home Office—on the way that police forces should respond in cases involving people convicted of the most serious offences. I am not talking about a person who is close to the end of his sentence. A convicted murderer under a life sentence is only ever released on licence and I believe that the Home Secretary is keen to keep that provision. I support him in that. I have no problem with his view on that matter, but it is no good for people to play down the fact that someone poses a danger. Convicted murderers are a danger to society if they do not return to their establishment; they have broken the trust placed on them when they were transferred to an open prison with better, easier conditions.

A number of escapes from Sudbury have caused concern recently. Police investigating robberies at the houses of four elderly people—including one who had suffered a broken leg—were searching for a violent murderer on the run from the prison. Isaac Price, who narrowly avoided arrest earlier this week by swimming across a swollen brook following a police chase, is being hunted in connection with raids on pensioners' homes in Shropshire and Worcestershire.

Members with open prisons in their constituencies do not usually complain about them. I have not complained about Sudbury in the past, but I am concerned now. We need to build up trust in the local community, as people who live near the prison need reassurance.

The hon. Member for Northavon made several points, but I am especially concerned about a growing trend. The Government are, rightly, proudly trumpeting their antisocial behaviour measures, including the antisocial behaviour orders. However, people who live near prisons also have the right to expect protection. Sudbury may be geographically isolated but it is sited in a local community. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House and my constituents that there has been no easing of the criteria for placing people in open prisons because, from the evidence that I have seen and the recent cases that have been brought to my attention, I fear that that may have been the case.

Sudbury is at full capacity. The picture is not dissimilar to the one that the hon. Member for Northavon gave us of Leyhill open prison. Maximum capacity at Sudbury is 560—I think that the maximum has increased over the past few years. The number of prisoners was 546 and 10 more were received today, which takes the prison to capacity.

In seeking assurances from the Minister, I echo some of the points made by the hon. Member for Northavon. Those of us with open prisons in our constituencies expect reassurance that the people sent there are right for the conditions at such prisons. After the answers that I received from the Minister last week, I fear that a growing number of people sent to open prisons do not deserve that trust. If that is the case, the criteria for sending people to open prisons and the very future of those prisons must be called into question. That is bad news for the Government's overall prison policy, so I hope that the Minister can reassure us.

6.4 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Paul Goggins)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on initiating this important debate. As he said at the outset, there are three prisons in his constituency: HMP Eastwood Park, which is a women's closed prison; HMYOI Ashfield, which is a young offenders and juvenile establishment—I was pleased to hear his positive remarks about that institution, which has shown considerable progress in the recent past; and HMP Leyhill, which is an open prison.

The hon. Gentleman referred to his concerns, and wider public concerns, about open establishments, and I compliment him on the way that he has responded to the whole issue—not only for acknowledging that Leyhill is a good open prison, but for not taking what must have been the considerable opportunities in the past few weeks to grab a few headlines. Instead, he has come to the House to debate the issue intelligently.

The hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) continues to ask me questions, which I shall continue to endeavour to answer to the best of my ability. Indeed, he has recently written to me, and I will respond in due course to that letter. He, too, shows an intelligent approach. He is right to say that trust is needed in local communities near open prisons. It is essential that they are reassured, and the way that both hon. Gentlemen have approached the issue is highly commendable.

The hon. Member for Northavon mentioned two cases, the first of which involved Michael Purcell. I am not familiar with all the details of that case, so I cannot make any detailed comment, other than to confirm that he was transferred to Leyhill on the recommendation of the Parole Board, but I promise to consider the detail of that case, and I will write to the hon. Gentleman to answer his specific questions.

The other case that the hon. Gentleman mentioned—that involving Roderick McLean—is perhaps rather better known. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand if I cannot go to the conclusions of the investigation that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary initiated on that case—it would be premature to do so—but I want to put some information on the record, because there has been a lot of wild speculation about the case in the recent past.

I can confirm that Roderick McLean was remanded in custody on 29 July 1996, and sentenced on 13 March 1997. As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, Mr. McLean received a custodial sentence initially of 28 years, which was reduced to 21 years on appeal. He was initially deemed a category A prisoner in Scotland and also a so-called strict escapee, so his behaviour and movements were kept under particular scrutiny. He was downgraded to category B on 10 June 1998, and removed from being classified as a strict escapee on 23 March 1999. He was recategorised as category C at HMP Shotts, before being transferred to the English prison system on 13 March 2001. It is important to make the point that he was already a category C prisoner while in the Scottish system.

Within England, Mr. McLean was received at HMP Bristol—a local prison, quite close to the hon. Gentleman's constituency—on 23 March 2001. On 20 August 2001, Mr. McLean was allocated to HMP Erlestoke, which is a category C prison. He arrived at HMP Leyhill on 4 September 2002. As a prisoner in open conditions, Mr. McLean undertook more than 20 periods of successful temporary release from HMP Leyhill. Indeed, it was from a community visit that he failed to return on 8 September 2003—more than 14 months after moving to open conditions. I hope that it helps to put that information on the record.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the terms of reference for the review. I can confirm that the review will consider the circumstances leading to Mr. McLean's allocation at Leyhill prison, specifically the recategorisation procedures, as well as the circumstances surrounding his move from the Scottish Prison Service to HM Prison Service and his initial security category. It will also consider whether the speed of progression was appropriate given his length of sentence and whether sufficient detail was available about the offence to inform appropriate decision making.

The hon. Gentleman asked about communications with the police, and I can confirm that that issue will be part of the investigation. The report will make recommendations on preventing the recurrence of such incidents—either specifically related to Leyhill or to the service as a whole—and on the better handling of them in the future. The hon. Gentleman referred to comments made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on 7 January during his statement on the future of correctional services, and I simply echo what he said. We will make the findings available and I shall communicate them directly to the hon. Gentleman as soon as they are available.

I was especially pleased to learn that the hon. Gentleman visited Leyhill yesterday to discuss his concerns with its governor. I hope that he was reassured that the allocation and recategorisation rules have not changed—I hope that the hon. Member for West Derbyshire is also reassured—and that public protection is a key aspect of the decision-making process when assessing prisoners' suitability for open conditions.

I think that it would be helpful for the House if I explained the way in which the categorisation and allocation system works. Prisoners receive their initial categorisation shortly after they have been convicted and sentenced. The decision on the category that a prisoner is given—category A, B, C or D for male prisoners, and open, closed or semi-open for women and young offenders—is based on a number of pieces of information that together inform an assessment of the risk of a prisoner escaping or absconding and his or her potential risk to the public. The risk assessment includes a consideration of current and previous custodial records, details of previous offences, details of the charges, pleas, findings and sentences relating to the current offences, and any other relevant information on the prisoner that the Prison Service or probation service may have, such as medical information, psychological reports and any security information. Once all that information is available, prisoners are categorised according to the likelihood of their escape and the threat that they would pose to the public if their escape succeeded. Prisoners are placed in the lowest security category that is consistent with the needs for their security and control before being allocated to an appropriate prison.

After prisoners have been categorised and allocated to a suitable prison, they move through the prison system by a process of recategorisation. The process determines whether the risks that they posed at their previous categorisation assessment have changed, and the extent to which that has happened. Any decision on recategorisation must be based on a clear change to the risk posed by prisoners due to their likelihood to escape or abscond, the risk posed to the public in the event of them escaping or absconding, or other control issues that could pose a threat to the security of the prison. Risk levels may decrease or increase during the course of a sentence, so a prisoner's security category and allocation must reflect that. When prisoners are considered for allocation to the open estate, it is essential for their risk levels to be clearly reduced and for it to be shown that they can be reasonably trusted not to abscond or to take advantage of the reduced levels of security in the open estate.

I understand and share concerns about the extent of absconding from our open prisons, but we need to put the figures into context. The vast majority of prisoners are held in closed secure prisons. Indeed, of the 75,258 prison places in the system, only 4,400—less than 6 per cent. —are in he open estate. The increase in the overall prison population puts pressure on the prison estate as a whole. The greatest pressures, of course, are on the local prisons that serve the courts and thus take prisoners on remand, as well as those who are awaiting sentence or who have just been sentenced. Within that context, and in order to make the best use of the available capacity, the Prison Service is right to ensure that prisoners who are suitable for open prisons are quickly identified and moved out of closed prisons, subject, of course, to a careful risk assessment. There is no key performance indicator for recategorisation. However, as the Prison Service is under population pressure, there is a need to move people quickly once the assessment has been carried out and the prisoner is deemed suitable for open conditions.

The Government continue to increase the overall number of prison places.

Mr. McLoughlin

Does the Minister have the figures for what it costs to keep someone in an open prison as opposed to what it costs to keep someone in more secure accommodation? If he does not have those to hand, perhaps he could let me know later.

Paul Goggins

I shall certainly write to the hon. Gentleman with an answer. I cannot give the figures off the top of my head. Different establishments cost a different amount. An average across the estate is £36,000 per place each year. I shall get him a precise answer as soon as possible.

The Government have provided 14,700 more prison places since 1997 and seven new prisons. Additional funding has been provided for about an extra 3,000 public sector prison places to be built at existing prisons. Two new private prisons, providing 1,290 places, are also due to be opened at Ashford and Peterborough in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

Mr. Webb

The Minister has moved on to the general capacity of the system. Does he accept, however, that only today Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons said in her report about open prisons that, because of pressure on numbers, different sorts of people are going to open prisons? That seems to be a fact. I think the Minister is happy that they are all properly assessed, but is the policy to change the mix of who goes to open prisons deliberate, or is it a by-product of pressure in the system?

Paul Goggins

I thought it was important to set the capacity issue in context. I shall say more about the people who occupy those 4,400 places in our open system later.

If we take into account the additional places provided since 1997 and those that are being made available, we expect 78,700 prison places to be at our disposal by 2006. Simply providing more prison places is not the only answer, however. It is vital that we continue to work with people in our prisons so that they have the capacity for rehabilitation. I am pleased that this year we expect 50,000 basic skills qualifications to be gained in our prisons. Some 30 per cent. of people leaving prisons last year went into either a job or training. As the hon. Member for Northavon remarked, that is a good indicator of the chance of people staying out of trouble in future.

It is also important—my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary spoke of this in his statement on correctional services on 7 January—to provide sentences with credible intensive community sentences for people who would otherwise go to prison for short periods, usually with little impact. It is not enough just to have extra prison places. We have to use them properly and get people on intensive community sentences, if appropriate. However, open prisons will continue to make an important contribution to resettlement, preparing prisoners for their release in a way that will reduce reoffending, thereby increasing public protection. That is an important point. Some 2,500 of the places in open prisons are generally used to help prepare longer-term prisoners, including life sentence prisoners who are coming to the end of their sentence. That includes people who have committed serious offences, such as murder and sex offences, which have been mentioned. So 2,500 places are reserved for those people.

Roughly half of resettlement regime places are occupied by prisoners involved in unpaid community work placements. That enables them to make reparation to the community while learning useful skills that will increase their chances of finding employment on release. The other half are for prisoners who are involved in paid employment outside the prison during the final months of their sentence. That can be an important stage in the transition back to the community for longer-term prisoners. Subject to appropriate risk assessment and monitoring, they do real jobs for real wages alongside other members of the work force. That enables them to help to support their families and to save money for their release. It may also provide them with a job that they can continue once they are discharged, and the hon. Member for Northavon mentioned Tesco in that context, which is good example. We know that prisoners are much less likely to reoffend if they get and keep a job on release.

A period in open conditions is essential for most life sentence prisoners. It allows the Prison Service to test areas of possible concern in conditions that are nearer to those in the community than can be found in closed prisons. Lifers have the opportunity to take home leave from open prisons and, more generally, open conditions require them to take more responsibility for their actions.

The remaining 1,900 open prison places are occupied by short-term prisoners. I accept that such prisoners, although not presenting a risk to the public in terms of their offence, tend to be more impulsive and have less to lose than life sentence prisoners if they abscond. However, I emphasise again that those short-term prisoners have been allocated to the open prisons only after a thorough assessment of the trustworthiness of the prisoners not to abscond and of the risk posed to the public if they should do so.

In addition to those two main groups, we are also developing new ways of using places in the open prison estate. From next week, we will be piloting intermittent custody, the first of the new sentences to be introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Kirkham, a male open prison in Lancashire, together with Morton Hall, a women's prison in Lincolnshire, will be the first prisons to accommodate offenders serving intermittent custody. This use of part-time custody is an attempt to reduce the negative outcomes, such as loss of employment and accommodation and family breakdown, which can often accompany even short periods of full-time custody.

Intermittent custody will be for offenders who have committed an offence sufficiently serious to warrant a custodial sentence, but who represent a low risk to the public should they serve the sentence intermittently. Offenders in full-time employment or study, or with responsibilities as carers, will be likely to serve their custody days at the weekend and be in the community under licence supervised by the probation service during the week. Those who are unemployed will be likely to serve their custody days during the week, with a regime focused on helping them find a job, and be in the community under licence supervised by the probation service at the weekend, in order to help them to maintain family ties and community links. That is a further option that the open prison estate will be increasingly using.

A very high proportion of the prisoners who go to open prisons make the most of the opportunities provided there to improve their prospects on release. As I have said, many work in the community doing paid or unpaid work. However, I accept that a very small proportion betray the trust placed in them and abscond.

There was an increase in the number of absconds from 825 in 2002 to 1,224 in 2003. The increase at Leyhill was from 25 to 102, and at Sudbury for the whole year it was from 65 to 78. I share the concerns voiced by both hon. Members, but I reassure them and the House that while the figures concern me, we shall do everything we can to get them down.

Those figures should also be seen in the context of the commitment to security, which is central to the work of the Prison Service. Last year there were just 13 escapes from prison—that is, escapes where people got out of secure conditions. There have been no category A escapes since 1996. Therefore, I ask hon. Members to place the concern about absconds from open conditions in the context of that wider, very successful commitment to security across the rest of the prison estate.

Only a small proportion of those who abscond commit offences while they are at large. However, I reassure the House that whenever a prisoner absconds or fails to return from an outside work placement, the police are informed immediately. The details of the prisoner are circulated to police forces and visits may be made to known addresses. Once the prisoner is recaptured, he or she will be returned to a closed prison, where many will complete the rest of their sentence.

This has been a very important debate. I will reflect carefully on the remarks of both hon. Members who contributed to see whether there are other points to which I should respond. I look forward to further discussions with them about this topic. I hope that they are reassured that open prisons, which provide some 4,400 of the 75,000 or so prison places currently available, are a key part of the process of rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners back into society.

There has been no change in the system of categorisation and allocation. Indeed, public safety remains the key issue when recategorisation is being considered. However, I am not complacent. I share hon. Members' concerns about the recent increase in absconds, and I shall continue to ensure that the Prison Service takes all the necessary steps to keep them to a minimum.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past Six o'clock.