HC Deb 05 May 1994 vol 242 cc620-1W
Mr. Hoyle

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many working days have been lost to the prison service in each of the last five years because of strike action taken by prison officers.

Mr. Peter Lloyd

Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from Derek Lewis to Mr. Doug Hoyle, dated 5 May 1994: The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about strike action taken by prison officers. No working days were lost as a result of strike action by prison officers during the last five years. Just before this period, there was a ten day strike by prison officers at Wandsworth from 29 January to 8 February 1989, over the introduction of new shift systems. The figure for working days lost cannot be identified but the majority of prison officers (from a total of over 300 at the establishment at the time) were involved. The prison was managed by governor grades from Wandsworth and other Prison Service establishments, other managers, police officers and prison officers who refused to take industrial action. The other serious dispute in recent years which resulted in strike action was at Holloway in July-September 1988, over staffing levels. The dispute ran for six weeks and over 7,000 working days were lost. The prison was run by governor grades and other staff who refused to strike.

Mr. Hoyle

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many formally registered disputes there were in each of the last five years between the Prison Officers Association and the Prison Department; and how many of those disputes were resolved without recourse by the trade union side to industrial action.

Mr. Peter Lloyd

Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from Derek Lewis to Mr. Doug Hoyle, dated 5 May 1994: The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about formally registered disputes with the POA in each of the last five years, and how many were resolved without recourse to industrial action. The number of disputes or failures to agree declared under the Cubbon formula arrangements, the Disputes Procedure which replaced the formula in October 1989, and the Industrial Relations Procedural Agreement, which was introduced in July 1993, are as follows: In 1989/90, 61 disputes were declared at 46 establishments; 30 disputes were resolved in that year. In 1990/91, 119 disputes were declared at 77 establishments; 91 disputes were resolved in that year. In 1991/92, 130 disputes were declared at 61 establishments; 134 disputes were resolved in that year. In 1992/93, 38 disputes were declared at 34 establishments; 76 were resolved in that year. In 1993/94, 139 disputes (or failures to agree from 1 July 1993) were declared at 67 establishments; 88 disputes/failures to agree were resolved in that year. The vast majority of disputes were resolved without recourse to industrial action, the aim of the procedure being to provide a mechanism to resolve disagreements through discussion as quickly as possible at the lowest appropriate level. No strike action has been taken during the last five years (the last strikes by prison officers were at Holloway in 1988 and Wandsworth in early 1989). Where industrial action took place it varied in nature from, for example, a refusal to supply payphone cards to inmates, to action restricting prisoner intake and leading to locking out in police cells. In 1989/90 there were some episodes of less severe action, including at Canterbury, Lindholme and Wymott. In 1990–91 industrial action took place at 12 establishments arising from local disputes and in some cases this resulted in prisoners being accommodated in police cells. Industrial action also took place at ten establishments arising from the April 1990 prison disturbances, where POA branches would not accept prisoners from outside their catchment areas. In 1991/92 industrial action took place at 11 establishments in connection with the disputes. Action at Winchester carried over into the following year and ended in June 1992. There has been no subsequent industrial action associated with disputes or failures to agree at individual establishments. There was national action, amounting to a work to rule, from 5 November 1993, until the Home Secretary obtained an interlocutory injunction on 18 November, restraining the POA from pursuing further planned industrial action, namely 'locking out' prisoners. The threatened action would have put 1,700 prisoners in police cells in a matter of 72 hours. The disruption to the prison system, the police, the courts, prisoners, their families and legal advisers would have been very considerable, and would have filled up almost all the available police cell capacity in an unmanageably brief period. The cost to the taxpayer would have been nearly one million pounds over those three days.