Prison Service Management (Hansard, 10 December 1997)

§ Mr. Straw

I am pleased to report that I will tomorrow publish the Government's response to the Home Affairs Select Committee's inquiry report into the management of the Prison Service. Copies will be placed in the Library.

I am grateful for the Committee's report, and have studied its conclusions and recommendations carefully. I agree with the Committee's conclusion that the Prison Service has done well to manage a rapidly rising prison population and, against this background, has made considerable progress in providing acceptable accommodation for prisoners. The Government accept in principle the desirability of reducing the present high levels of overcrowding, although the Audit of Prison Service Resources, published on 25 July, shows that this will be difficult to achieve in the current circumstances. In the meantime, it will be a priority for the Prison Service to seek to provide adequate regime activities for those prison which are overcrowded. In order to ensure that the projected numbers can be accommodated safely, I have provided the Prison Service with an additional £43 million this year and next to increase capacity and to pay for the costs of overcrowding and purposeful activity. Longer term resourcing issues will be considered as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

The Committee's conclusions that the needs for accountability and responsibility require Ministerial involvement are correct, and support the steps I have already taken to implement the Government's manifesto commitment to take proper Ministerial responsibility for the Prison Service. I have made clear that there are no present plans to end the Prison Service's agency status. I have considered and endorsed the findings of the Director General's organisational review of the Service, published on 10 November, which included measures to re-assert and reinforce Ministerial responsibility for the Prison Service.

The Committee also endorses the role of the private sector, and recommends that its involvement in the Prison Service should be allowed to develop further. The Government have expressed reservations about the principle of contracting out the management of prisons. It is generally accepted that responsibility for the incarceration of offenders must remain with the state. As I explained in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Hall) on 19 June 1997, Official Report, columns 247–49, the issue is whether that responsibility should, as a matter of principle, be discharged through direct management in the public sector or whether it can properly and effectively be discharged under a regulatory framework. The Government will give careful consideration to the conclusions put forward by the Home Affairs Select Committee before settling their overall approach to this issue.