Prison Service (Hansard, 19 October 1998)

§ Mr. George Howarth

The Home Secretary announced at the Labour party conference that he would be setting recruitment targets across the Home Office, with the aim that the workforce properly reflects Britain's multi-racial society.

As an equal opportunities employer, the Prison Service is committed to increasing the numbers of ethnic minority staff which it employs at all levels, consistent with fair and open competition and with recruitment and promotion on merit. Latest figures for the year to 31 March 1998 indicate that 7.8 per cent. of prison officers recruited were from ethnic minorities—more than double the figure for any previous year.

In the last few years, there has been considerable progress on measures taken to encourage ethnic minority staff. These include the following: as part of the guidance on devolved recruitment, governors have been encouraged to take positive action to redress the current under-representation of people from the ethnic minorities, such as the recent open day organised by prisons in the Doncaster area; competence-based job simulation and assessment centres for the recruitment of prison officers support the devolved recruitment of prison officers and are increasingly used for promotion at all levels; the Prison Service has provided placements for three Windsor Fellows this year, and continues to provide mentors from management level staff for ethnic minority undergraduates under the National Mentoring Scheme.

As a result of many years of sustained outreach work, the Service has two members of ethnic minorities who successfully applied for the Accelerated Promotion Scheme in the last year.

In August 1997, the Home Secretary established a monitoring group on the position of ethnic minority staff in the Home Office with the following terms of reference: To examine the position of ethnic minority staff in the Home Office, the measures taken to ensure their full representation and employment and to reduce real and perceived disadvantage and to make further proposals for action".

The Prisons Board is fully committed to the monitoring group and is carrying out a comprehensive review in the Prison Service. The review, which is now well underway, will lead to the development of a racial equality action plan which will recommend further measures to stimulate the recruitment of staff from ethnic minorities.

In July 1998, the Prison Service set up a new Race relations group. Its purpose is to ensure that the Service's race relations policies are as good as they can be, and to check that they are operating effectively across all establishments. It will also help to monitor and direct the range of initiatives which are underway, in relation to both staff and prisoners.