Prisons: Target Performance Improvement (Hansard, 28 July 2000)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bassam of Brighton)

My right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced the establishment of Lord Laming's working group on 31 January 2000 (Official Report, Commons, col. 425W). My noble friend Lord Laming has completed his report, and copies have been placed in the Library and printed paper office.

I am very grateful to the noble friend Lord Laming and his colleagues on the working group, for their analysis and recommendations. Many of these recommendations build on the extensive change of the prison service programme being managed by the Director General. We accept all the recommendations made in the report, save where my noble friend Lord Laming or the Director General has advised us that further work is required in order to assess how best to take the recommendation forward.

We have, therefore, today, announced that the right honourable Member for Fareham, and Chairman of the Newbridge Trust, Sir Peter Lloyd, has agreed to chair a review of the role of prisons' boards of visitors (Recommendation 16). Mr Patrick Carter, a non-executive Director of the Prison and Probation Services, has agreed to lead a review of the Prison Service's programme of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) prisons and market-testing (Recommendation 8).

The Director General has been asked to report back to my right honourable friend the Minister of State 105WA for the Home Office, Mr Boateng, at the latest by October 2000, with a more detailed action plan in response to Recommendations 4, 5, 9, 13 and 14. I have also asked the Director General and Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons to take forward Recommendation 12.

We welcome the report's focus on updating personnel policies, and the importance placed on succession planning, and the effective management of sickness absence and poor performers. These underscore the importance of major programmes of work already under way within the Prison Service. My noble friend Lord Laming has noted the leadership being given by the Director General and the Deputy Director General, and the report's recommendations regarding managerial accountability and the pivotal role of the area manager in improving performance built on recent reforms relating to regionalisation.

The Prison Service is in the process of modernising its information technology systems, and will be introducing service level agreements into all public sector prisons by April 2001. Work is also in hand to develop a more sophisticated means of linking performance with the allocation of resources. The Quinquennial Review of the Prison Service, conducted in 1999, reaffirmed its status as an Executive Agency.

My noble friend Lord Laming's recommendations are:

1. The Prison Service must give the highest priority to developing succession management in order to avoid frequent changes of governors. They must ensure that governor posts are filled as quickly and appropriately as possible.
2. The personnel policies and practices of the Prison Service should be brought up to date. Sickness absence should be robustly challenged. Mechanisms to deal with poor performance should be improved.
3. Staff training should be improved and be linked to quality standards and performance targets.
4. A critical examination of information routinely circulated and gathered should be undertaken. In future, information should not be gathered or sent unless its use has been defined and justified.
5. It is recommended that all instructions to governors, and requests for information, should be directed through the management line and should be prioritised.
6. The Prison Service should be clearly defined as an executive Agency and be required to perform as such.
7. The allocation of increased resources should be linked to defined objectives and outcome measures-systems must be in place so that every prison governor can demonstrate that resources are being used flexibly and to good purpose.
8. The programme of PFI prisons and market testing should be reviewed to advise Ministers on how best to use the financial and management resources of the private sector to provide both greater choice and additional capacity to the Prison Service.
9. We believe that service level agreements should be developed for every establishment in the public sector. In each of these establishments, a contract compliance officer should be appointed to monitor day-by-day application. In many prisons, the extra cost would be covered by the better use of resources.
10. The Prison Service should operate to agreed national standards which are put into practice in each establishment. It is not a "federal" service and these core standards should be the basis for all evaluation of performance.
11. The highest priority should be given to modernising the management information systems of the Prison Service and ensuring the successful implementation of the new contract with Electronic Data Systems.
12. The Prison Service and the Chief Inspector should work to produce an agreed set of standards, to be approved by Ministers, against which the performance of prisons will be evaluated. The methodology for the inspection of prisons will be developed in relation to these standards. It should facilitate both objective assessment and comparison covering both value for money and quality of service delivered.
13. The principle of managerial accountability must permeate the service and inform all practice and decision making.
14. The principle of managerial responsibilities of area managers should be clearly defined and they should be held personally accountable for the performance of each prison in their area. Specialist staff should be relocated from headquarters to the areas to enable area managers to fulfil their new and demanding duties.
15. Links between prisons and community based agencies should be strengthened and coordinated more effectively. Prison and community based agency staff should be provided with training to enable them to work together more effectively. Community based agency staff should be able to convey any concerns they have about the prison to the governor or area manager.
16. There should be a review of the role, resources and responsibilities of boards of visitors.