Offender Management Bill

Since the Minister was absent at an earlier stage of the Committee, perhaps I may ask her about supervision of custody officers. She kindly wrote to me recently in response to my Question on how supervision in private, contracted-out custody was monitored. She stated that it was a matter for the private contractors and that the Government managed these matters through the performance framework. As the Minister knows, I am very concerned that custody officers should be well supervised; in young offender institutions, they currently are not. I was therefore concerned by that Answer. It is certainly relevant to the question of visitors with children. I would therefore appreciate it if the Minister were to describe in a letter to me how these contracts monitor the performance of the contracted-out prisons, so ensuring that adequate supervision exists. We hear that there is often a high turnover of staff in private nurseries and prisons, because, for all the benefits that private contracting can bring, support for front-line staff is not as strong as it would be in public provision. I understand that the European Union has demanded that a common core of skills and knowledge for adults working with children be in place by 2008, but I may be wrong. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether that is correct.