Offender Management Bill

My Lords, my noble friend is right to emphasise the importance of justice, but also important is parity of treatment in relation to how we house and deal with those who are sentenced to periods of imprisonment. I want to clear up a few points as there may have been some misunderstanding. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, is concerned that we are removing the role of the controller, as a third pair of eyes, from the process. I can reassure him that we are not doing that. Controllers will no longer conduct adjudications, but will still monitor the conduct of them by private prison staff; for example, they can even attend individual adjudications if they want to. That is not changing. We agree with him on the need for that scrutiny to be maintained. The consultation process was raised by my noble friend Lord Graham. I know how seriously he addresses the issue. I can reassure him that we have consulted the Prison Governors Association and there has been further consultation with contractors and existing controllers. Plans have been developed in discussion with the public sector Prison Service to ensure parity with its procedures. My noble friend Lord Rosser was correct in the premise that he made about the way in which we seek to deal with the matter. These are sensitive issues. I assure the House that the Government recognise that sensitivity and the nature of the changes contemplated in the clause. We are also aware of the need to ensure the proper and fair treatment of prisoners, as I made plain. With that in mind, we have taken careful measures to ensure that our approach is balanced by appropriate and robust safeguards. The powers proposed to be transferred by the clause are essential tools for governors in public sector prisons, used to maintain order, control and discipline. As part of our clearly expressed desire to ensure parity of performance between the public and private sectors, we feel that this is precisely the right time to extend the powers, so that they apply equally in private prisons. Specifically, the changes proposed will enable directors to be fully responsible for order and control within their establishments. Controllers, who currently undertake the task on behalf of directors, will then be freed up to spend more time monitoring the quality and value of the service provided by the contractor. Consequently, the change will ensure that the disciplinary system in private prisons operates as speedily and effectively as possible, but also that better oversight of the whole range of services is being delivered by the contractor. This will, I hope, bring real benefits to prisons and prisoners generally, and to the public, with better value for money. I was much encouraged by what the right reverend Prelate said, because in his capacity he has had the advantage of going into a number of prisons, both public and private. His experience of a number of private-sector prisons reflects that of the noble Lords, Lord Elton and Lord Ramsbotham, and others. The powers are already highly regulated by secondary legislation—not least the prison rules and the detailed instructions in the Prison Discipline Manual and Her Majesty’s Prison Service standards, which private prisons are, respectively, statutorily and contractually bound to follow, so that they exactly reflect those that apply in public sector prisons. We are simply creating a parity of powers between directors and governors—neither will have any greater freedom than the other as they perform identical tasks. That is why my noble friend Lord Rosser was right. We are also going to require contractually that, before directors can adjudicate, they must have passed the equivalent training course as their public sector colleagues. I know that this is a matter of complaint but, as most directors are ex-Her Majesty’s Prison Service governors anyway, they are already likely to be very experienced in the task. My noble friend Lady Gibson has complained about the number of private prisons that have—some would say—purloined for the private sector some of the best from Her Majesty’s Prison Service. That is always an issue of tension. However, the controller will ensure that the rules that apply to one are adhered to by the other. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, is right about a strong safeguard, which already exists, in cases of a disciplinary offence that may result in the award of additional days. The requirement, under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, is that such cases must be dealt with by an independent adjudicator rather than by the government controller, in both public and private sector prisons. This proposal does nothing to alter that. My noble friend Lord Judd asked me about my new role conjoined with my old role and my thoughts on that. I hope that he will be content that I believe that we are being consistent. This proposal does not in any way alter that. Such a safeguard was not in place in 1991, when controllers were first introduced. That would have been of concern to the noble Lord, Lord Elton—that controllers were going to be adjudicating on issues where there might be a positive punishment—but we do not have that difficulty now. Some are also concerned that a director’s impartiality would be jeopardised by commercial considerations, as we heard today. There is, however, no evidence in how they use their existing powers to support that. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, rightly referred to perceptions, as opposed to the reality. But there is no evidence on which that perception can justifiably be found. Most notably, the incentive schemes, which often reward good behaviour, are much more imaginative than those in the public sector. However, even if a director were minded to adopt a commercial approach, the requirements of the Prison Discipline Manual, the detailed procedures to be followed, the route of appeal, plus scrutiny from the controller, the IMB, the inspectorate and the ombudsman surely offer us all some reassurance that they would be immediately detected. The powers of segregation and control are already available to directors in an emergency, when they simply seek retrospective approval by the controller. The clause will simply enable those existing powers to be exercised by the director acting alone, even where there is no emergency. There is no evidence whatever to suggest that directors have misused the existing powers since the first private prison opened in 1992. Indeed, private prisons have been credited with a key role in improving decent treatment and the conditions of prisoners in both the public and private sectors over the past 10 years. Such a view is not my own, I hasten to add, but comes from no less a source than Martin Narey, the former director-general of Her Majesty’s Prison Service. I also urge the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to reflect on his own decision, when Chief Inspector of Prisons, to tackle the press about their inaccurate portrayal of the privately owned and operated HMP Doncaster. He may recall that at the time he was so impressed on an inspection by the capability of the director and staff that he personally intervened to demand that the press recognise the excellent practice to be found at the prison. It must have had quite an effect on him, because as recently as January, at the Conservative evidence session for the Bill, he described HMP Doncaster as: "““a frightfully well-run prison … staff had extremely good relationships with the prisoners and the organisation running it had done all sorts of imaginative things with education…work…and so on, which weren’t happening in the public sector. And when I asked the Governor why he was doing this, which conflicted with what I’d seen of prisons in the public sector, he said he’s not allowed to do it in the public sector prison””." I use not my words but those of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to reassure the House that this is not something that we need to be frightened of. I will not pretend that private-sector performance is always excellent. There have been recent problems at Her Majesty’s Prison in Rye Hill, for example, which the inspectorate has reported on and were the subject of the ““Panorama”” TV programme. My point is that similar problems occur in some public sector prison as well. Good or poor practice is not the sole preserve of one sector or the other. If further evidence of the quality of private prisons is needed, I would invite your Lordships to attend to the most recent prison performance ratings, published by the National Offender Management Service, which shows that eight of the 11 private prisons are rated at level 3 or above on the four-band system. This is a ratio that compares well with the public sector. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has previously described private prisons as models of what prisons should be like. That is a lot of reinforcement of what I hope is a safe and satisfactory move forwards. Restrictions may have been prudent when private prisons were first introduced; I believe that they were. However, considering the good operating record of the private sector since then, we believe that they are no longer justified. Finally, some would argue that these tasks are essentially functions of the state. That was said by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and others. The arguments around the propriety of imprisonment being conducted by private companies were debated at length in 1991 and we all know the outcome. To rehearse them again now is perhaps unnecessary. In conclusion, we have seen over time a great deal of evidence which reassures us that what we are doing is not a step too far. I hope that the House will feel that the safeguards I have outlined in some detail, which will enable these powers to be effected properly—the contractual mechanisms, the detailed operating procedures, the scrutiny of the controller, the IMB and the ombudsman—suffice to give noble Lords comfort. The proposals are safe and, I suggest, a logical next step in balancing the procedures between public and private sector prisons to the ultimate benefit of both prisoners and the general public. Further, for the avoidance of doubt, the term ““prison”” in relation to this clause also applies to young offender institutions, although at present no YOIs are being run privately. On that basis, I hope that noble Lords will feel that this is not such an avant garde move as they might initially have feared.