Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I understand what my hon. Friend says, but the simple fact is that I made the judgment during the period between summer 1994 and 1997. I do not recall any pressure—except from the Prison Officers Association, which I explained I could not accept—to include a specific commitment to repeal section 127, and no such commitment went into the manifesto. I do not recall any suggestion at the so-called clause 5 meetings that take place with the national executive, or at meetings of the shadow Cabinet of the day, that we should have such a specific commitment, nor was one made. Winding forward, I have set out—as did Paul Boateng on my behalf in 2000—how we have sought to negotiate a voluntary agreement and a comprehensive package of reforms of industrial relations in the Prison Service to obviate the need for reliance on section 127. That is what Paul Boateng told the House on my behalf in summer 2000. We introduced the pay review body and the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), took the matter forward with the then Prisons Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins). There was then a series of intensive negotiations with the POA about establishing a new, comprehensive voluntary agreement in return for a suspension and/or repeal of section 127. My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East, who led those negotiations, has authorised me to say that throughout the negotiations with the POA it was made clear at every stage that the voluntary agreement to which we could assent had to include a comprehensive and legally binding undertaking by the association not to take industrial action. It was only in respect of that that the Government moved, by an order under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, to repeal section 127 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. When that repeal occurred, it was made clear—initially in the other place because that was where it was dealt with, and subsequently in this House—by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), who had taken over as Prisons Minister, that"““If the POA gives notice to terminate the agreement with no alternative arrangements being in place, the Secretary of State would ask Parliament to reintroduce statutory constraints such as existed prior to disapplication of Section 127.””—[Official Report, 4 September 2006; Vol. 449, c. 1897W.]" That is absolutely fundamental to this part of the story, which is why I ask all my right hon. and hon. Friends, as well as the House more generally, to support the introduction of what will be a reserve power in the event that we cannot reach a further voluntary agreement. By the time that the POA had signed up to the 2005 joint industrial relations procedural agreement, or JIRPA, it had voluntarily accepted that whatever else happened in the Prison Service, there could not be industrial action because of the risk to public safety and, I have to say, to the welfare of prisoners. We saw on 29 August the serious risk to prisoners if there is industrial action or a strike: they are literally locked in their cells with no idea when the next meal or exercise is coming, and the quite large number of prisoners with health needs have no idea when their medication will next turn up. The POA accepted that, but now in a round robin to MPs it says that it only signed up to the agreement under duress—its exact words. But that is not the case. It did not sign up to it under duress, but voluntarily. Indeed, I think that the matter went to a delegate conference. The association examined every single word in that agreement. It signed it and accepted the case voluntarily that I am now making to the House, which is that we have to have arrangements for dealing with industrial disputes in the Prison Service other than the possibility of industrial action because of the risk to the public and the dangers to the welfare of prisoners.