Clause 21 - Appointment of Chief Inspector
Police and Justice Bill
3:30 pm
Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
These amendments are about the proposed creation of a chief inspector for justice, community safety and custody. No doubt our clause stand part debate will give us the opportunity to discuss the overall merits of creating the combined inspectorate. We will come later to amendment No. 44, which will enable us to discuss the independence of the inspectorate, but the amendments before us deal specifically with whether it is right to subsume the inspectorate of prisons into the new, combined inspectorate. Considerable worry has been expressed outside the House that that will compromise the independence of the inspectorate of prisons. The inspectorate has a special place and therefore needs to be treated differently. I shall explain why.
First, it should be clear that special conditions are attached to the inspection of prisons. It is obvious that they are closed environments in which neither we, as parliamentarians, nor the public know what happens unless someone explains what is going on. That makes the operation of the prison inspection system different from other aspects of the criminal justice system that may be more visible to the outside world and media scrutiny. We therefore rely absolutely on having a robust, independent prisons inspectorate to fulfil that task.
Secondly, prisons, by definition, have great power over the lives of individuals, so the inspection process needs to take particular care that prisoners are treated properly and that their human rights are observed. The director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Frances Crook, observed that
“The primary purpose of prison inspection should be to consider human rights and the implementation of internationally agreed standards. When dealing with the loss of freedom the very highest standards of accountability are necessary.”
I am sure that we all agree.
Thirdly, the chief inspector of prisons reports directly to the Home Secretary and Parliament. The worry is that, if the chief inspector had broader responsibilities and a wider brief, that would reduce the intensity of their focus on the treatment of prisoners, which, as I explained, is particularly important. The chief inspector of prisons has a right to go unannounced into any prison in the country at any time. In fact, half of all inspections are unannounced. This week, I asked a former chief inspector of prisons what notice he gave for the inspection of prisons. He said that he gave no notice, and that he would descend on prisons. I am sure that we all agree that that is the right practice to adopt.
The chief inspector of prisons has not only the right to speak directly to Ministers and the Home Secretary, but the right, which the current inspector and her predecessors have exercised, to speak apart from Ministers and to express worries about the condition of prisoners. That right makes Governments uncomfortable, but I am sure that we all respect it and recognise that it is necessary.
Fourthly, there is a major difference between the prisons inspectorate and the other chief inspectors. They tend to come—I think that they almost always do—from the services that are being inspected. That is how they arrive at the positions to which they are appointed. The chief inspector of constabulary is a former chief constable. Other chief inspectors act as principal service advisers to Ministers and sit on departmental management boards. That makes them rather less independent than the prisons inspector, who generally does not come from the Prison Service, but is an independent person of high standing. The prisons inspector does not act as a principal service adviser to Ministers and does not sit on departmental management boards.
I am sorry that the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety has just left the Committee because I was about to raise a particular point. When I met her recently to discuss police reorganisation—I was grateful for the briefing that she offered me—to my surprise, one of the inspectors of constabulary was present. I had not been given notice of it, although I was grateful to meet him and to be briefed by him and the Minister, but it indicated the extent to which the inspectorate and Ministers sit together. In that case, the inspector of constabulary was specifically advising the Minister on police reorganisation, but that is not the relationship that an inspector of prisons would expect to have with the Home Secretary or other relevant Minister.
Fifthly, the proposed inspectorate is designed to deliver the Government’s principles of inspection, which are drawn up by the Audit Commission, but that body does not inspect; it audits. It is designed to provide public assurance and service improvement that is proportionate to risk, and it offers value for money. However, regulation and audit are different from inspection. Regulation and audit can reasonably be carried out by internal teams. Especially in the arena of human rights, inspection cannot and must not be carried out internally. It is essential to separate the two.
Our concern about the provision is reinforced by the fact that, under clause 25, Ministers will be given powers to direct the chief inspector, and that includes the prisons inspectorate. It seems dangerous to ignore the history of the independent prisons inspectorate. Its independence arose from an Act of Parliament of 1835. It remained unchanged until 1962, when the Prison Commission was abolished. Significantly, it was replaced by a prison department within the Home Office.
Home Office inspection, which was not independent, continued until 1981, when a report chaired by Mr. Justice May specifically recommended the re-formation of an independent inspectorate, not least because of the loss of pubic confidence in the objectivity of in-house inspection. The danger of creating a combined inspectorate, of which the prisons inspectorate will be part and which is capable of being directed by Ministers, is that we will recreate a system of prisons inspection directed by the Home Office of the sort that so undermined confidence in 1981 that a judicial inquiry recommended that it cease. We do not seem to learn the lessons of the past.
The concern that I express has been raised by a number of organisations. The Prison Reform Trust and Action for Prisoners’ Families say that there is little doubt that the Bill threatens to dilute the authority and independence of the prisons inspectorate—just at the point when such bodies would be needed to meet new UN requirements and when international criminal justice delegations are preparing to adopt the British model. Similarly, the Howard League for Penal Reform has expressed concern about the provision. It said that, ideally, it would like clause 23 to be dropped from the Bill. Clause 23 gives the prisons inspector specific duties, and I suspect that the Howard League for Penal Reform means that it would like the prisons inspectorate to remain independent.
Our position was expressed elegantly by the former chief inspector of prisons, Lord Ramsbottom, in a letter to The Times of 17 March, which was co-signed by Lord Hurd of Westwell, the former Home Secretary, and Lord Dholakia, the Liberal Democrats spokesman for foreign affairs in the other place. They wrote:
“We deplore the suggestion and request the Government to withdraw the Inspectorate of Prisons from the proposed merger, allowing it to continue to carry out the role for which it was designed, and which it has carried out to the apparent satisfaction of everyone other than those who fear the accuracy, objectivity and content of its reports.”
Amendment No. 143 would remove the word “Custody” from clause 21(1), meaning that the prisons inspectorate would not form part of the new combined inspectorate. Were the amendment to be agreed, there would plainly have to be subsequent amendments to the rest of part 4.
As an alternative, amendment No. 146 proposes a delay in the establishment of the prisons inspectorate element of the combined inspectorate. In other words, the combined inspectorate could go ahead, but the prisons inspectorate would remain separate. However, if an independent review commissioned by the Home Secretary concluded that it would be desirable for Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons to be replaced by the chief inspector, that could happen, but only after a minimum period of five years and only subject to an order to be laid before both Houses of Parliament. Parliament would have a proper vote on whether it considered that to be a good thing. By agreeing to that amendment, the Committee would allow the combined inspectorate to be established unhindered, and it may judge that it would like to do that.
These are very serious matters. We shall come to the justification for the combined inspectorate; the Government have serious questions to answer about whether they are confident that the independence of the inspectorate, so important for the reasons that I set out, is going to be maintained under the provisions. We fear that it is not.