Clause 12
Offender Management Bill
3:15 pm
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister (Home Affairs), Home Affairs; Harborough, Conservative)
I just want to develop some of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate mentioned in the debate on clause 11. They relate to the powers of prisoner custody officers to detain suspected offenders. I seek clarity about the geographical limits of PCOs to detain. Under new section 86A(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1991:
“A prisoner custody officer performing custodial duties at a contracted out prison shall have the following powers”.
Are those powers limited to the geographical area of the contracted-out prison, or can the PCO exercise powers of detention outside the limits of the prison grounds? That might be relevant, because under new section 86A(3), a person who makes off while subject to a requirement to wait can be guilty of an offence.
The expression “makes off” might need further explanation. Does it mean get clean away, or simply move away in a way that is contrary to the request of the PCO? I can see that if the person gets clean away, that will present a problem for the relevant officer, because he will not have the power to chase after him or call for assistance. Perhaps something needs to be done about that.
I also invite the Minister to explain how new section 9A(2) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 bites. It says:
“Where the officer has reason to believe that the person is committing or has committed an offence...the officer may—
(a) require the person to wait with him for the arrival of a constable for such period as may be necessary (not exceeding two hours); and
(b) use reasonable force to prevent the person from making off while subject to a requirement under paragraph (a).”
Does that mean that the custody officer has under that legislation the power to lock people up? Does the person wait only in a waiting place, say a public room in which he is told, “Please don’t move”, or does the expression “reasonable force” imply that having ordered a person to do as he is told, the officer can physically put him in a room and lock him up until a constable arrives? Those matters will no doubt be made clear during the training of PCOs, and it might be that they are powers that public service prison officers have and private service prison officers do not. It is important that legislators, at least, should know what the Government intend so that we can better understand the context in which the clause operates.
Let me say one more thing before the Minister replies. One of the useful things that we gained from the informal evidence session last week was that Mr. Martin Narey, who had been in the Prison Service for 25 years before he moved to NOMS and then to Barnardo’s, candidly told us that he had spent a long time in the Prison Service thinking that the use of the private sector in the prisons world was wrong. He even used the expression “immoral”. However, by the time that he had finished, he was utterly convinced that the private sector was a useful addendum to the prison system. It is interesting how the Government have followed his lead and, although the Labour party used to be vehemently opposed to private sector involvement in prisons, it now seems to be a champion of it. Is it not interesting how these things change?