rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what were their reasons for deciding not to renew the appointments of three members of the board of visitors at Haslar Prison in the triennial review on 31st December 2000.

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords and to the Minister, who have stayed until this late hour to deal with a very important question--one which affects not only Haslar but has implications for the management and support of boards of visitors as a whole.

Let me start by acknowledging that there was a breakdown in relations between the governor, Mr McAlley, and the board of visitors at Haslar. Matters came to a head in May last year, three months after his arrival at the prison, when the board decided unanimously to conduct a race relations survey at Haslar on the lines of NACRO's prisons and race survey. The idea was approved by the Minister when he met the chair, Katheryn Harrison, on 23rd May.

However, when she tried to see the governor to discuss the arrangements with him, he was too busy. She therefore dealt with his deputy. The governor, however, was violently opposed to the idea and wrote to Ms Harrison, on 8th June, saying that he viewed her conduct as,

"underhand, subversive and a blatant attempt to undermine my authority as governor".

He concluded:

"You will not, under any circumstances"-- which was underlined--

"conduct a survey of the detainees at Haslar".

Ms Harrison replied that the board had every right to carry out the survey, and the Minister also intervened, causing Mr McAlley to back off, two days before the survey, when he wrote to Ms Harrison asking how she wished to proceed on the Sunday and what he could do to help. Almost immediately afterwards he wrote to all members of the board, reverting to the stand he had taken before and insinuating that the operation was being undertaken without the Minister's knowledge or approval.

On 23rd June, when the survey was published, the governor wrote to the board urging them to withdraw it, and threatening that if they did not he would signal to the Secretary of State that,

"I find your continued presence in my establishment intolerable".

He accused the authors of lying; and he insinuated that they had padded the survey with extra forms which had not been completed by or on behalf of inmates. Two members of the board then resigned, cowed by the governor's threats and wild insinuations.

On 4th July, one of the members made a formal complaint against Mr McAlley's behaviour over the survey, saying that he had interfered with the board's statutory responsibilities. Here I should like to ask the Minister to state unequivocally that the plain meaning of the rules is that boards of visitors may conduct surveys of this kind.

The complaint also stated that members of the Haslar board had been subjected to bullying and intimidation by the governor and that the governor had made libellous statements about one member of the board.

Four other complaints of bullying and intimidation were made against Mr McAlley during his short tenure of the governorship of Haslar. One investigation found that officers,

"have been caused stress, embarrassment, humiliation and discomfort"--

Further, that the governor,

"failed to effectively undertake these critical duties-- those were the duties specified in Combating Harassment and Discrimination--

"all the more of a failing given his position as a Governing Governor".

The inquiry recommended that Mr McAlley be posted to a job where he could receive closer managerial supervision than is provided to a governing governor--in other words, he should not be appointed to such a position and, in the meanwhile, he should receive,

"support, guidance and training in order to overcome his perceived shortcomings in Personnel Management".

Did any of this get through to Mr Paul Boateng at the triennial review; and was he made aware of the unique circumstances in which the governor had been simultaneously under investigation following complaints by the chairman of the POA, senior management and a member of the board of visitors?

Afterwards, in October, Mr McAlley was transferred to another position and the staff have since been informed that Mr Bennetts, the Governor of Shepton Mallett, is to take his place. Will the Minister tell the House when Mr Bennetts will take up this appointment, bearing in mind the frequent warnings of the Chief Inspector against leaving establishments without a governing governor?

I believe that the Minister received an incomplete and tendentious account of events at the prison from the board of visitors secretariat, and that this was the real reason for the decision not to reappoint the three members. The briefing drew heavily on the inquiry into the complaint made by one of the three--an investigation which, as I shall show, was flawed by irregularity and unlawfulness.

In the first place, the chair of another board was appointed to the inquiry panel, the first and only time that it has ever happened in such an investigation, clearly showing that an ulterior purpose not mentioned in the official terms of reference was in mind. Will the Minister tell the House at whose instigation that happened? Who nominated Mr Foster, and was he on the database of trained investigators maintained by the investigation co-ordination unit?

Secondly, it became apparent from a list of 78 questions notified to the Haslar chair by the lead investigating officer, Governor Max Morrison, that it was the intention to probe the conduct of the board members, and not that of Mr McAlley. Any such inquiry ought properly to have been conducted under DC4/99, the document setting out the procedure for dealing with complaints about the conduct of a member of a board of visitors. That contains a number of procedural safeguards which were circumvented by dealing with the complaints under the pretence of inquiring into a complaint against the governor. The area manager herself mentioned DC4/99 in a letter to the Haslar chair, so she was well aware of the distinction.

Thirdly, PSO 1300--the instruction dealing with the conduct of "all types of investigation" other than those concerning boards of visitors, and in particular, as in this case, ostensibly into serious allegations against a senior member of staff--states that,

"persons identified and criticised ... must be given a reasonable opportunity to respond ... the senior Investigation Officer should himself forewarn individuals of likely criticism and provide them with opportunities to respond ... Any material that is to be disclosed which criticises any individual must be brought to the attention of that individual in writing with a specified deadline for response ... The interviewee must be informed of the purpose of the investigation and issued with written advice about the use that may be made of their evidence in any subsequent disciplinary hearing or court".

The first three of those requirements were contravened; so was the spirit of the fourth; so was the requirement that the commissioning authority must consider any reasonable complaints about the procedures and respond to them. The chair wrote to the commissioning authority to complain that the 78 questions she was supposed to answer appeared to be a witch-hunt against the board. The CA replied to the letter without addressing the point. The irrelevance of the questions to the original terms of reference was also drawn to the attention of the board of visitors secretariat and to the attention of the Minister.

In the past three years, only 11 members of boards of visitors have not been re-appointed at their triennial review. Apart from the three cases that we are considering today, two members were not re-appointed at Holloway in 1999 and two were not re-appointed at Standford Hill, although they were never formally notified of the Minister's decision. Those two members at Standford Hill have been in limbo for the past 15 months. When can they expect to be told what their status is?

After the Holloway episode, an inquiry ordered by the then Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, recommended that,

"The triennial review system should be overhauled to make it more transparent and fair".

Can the Minister tell us what was done about that advice? If it has been ignored, Ministers are culpable of perpetuating what was described by Rhona McMeekin in an article in the AMBoV Quarterly as "institutionalised injustice". The problem is still that the triennial review is used as a means of getting rid of members by the secretariat, acting in concert with the Prison Service, and carrying out its wishes in order to avoid the procedural safeguards that would otherwise have applied. The secretariat reports to Ken Sutton, the Director of Regimes, and, through him, to Phil Wheatley, who is Deputy Director General of the Prison Service. Your Lordships may think it unsatisfactory that boards of visitors, which are meant to be the independent eyes and ears of the Secretary of State, are nevertheless treated as part of the very system that they are supposed to monitor.

It is extremely difficult to get good members or, indeed, to get any members to serve on boards of visitors. Almost all boards are short of their proper numbers. They are short of the statutory complement of JPs; they are short of working people; and they are short of younger people. In view of what has happened at Haslar, as well as at Holloway and Standford Hill, it will be even more difficult to get anyone with a mind of his or her own to volunteer. The danger is that boards will be not independent watchdogs but the poodles of the Prison Service.

I very much hope that the review that is being conducted by the honourable Member for Gosport, which is about to report, will recommend, as I do now, that the secretariat be divorced entirely from the Prison Service. That change cannot occur too soon.