Examination of Witnesses

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:48 am on 12 July 2011.

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Jonathan Ledger and Steve Gillan gave evidence.

Photo of Philip Hollobone Philip Hollobone Conservative, Kettering 11:32, 12 July 2011

We will now hear evidence from the National Association of Probation Officers and the Prison Officers Association. For the record, please would you be kind enough to introduce yourselves to the Committee? If either or both of you would like to make a short statement to the Committee, you are invited to do so.

Steve Gillan: I am Steve Gillan, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association.

Jonathan Ledger: My name is Jonathan Ledger. I am general secretary of NAPA.

Photo of Philip Hollobone Philip Hollobone Conservative, Kettering

May I ask for indications of which Members would like to speak? At the moment I have Helen Goodman, Andy Slaughter, Dave Watts, Yvonne Fovargue, Elfyn Llwyd, Alex Cunningham and Mike Crockart. Going from Opposition to Government, I will take Mike Crockart second, then the running order as I have described. This session ends at 12 o’ clock.

Q 22

Photo of Helen Goodman Helen Goodman Shadow Minister (Justice)

One of the Government’s main objectives is to increase significantly the number of prisoners who work while in prison. At the moment a minority of prisoners work for around 20 hours a week. The Government’s proposal is to get almost all prisoners working 40 hours a week. It would help the Committee if we understood the implications of that for running the prisons, particularly from Mr Gillan. What sort of staff oversight would this entail? What other investment might be needed? Could he tell us something about the practicalities of this?

Steve Gillan: First, we broadly support the ethos of prisoners working and being trained for when they are released so that they can hold down proper jobs as part of the rehabilitation process. However, when Kenneth Clarke announced it to the Conservative party conference last year, we were taken by surprise by the announcement of a 40-hour week, bearing in mind that the core day had previously been cut.

Q 23

Photo of Helen Goodman Helen Goodman Shadow Minister (Justice)

Could you explain what the “core day” is to the Committee?

Steve Gillan: The core day refers to how long prisoners are out during a day and at the weekend. A few years ago, that core day was slashed simply because there was not enough money to go around. The Prison Officers Association was not in favour of that because it actually locked prisoners up for longer. However, we are broadly in support of prisoners coming out to work. We do not think we can get anywhere near 40 hours a week, because, first, there is not the space, and secondly, there are not the resources with the ongoing cuts over the next four or five years.

Q 24

Photo of Helen Goodman Helen Goodman Shadow Minister (Justice)

If 40 hours was achieved, could you explain in more detail what sort of impact it would have on staff—for example, would it mean employing more people or longer hours?

Steve Gillan: There are different ways of looking at it. You have to look at the detail, but at the moment, there is no detail and that is our problem. For example, prison officers work on average 39 hours a week, so it is ridiculous to consider that prisoners should be working for 40 hours a week when the staff are not going to be there to implement that. That is one of the resource implications that we would have. Of course, prison officer numbers are actually going to fall as prisons are closed, with further market testing on the horizon.

Q 25

Photo of Helen Goodman Helen Goodman Shadow Minister (Justice)

Could you say something about what the change in the prisoner’s core day has been over the last 10 years?

Steve Gillan: Answers to parliamentary questions about prisoners work activity show that, on average, it was about 13.9 hours in 2009-10. Last week I was in Holme House, which has managed to get 100 prisoners working up to 34 hours a week, but that is keeping prisoners out over lunch time. The governor’s worry is that once budget cuts start to kick in over the next three or four years, he will have to cut back again.

Q 26

Photo of Michael Crockart Michael Crockart Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West

It is a pleasure, Mr Hollobone, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time. My question relates to implementing the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996. We have heard evidence  this morning that there is a feeling that prisons are not equipped to employ people meaningfully. Do you agree with that, and if so, what can be done to achieve such employment?

Steve Gillan: It depends what prison you are looking at. Some local prisons are severely overcrowded, and do not have the correct work spaces and workshops that prisoners can go to, to do the work. For example, Holme House is a newish prison, but it has over 1,000 prisoners and only 100 of them were allocated to the workshop doing 34 hours of work. That is a tiny proportion in relation to Holme House. We would have a problem with other aspects of prisoners working and the amount of money involved, and I am happy to elaborate on that later.

Q 27

Photo of Michael Crockart Michael Crockart Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West

The point that previous witnesses in the evidence session made was that it need not necessarily be the type of work you are talking about—the workshops that are already there. If we are talking about external companies coming in and setting up a business within a prison, then surely it would be up to them to set up the infrastructure to allow those prisoners to do the meaningful work. Is that not a better way forward?

Steve Gillan: That would be a very interesting concept but the reality is there is no meat on the bone at this moment in time, and we do not know what individual companies may be talking about. We are broadly supportive of prisoners working, but it has to be meaningful, constructive and worthwhile, not putting knives and forks in plastic envelopes for airlines, which does not assist at all. Of course, you have to look at the situation with regard to companies that may well be laying people off on the outside and coming into prisons and setting up work forces. I am not sure how the general public would view that.

Q 28

Photo of Michael Crockart Michael Crockart Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West

You major on the word “meaningful”— that it has to be meaningful work—and then give the example of putting knives and forks together. Plenty of people outside prison are doing that type of work and regard it as meaningful because of what it achieves for them. Surely that is what we are trying to get for the prisoners. That sense of meaningful work is in supporting their families and giving something back to society.

Steve Gillan: I was not demeaning anybody in outside industry. I thought that what we were trying to do was to rehabilitate prisoners so that they did not come back. Unfortunately, for the past 25 years or so we have been playing political football with the issue, and we have not got anywhere. To be honest with you, the real issues are alcohol abuse, drug abuse, mental health issues, education and social exclusion. Until investment is made in those areas, we will just go round in circles.

Q 29

Photo of Andrew Slaughter Andrew Slaughter Shadow Minister (Justice)

In so far as there will be any new resources for dealing with rehabilitation, and particularly if there will be enhanced community punishments, they will come through payment by results alone. Does that cause you any concerns, and how do you see that working?

Steve Gillan: It does not cause me concern at this moment in time, for the simple reason that we do not know enough about payment by results. The first pilot was started at Peterborough, but we are awaiting the results of those pilots, which are not due out until 2015. To lay all your eggs in one basket, as we have just seen in the market testing process of Doncaster, where it was said that the payment by results ethos was in effect what got them the contract—it has not been measured and we seem to be playing a little bit of fast and loose and a little bit of Russian roulette with the criminal justice system.

Jonathan Ledger: On that point, I agree with Steve. We know very little at the moment, and the signs are that the project in Peterborough will take some time to assess. It seems to be something of a side issue in terms of those working on the ground and those who are dealing with community supervision on a day-to-day basis. At the moment, that has had no impact at all. We are concerned that there are issues about how you measure payment by results, and what you are looking to find out. Are you looking to improve things such as recidivism rates? We would all support that, but the problem is that with some sort of profit motive or financial incentive around it, we fear that the wrong motivation may begin to underpin a payment-by-results system. That is something that we would expect to be rigorously scrutinised.

Q 30

Photo of Andrew Slaughter Andrew Slaughter Shadow Minister (Justice)

I do not know whether you have had a chance to look at the Civitas report that came out this week. It seemed to say that rehabilitation as it is envisaged in the Bill would not work for repeat offenders, and that not enough consideration could be given. From your own experience—particularly Mr Ledger—do you feel that that is the case?

Jonathan Ledger: I missed the beginning of what you said.

Q 31

Photo of Andrew Slaughter Andrew Slaughter Shadow Minister (Justice)

The Civitas report commented on rehabilitation as the Government envisage it at the moment, and stated that Civitas was not persuaded that it would work in the case of persistent repeat offenders. Do you think that more needs to be done to deal with that problem?

Jonathan Ledger: From the NAPO perspective, we have argued consistently—we argued this very strongly in our response to the Green Paper—for an increase in resources for the probation services in order to focus on offenders, particularly those in the category that you have just described, so that we could target the problem behaviour that they were presenting and intervene intensively and frequently at an early stage post sentence. The concern is that something of the revolution has been lost in the resulting Bill—we welcomed much of the original Green Paper—and we fear that there is now less of a focus on how we intervene positively to change lives, to use the old chestnut. That is how we protect communities and reduce the number of victims in our communities. It would be true to say that there has been a shift away from the focus on early intervention and rehabilitation, which may have unfortunate consequences.

Steve Gillan: I have seen that report, and I concur that we have had a big problem with prolific and repeat offenders. Again, I refer to Holme House and some of  the excellent work that is going on there at the moment. Prisoners are identified as being prolific and prison officers are attached to them now in a multi-agency approach from outside in the community. We did this sort of thing probably 20 years ago, when it was called through care, but because of resources it goes by the wayside. It is very important that we get back to that ethos of investment. If we invest in the right areas, the prison population will come down and the general public will get what they want anyway—an efficient prison and criminal justice system.

Photo of Andrew Slaughter Andrew Slaughter Shadow Minister (Justice)

I could ask about resources but I think my colleague is going to ask about that. I will stop there.

Photo of Philip Hollobone Philip Hollobone Conservative, Kettering

A lot of your colleagues are lined up to make contributions, starting with Mr Watts.

Q 32

Photo of Dave Watts Dave Watts Labour, St Helens North

We heard earlier from witnesses that they are keen on the strategy and they believe that the resources should be transferred to the community programmes that are an alternative to a prison sentence. Given that you said that you seem to need more space and more resources, what will the impact be if there are cuts in the overall budget, then further cuts from your budgets to pay for improved services in the probation service, drink prevention and all the other things? What practical impact will that have on prisons?

Steve Gillan: That is a very interesting analogy—I do not have all the answers to that. However, in 1993-94 there were approximately 43,000 prisoners and now we have 85,000 prisoners and roughly the same number of prison staff to work with them. Prisoners have doubled but staff have not. We have to get back to multi-agency networks working. There has to be a balance between community-based stuff and prison because the reality is that the general public want to feel safe. Sometimes the general public get forgotten in all this.

Jonathan Ledger: The important point here is that we are complementary services—prison and probation. We should not be set against each other in any way, certainly not in the context of resources and cuts. The key work that prison staff do is essential to the good work that the probation service does when we are dealing with those who have been released. It is vital that you look at this in the round rather than seeing us as competing against each other.

Q 33

Photo of Dave Watts Dave Watts Labour, St Helens North

Is it your view that there is no scope for transferring resources away from the Prison Service itself? You would need to have the same resources that are there if you wanted to do things like the Work programme and more work in prisons. It seems to me—I do not know about other members of the Committee—that there is a contradiction here. There seems to be the easy hit. First, the Treasury takes a lump sum out of the system, then we transfer some into preventive services in probation and youth offending and that comes from your budget when you are saying that there is not that scope.

Jonathan Ledger: Yes, it means constantly adjusting the balance and often coming up with the same result, unfortunately. But the resources are interlinked in that sense. We have argued from a NAPO perspective that fewer people should go to prison for short sentences—we  see little point in that. Steve will give his own view on this from the POA perspective. We also think it is not always easy for prisons to intervene in a positive way and they end up being warehouses essentially, rather than positively intervening in the lives of those they have custody of. That argument is not about taking resources away. It is about freeing up resources in the prison system to be able to work effectively in the way Steve described earlier.

Steve Gillan: I do not think it is right to rob Peter to pay Paul. Everybody clearly does a good job, whether it is probation services, social workers or prison officers. Certainly, I am clear about what my members believe: they are the forgotten service. Resources have been rushed away. There is this rush to privatisation and market testing to make it cheaper. We believe that it will be more dangerous because we do not believe the prison population will drop. In fact, it has increased slightly since last July.

Q 34

Photo of Yvonne Fovargue Yvonne Fovargue Labour, Makerfield

I should like to move on to the duty to explain sentences. Do you feel that there are some offenders who do not understand the sentences? What resources do you think you need to be able to explain that fully to them?

Steve Gillan: Sentencing has always been very confusing. I do not think the general public understand sentencing that well. For example, my members have to be trained in what the sentencing policies are and what sentencing means. I think it is too complicated, and it needs sorting out rather quickly.

Jonathan Ledger: The probation service has a key role to play here. Recently we have been concerned about what we see as a slight dumbing down in the quality of court reports that can be done for the courts. When I was a practising probation officer, the pre-sentence report was absolutely key to sentences in terms of making a judgment. One of the things you did, through the process of preparing a report, was to explain sentences to those you were working with, so the offenders got the explanation from you of whether it was going to be a custodial sentence or some sort of community sentence.

I do not want to harp on about resources, but the focus on speed and shortening processes is not helping us, because we can explain these things, go through them and prepare people for whatever the outcome of the court appearance is going to be. It is an interesting point that you have made and again we are worried that we are not able to do as good a job as we used to.

Q 35

Steve Gillan: That is partially correct. I believe that you cannot just look at the Bill in isolation from everything else that is going on with the cuts generally: police budgets have been cut, probation, even voluntary and community services. Inevitably—and there is some evidence out there—we believe that when unemployment goes up, crime will go up. So we do not believe that the prison population will fall as dramatically as anticipated; and, of course, with the U-turn on the discount rate of 50%, there is now a black hole in that budget of £130 million. We are greatly concerned about how that is going to be achieved.

Q 36

Photo of Elfyn Llwyd Elfyn Llwyd Shadow PC Spokesperson (Wales), Plaid Cymru Westminster Leader, Shadow PC Spokesperson (Constitution), Shadow PC Spokesperson (Foreign Affairs), Shadow PC Spokesperson (Home Affairs), Shadow PC Spokesperson (Justice), Shadow PC Spokesperson (Defence), Shadow PC Spokesperson (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Would you support the notion put by some authorities that it is time to have a full audit of everybody currently in prison; to look at those with mental health problems, or drug problems and so on, who are not a danger to society and consider whether they should actually be in prison?

Steve Gillan: Clearly, we believe that some people should not be in prison: the mentally ill and self-harmers all go into that envelope. If there is engagement and a process further down the line that can divert them away, we would fully support that. It would free up the prison population to a manageable degree, so my members can get on with the proactive work that they are paid to do on behalf of society.

Jonathan Ledger: In terms of Mr Llwyd’s question, reflecting on what I said earlier, that is why we are so disappointed in many ways by some of the shifts in the Bill away from the Green Paper that originally prompted it. Certainly the elements that may be added that I know have been discussed by Government, like introducing more mandatory imprisonment for certain types of behaviour and effectively reducing the discretion of the judiciary, are disappointing. They have run the risk of increasing the prison population considerably, meaning that prison staff have to deal with longer-term and disaffected prisoners who are being retained longer.

There is also an impact on the work of the probation service because judicial discretion is very much based on the advice and assessments that we provide. Again, where there is less discretion to be used, there is less opportunity to explore fully the reasons why offending behaviour has taken place and identify in those reasons ways in which you can deal with it and address it in the hope of stopping it in future.

Q 37

Photo of Alex Cunningham Alex Cunningham Labour, Stockton North

Mr Gillan talker earlier of the need not to rob Peter to pay Paul, but what we actually have is both Peter and Paul being robbed to pay the Treasury. Your organisation has campaigned hard against cuts in prison, probation, the youth offending service and others, so is it actually realistic for the Government to have this aspiration for greater community sentences when there is such a cuts environment?

Steve Gillan: There are a couple of ways of answering that. We want to see the prison population fall, but we want to see it fall so that communities are safer and reoffending decreases. I do not see how that can be married up with the budget cuts over the next four or five years in every area and walk of life. I just do not see how that will actually happen and I think, as we have said continually, that the criminal justice system will eventually go into meltdown.

Q 38

Photo of Alex Cunningham Alex Cunningham Labour, Stockton North

What about the victims? There are issues about what this means for victims of crime and our communities.

Jonathan Ledger: I think that the probation service is often attacked for not focusing enough on victims. We have always argued with that, because actually the focus has been strong in the probation service for a good part of 20 years now—a significant shift. Yes, you are absolutely right about the dangers that you mentioned, and the cuts and probation staff’s ability to work in the community. We are potentially less able to protect those communities  if there are fewer qualified, able staff, who know their communities and the type of offending behaviour with which they are presented, to intervene. A lot of this work is unseen; much of the work of the probation service is seen only when something goes wrong.

Q 39

Photo of Alex Cunningham Alex Cunningham Labour, Stockton North

So the Bill, with its cuts and everything else, is actually putting our communities and victims at further risk?

Jonathan Ledger: There is no getting away from the fact that cuts are bad news for any service. If you believe in the probation service, as I do, you know that it has an impact on criminal behaviour. If the probation service is less able to do its job and is affected by having fewer staff and resources to do so, then that must have some identifiable impacts on criminal behaviour.

Q 40

Photo of Ben Wallace Ben Wallace Conservative, Wyre and Preston North

Perhaps one of the ways you could free up some money is that there are 3,400 prisoners who have completed their tariff but are serving indeterminate public protection sentences. We spend roughly £120 million a year on their custody. Would you agree that getting to grips with that backlog and finding them an appropriate setting—whether that is under the aegis of the probation service or not—would perhaps be a good way of finding alternative funding?

Steve Gillan: Certainly the IPP system should be sorted out so that people are getting on the right course and are not just lost in the system. We would welcome suggestions through the Bill process that would adequately address that while at the same time protecting the general public from violent crime.

Jonathan Ledger: The difficulty is that high risk offenders attract a huge amount of media attention, and if we are to work constructively with them in the community, we come back to resources. We need to make sure that everything is in place in terms of staffing and support to ensure that we can do the job properly, to maintain the public’s confidence and ensure that we intervene in a positive way. People being left without the situation being addressed is not good, because essentially they lose an understanding of why they are still in prison. The impact of the sentence is undermined as well.

Q 41

Photo of Helen Goodman Helen Goodman Shadow Minister (Justice)

Steve Gillan mentioned the importance of multi-agency working, a point also made by Juliet Lyon in the previous evidence session. Do you think we should have a stronger duty to co-operate between the Prison Service and the probation service, and also with other services in the community—local authorities, housing associations, maybe health authorities—so that people do not fall through the cracks?

Steve Gillan: Absolutely. It is essential that you have what I call old school throughcare, so that we track the offender right through to where they are going. If you do not have that, there is nothing worse—and we have seen it time and again—than an offender being released into the community, the same environment that they came from in the first place, only to come back six weeks later. I do not think that that helps the taxpayer or prisons, and we have seen it for the last 25 years. We have had situations where young mothers have left prison with their babies and had nowhere to go. To me that just cannot be a society that we want to accept.

Jonathan Ledger: The partnership commitment is very strong in the probation service. It has been developed over years across the probation service in England and Wales to deal with the sort of issues that Steve raised. In the current climate my anxiety is that a lot of those partnership agencies—voluntary, charitable organisations— are at risk and under threat. They are struggling to maintain the sort of service that they provide. That will certainly be a huge loss to the probation service in its work. Clearly, we cannot do everything, and we need to be able to refer to specialist services and support agencies to do our work in communities.

Q 42

Photo of Andrew Slaughter Andrew Slaughter Shadow Minister (Justice)

The Bill seems to give quite a lot of new responsibilities to prison officers and the probation service. There are quite complex changes to sentencing, which you will have to understand and explain. You may want to correct us on this, but we have been told that the cuts will mean 10,000 prison officers having to leave over time and up to 10% cuts in probation services this year, by region. Have you experienced that level of cuts before, and what difference do you think that will make to the service that you can provide?

Steve Gillan: No, we have not experienced that level of cuts before. It is completely new to us, and there is a lot of fear among my members, because they want to do a decent job on behalf of the general public. I fear that they will not be able to do that.

Photo of Philip Hollobone Philip Hollobone Conservative, Kettering

Order. I am sorry to interrupt, Mr Gillan, but under the terms of the programme motion, I have to bring this particular session to an end. I thank you and Mr Ledger for your time this morning and for giving evidence to the Committee.