27
Examination of witnesses
James McEwen, Alfie Jackson and Cohen Lewis.
Q1 The Chair: Welcome to all three of you to our very first session on our inquiry into fire safety in prisons. I would be grateful if you could each introduce yourselves.
Cohen Lewis: Good morning, everyone. My name is Cohen Lewis. I am the deputy director for estates and the national safety group in HMPPS.
James McEwen: Good morning, I am James McEwen. I am the chief executive officer of HMPPS.
Alfie Jackson: Good morning. I am Alfie Jackson, the interim director for prison policy and analysis in the Ministry of Justice.
The Chair: Thank you all very much indeed. We are going to kick off with Baroness Hughes.
Q2 Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Thank you, Chair. Good morning, everybody. First, could you describe for us how you see the current level of fire safety risk in the prison estate? Can you tell us whether there has been an independent assessment of that level of risk, to inform your view?
James McEwen: I can. Our current assessment is that the level of fire risk in prisons is high. Prison is a high-risk setting for fire; that is inescapable, so the inherent risk is high. We are a locked environment. We have a number of people held in prison who are determined to start fires, and we have a number of other challenges, as well as a very vulnerable and complex population in some instances. We sometimes face aggression from prisoners because people set fires for reasons when we go to suppress and manage fire incidents. There is also the built environment. Many of our prisons are Victorian; that makes fire safety measures difficult to install. But, as I am sure we will get to, there is a wide range of mitigations that we have outside of those constraints that bears down on the risk, and Cohen can talk to those if helpful.
In terms of independent scrutiny, we are subject to audit by CPSFI. We have internal audit teams: fire engineers who assess local management strategies and plans, and our audit and risk committee, which documents and tests our fire safety risk within the agency. That risk forms part of the overall risk that is reported around some of our estate and property risk at the MoJ level. So again, we get scrutiny from non-executive and independent members of our audit committees.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: How intensive is that level of scrutiny and audit at each prison? Is it once a year? Is it more frequently than that? How intense is that scrutiny?
Cohen Lewis: CPSFI looks to inspect each prison every three years, so broadly in line with HMIP. Our internal audits, which are undertaken by our in-house fire engineers, happen quarterly in parallel with those measures that James has just set out. As part of our accreditation with British Standard 9997, we invite audit from the British Standards Institution, and that happens annually.
Q3 Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Okay. On deliberate firesetting, we have been informed that, as you were saying, James, about 98% of fires are started deliberately. We understand that about two-thirds of those are associated with vapes. Is anything being done, particularly given light of those statistics, to try and reduce those risks?
James McEwen: Absolutely. The stat on deliberate fire moves around, but it is normally around 95%. It might be 95% in the last year; some years it is 98%, but that figure is materially correct. We have done some really great work—which Cohen should take all the credit for, so I will pass on to him to talk about this—to go to market to find a much safer vape. We are already seeing the benefits of that, and Cohen can talk about it. But I would say at the outset that, when we find a way of tackling the source of ignition for fires, prisoners are very creative. They sometimes have time on their hands, and they create new sources of ignition, so it is a constant effort to try and work out how we improve safety. Cohen, do you want to describe our work in this area?
Cohen Lewis: Thank you, James. You are right. We are constantly looking to adapt to new threats and changes in behaviour. Vapes have been the ubiquitous problem in prisons for a long time. We worked with a company called Moja, which is a leading manufacturer of vapes, to develop something we call the safer vape pen. In essence, it is a frangible product, so when a prisoner tries to vandalise or interfere with it to access the hot coil, it disintegrates. We have seen some really positive movement on our fire safety stats. We have not had a full year’s worth of data yet, but we are really pleased at the rate by which vape-related fires are coming down.
As James has said, every action has a consequence. Prisoners who are determined to set fires are trying to identify new ways to set fires in prisons, and we are seeing changes in behaviour moving towards electrical devices. As we have set out in our written evidence to the committee, we are also looking at quite sophisticated technology around arc faulting, which relies on subtle signatures in current to cut power where we think prisoners are using a kettle or a toaster, or something else, instead of using a vape. We are really looking at every avenue that we can.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: As you say, this is a locked environment. Does the possibility of a real catastrophe keep you awake at night?
James McEwen: We are constantly thinking about our fire safety risks. Sadly, we have thousands of fires set in the estate every year. The vast majority of those are dealt with without injury or loss of life, but, on some occasions, there is injury and loss of life, and that is a matter of huge regret.
The nature of some of our prisons, and some of the work that we do on wider mitigations, means that fire risk is often contained in the fabric of the cells. In Wandsworth, the walls are a metre thick, so if someone sets a fire in the cell, that, plus some of the strategies that we have to make sure that prisoners do not accumulate property—the fixtures and fittings, and soft furnishings in rooms are highly fire retardant—reduces some of the risks. The brilliant work of the team, our fire engineers and the local mitigation plans we have mean that, although I came into this job really worried about fire safety risk and am worried overall about fire safety risk, I also know that we are doing some really good work to put downward pressure on that inherent risk that we see in the estate..
Cohen Lewis: I would just add that we have a well-trained staffing group who refresh their training annually, so all our prison staff will receive training on the use of—
The Chair: Can we come on to that in a bit more detail, which I know Baroness Bertin will do? Just before we move on to her, can we go back a little to the beginning of the question that you were asked? How would you describe the current level of fire safety risk across prisons? Can we get some numbers? For example, across the prison estate as of today, how many cells do not have proper fire detection?
James McEwen: There are 19,000 places where fire safety improvement works are needed. For context, if you go back to 2008-09, the equivalent number was 61,000. There has been significant progress made, but there are 18,000 or 19,000 places—
The Chair: What is a place?
James McEwen: A prison place—so a cell.
The Chair: Are we referring to it as a cell, whether it has one or more people in it?
Cohen Lewis: We count them in places. So that could be two prisoners in one cell.
The Chair: How many prisoners are you currently saying are in cells with no adequate fire detection equipment?
Cohen Lewis: It is 19,000 places, or 19,000 prisoners.
The Chair: Sorry, there is a difference, because some cells have more than one prisoner. So how many? If there are 19,000 cells, how many prisoners are in them?
James McEwen: I think Cohen was correcting me. The 19,000 is places, not cells—so 19,000 prisoners.
The Chair: It is 19,000 prisoners, which has reduced, as you said, dramatically from quite a long time ago. At what point did your department become aware that you were not going to meet the 2027 target?
James McEwen: Let us understand that the 2027 target was in two parts. The position as previously set out was that either prison places would be remediated to be fully compliant by 2027 or those places would come offline. The first part of that is: at what point did we understand that it would be impossible to remediate all the places to that timetable? At the outset, there was a credible plan to deliver to that target timetable. The biggest impact, the biggest shock, was the collapse of a company called ISG, which was one of our prime contractors. That had a significant effect on our ability to deliver the fire safety works that we had planned. ISG collapsed in autumn 2024. We were then working with our commercial teams and procurement experts to look at the lead times to bring in new contractors to complete works that had been either started or designed, with the boots-on-the-ground work being undertaken, or where the design work behind some of our fire safety measures had been conducted, by ISG. After we had done that due diligence and looked at the timetables for the procurement at that point, it became incredible to think that we could deliver full remediation by 2027.
The second part relates to the judgment as to whether we could credibly take thousands of places offline, given where we were likely to head on the remediation. The key determinant of that was the Sentencing Act. As you know, that has been before Parliament and we have committed to an annual statement. That is the place where we do all our detailed planning work to look at the short, medium and longer-term prison supply and demand position. At the turn of the new year, when that was being published, it was quite clear that the public safety consequences of taking offline the places that had not been fully remediated were intolerable. At that point, the Government wrote and were transparent about their plans.
The Chair: So that I am absolutely clear, in 2024, following the collapse of ISG, you did a review of what could happen. At that point, you were in a situation where you knew it was not possible to have full remediation. Those are your words. Correct?
James McEwen: In autumn 2024, after the detailed planning, yes, that is correct.
The Chair: So, in autumn 2024, you knew that the previous Government’s commitment in relation to 2027 was not achievable?
James McEwen: No, because the commitment was in two parts. Either they were remediated—I was in the Committee when the commitment was made—or the cells would be taken out of use. The point at which it was clear that the commitment could not be kept was when it was clear that we were unable safely, for public protection reasons, once we had worked through the impact of ISG and as we tracked the passage of the Sentencing Bill, to do the full due diligence on the prison population. Ministers then made the judgment that it is not appropriate to decant those cells.
The Chair: I get all of that. I was heavily involved, as members of this committee were, in the Sentencing Act and the Gauke review. The whole purpose of that was actually to reduce prison overcrowding from what it was back in 2024. You already knew then of the problems of prison overcrowding, so presumably you were already aware of the difficulty of taking cells out of use. Where full remediation could not take place, you knew that you could not take cells out of use because you were already overcrowded at that point, which is why the Gauke report was requested.
James McEwen: There were plans. At that point, it was known that we would be in a position where the prison population was unsustainable and there would need to be a change in approach. It was clear that there would need to be an intervention by the Government to reduce the prison population. The question was how far the prison population could be safely reduced.
The Chair: I am really sorry. I understand all that and am not being difficult. I just want to understand quite simply whether, bearing in mind the problem of overcrowding and the need to do something about it and what then subsequently happened, you knew in 2024 that you could not do full remediation by 2027. You also knew that it was not possible to take large numbers—we are talking about thousands—of cells out of use because of the overcrowding problem. What I am trying to understand is why, in 2024, the department did not announce that it would not achieve the 2027 target, because you knew in 2024 you were not going to do so.
James McEwen: I think that is where we diverge. We can look at the timelines—Alfie, you were close to this. It is not correct to say that we knew in 2024 that the impact of measures to reduce the prison population were not going to deal with the overcrowding and create sufficient headroom. Our estimate of that number, how many places might have been not remediated at that point, was not 19,000 but between 6,000 and 9,000. That has moved over time. There were plausible paths to think Parliament and the Government might introduce legislation and Parliament might approve it, which might have meant that we were not resiling from the 2027 commitment. That is my understanding of the position.
Alfie Jackson: I am sure committee members will be familiar with the Dame Anne Owers report into the prison capacity crisis and that we were days away from the collapse of the prison system and, indeed, the criminal justice system, at several points in the preceding years. We knew, as James said, that there was going to have to be some kind of intervention. We also knew there was going to be a general election in 2024. To come to the conclusion that it was not possible to meet that commitment would require us to conclude that there was no way for a Government, off the back of that prison capacity crisis, to take steps to bring the population down further. At that point, we did not know that because we were still working out the exact details of how many cells would need to be offline and we did not know what the Government would want to prioritise.
The Chair: Okay. The committee will take note of that.
Lord Hogan-Howe: The Chair is trying to get to the bottom of this issue. I am not quite clear about one thing. Obviously, this firm collapsed in September 2024. Was it the sole provider of this work?
James McEwen: It was the prime contractor in nine of around 40 projects that we have—about a quarter of them.
Lord Hogan-Howe: That was the first indication you had that there was going to be a problem. You obviously had the prison overcrowding problem and you were not quite sure whether you could get more spaces. When that supplier dropped out, what was the calculation then about the 2027 deadline? You introduced it as a major problem.
James McEwen: It was a major problem.
Lord Hogan-Howe: If both were true, the overcrowding and the lack of supply, I am not sure what impact the failure of the supplier had on the 2027 deadline and what you recalculated it as.
James McEwen: I fear I am repeating myself. There were two parts to the deadline. First, could we remediate the cells? ISG failure impacted our judgment about being able to deliver that safely. After the due diligence work was done, we asked: who can we get in? What is the timetable for reprocurement? That took some time. So, probably on the cusp of 2025, it was clear that it was difficult for us to foresee a path where we were going to get full compliance in the estate.
Separately, at this point, there was still the possibility that the Sentencing Bill could be introduced and the measures could be sufficient to both manage overcrowding and deal with the residual places that were likely not to be compliant. That was the judgment at that time. That judgment has changed through the course of the passage of the Bill. The annual statement was then introduced. That crystallised a point in time—a solid base on which the Government can make a decision on their ability to honour the 2027 deadline.
Lord Hogan-Howe: If the measures on overcrowding had not kicked in, what was the calculation about the failure of the supplier on the deadline?
James McEwen: Sorry, can you repeat the question?
Lord Hogan-Howe: If I understand it correctly, obviously you anticipated that overcrowding was going to be a problem in allowing any supplier to do this work. Were there vacancies in the cells? Could you get enough spare cells? One of the suppliers failed, but you had no guarantee that the overcrowding problem would be resolved because it was a general election et cetera. When the supplier failed, what calculation was made then, without any measures on overcrowding, about the impact on the deadline for implementation of these automatic fire devices?
James McEwen: The judgment made, once we had understood the full impact of ISG on the procurement timeline, was that we would not be able to remediate our way out of that commitment. Therefore, if the commitment was whole, would we be in a position to take the places off?
Lord Hogan-Howe: What I am not sure about is: by when did you think you would do it?
James McEwen: As we have set out, we are trying to do this work as quickly as possible.
The Chair: We will pick up the timeline in a bit more detail a little later. We will move on. I wanted to have a more general session at the start, but we will now speed on a little.
Q4 Baroness Bertin: Good morning, everyone. Can I just bring it back to the practicalities on the ground in terms of how fire risk is managed in prisons? In particular, could you talk through what happens when there actually is a fire?
Cohen Lewis: As you would expect, there are significant mitigations in place both at prison level regionally and nationally. I will keep it brief for now but if the committee wants to explore in more detail, I am happy to do so.
I will give you a flavour of the defences in place at prison level. As James mentioned earlier, the built environment is one of the biggest challenges for us. Things like compartmentation are important for stopping smoke spread, and the use of detection, suppression and ventilation is hugely important at site level. That is why we put such great emphasis on those systems and services. Volumetric control was touched on earlier—how many items a prisoner can have in his or her possession, and therefore how many ignition sources you have at cell level. Of course, there is staff training and staff’s ability to use respiratory protective equipment, use fixed misting devices and access prisoners within five minutes, which is a key timeline for us—after five minutes, the risk of harm from smoke inhalation increases. There is a huge package at prison level that I could talk at length about.
That is underpinned by national and regional policies around fire risk assessments. We talked a little earlier around audit. Fire engineers will audit the sufficiency of local measures on a quarterly basis. We also look regionally and nationally at how we manage arsonists and known firesetters in the estate as well.
Baroness Bertin: Thank you for that. Can I come to the specifics of staff training? As the expert sitting in front of us today, are you confident that all staff know what to do in the event of a fire?
Cohen Lewis: Yes, I am. Where we have had major fires in the past, staff have acted quickly, heroically and in line with our statutory guidelines around how quickly we should access prisoners and evacuate them. Most recently, at a recent fire at Highpoint, staff acted quickly to evacuate 105 prisoners within six minutes. That is a huge achievement and is not one they reached on their own—it is because we drill them annually on how to treat fire when it occurs.
Baroness Bertin: In a previous report, we spoke a lot about how there was not a great deal of line management because of staff shortages and just the nature of the work. You have to be on duty and there is not a great deal of time to train and give feedback. I want to interrogate whether you are absolutely 100% happy that everyone knows what to do in the event of a fire. If you asked the staff that, would they have that same clarity of answer?
Cohen Lewis: You are always going to have degrees or spans of confidence, whether you are a new member of staff or an experienced member of staff. The diversity of the staffing group is important. But our training regime for prisoners is robust. As we say, we refresh it annually. It is not true to say that we are complacent about the training offer, however. We are not content with just relying on the current training package. That is why we are working to deploy new virtual reality training so that staff can more regularly access firefighting training on the go without travelling offsite or taking time off the landings—to respond to your point around staff shortages. We are continually looking for ways in which we can develop and enhance staff’s ability to fight fires and respond to them.
Baroness Bertin: Do you have a staff survey where they can give feedback as to whether they feel confident in the event of a fire?
Cohen Lewis: Not in such specific terms, no. We will receive feedback after we deliver fire safety training but not as a kind of holistic staff survey and not on that specific question.
The Chair: Just before we move on, so that we understand the statistics of this in terms of the fires that occur, you mentioned earlier that there are, sadly, a growing number of fires in prisons—over 3,000 in the last year. Do you have an analysis of the breakdown of the causes of those fires? We are well aware that some will be deliberately set by prisoners themselves. What is the quick breakdown of the causes of fires? If you have not got the figures to hand, can you drop us a note?
Cohen Lewis: We can do so. The majority of fires are set as a result of bullying debt. There is a nuisance-making component—I will not deny—and there is an element of prisoners looking to transfer to other prisons or other parts of a prison, but the majority tend to be coercion or as a result of being in a difficult situation.
The Chair: So the majority are not caused by problems within the estate itself?
James McEwen: Over 95% are deliberately set. Around 80%, in terms of the ignition source, was vapes. That is why the safer vape pilot is now rolled out, and it is an impressive piece of work from the team. We are following that through with electrical arcing to try and get ahead of the next threat in terms of ignition.
The Chair: That is very helpful.
Q5 Lord Moraes: You started answering the question from Baroness Bertin, but I want to go back to your current fire detection and suppression technologies. What do you currently have, and is it fit for purpose—I am presuming there are problems—and, if not, what do you need?
James McEwen: Cohen will take you into the detail. We have some places in the estate where we have full automatic fire detection in cell, appropriate ventilation and in-cell fire suppression, where we take a misting approach. We then have other places. Some of the 19,000 places have domestic smoke devices outside the cell, where we have not yet done our work on automatic fire detection—we should come back to that because it is a major change in strategy, having taken the decision recently to prioritise more quickly automatic fire detection. Then we have other measures. Where ventilation and suppression are not meeting the regulations, we have mitigations, including portable misting devices, which can be taken to cells and where we can start to suppress the fire.
Cohen Lewis: I do not have a huge amount to add. The majority of prison places are equipped with automatic fire detection. For those that are not, we deploy domestic smoke detection, which is not as effective, and we do not rely on it as a compliant measure. We want to move as quickly as we can into an automatic fire detection scenario.
That being said, systems and services alone are not enough to prevent fire. You need to have well trained and well understood policies. Much like in this building, if the fire alarm were to go off, our safety would still rely on our evacuation of the building. Both those things have to come together to make sure that we are safe at the hands of fire.
James McEwen: We are looking at new technology all the time. We have challenges. Automatic fire detection is one of the more rapid measures that we can roll out. But when we are wiring that in, it is still quite challenging in older prisons in particular. So we are now looking at wireless technologies that would allow us to implement AFD even more quickly in the estate. We are constantly trying to go to market and see what is available to improve our posture.
Lord Moraes: I have a follow-up question. Given the unique structure of prisons, what you have described in terms of fire starting and the state of the estates, is there something out there that you would want? You are obviously investigating whether what you need is out there, or is it just a continual studying of what is out there? Do you need something now, for example?
Cohen Lewis: We are working internationally with our partners to learn from best practice. We do not pretend that we have all the expertise in the MoJ, and we lean heavily on the market. That is why we lean heavily on other jurisdictions to learn from them. We are extremely proud as an organisation to have achieved British Standard 9997 accreditation, because that is a gold standard, independently recognised, in how we manage fires in the prison estate. On James’s earlier point, when new technologies come, we want to pilot them to see how effective they are. So, we think integrated smoke detection and wireless detection systems can have a real impact while we are on the journey to delivering AFD. We need to learn more about how it works in old Victorian prisons with metre-thick walls. But we are testing that continually and working with the market to provide those solutions.
James McEwen: I am sure you will be taking evidence from the CPFSI as part of your inquiry, but what I hope it will say to you, if you look back over the last 10 years, is how much we have professionalised our approach to fire management and fire risk. Given the measures that we are putting in place, the governance, the wider systems, the culmination in the British standard being met, the CPFSI will tell you that there has been a sea change in capability across HMPPS and the MoJ. We have a constructive relationship with the CPFSI, which is challenging but also helpful. It supports us in continuing to make sure that our staff’s capabilities are at the cutting edge. In my time in the department, that has been a transformation, and it is one that was necessary. There is more to do, but it shows how serious we have been in terms of getting on top of this risk.
Q6 Baroness Buscombe: That neatly brings me on to the question of current inspection and oversight arrangements. Would you care to talk a little about that, including the step-away notice? Is that fit for purpose?
Alfie Jackson: We have touched on some of this, so I will try and be brief but am happy to deal with follow-up questions.
In terms of external scrutiny, the main inspection body is the CPFSI. As Cohen mentioned, it does a rolling programme of inspection of all prison sites and identifies any areas where we are either missing an important fire safety system—the automatic fire detection that James mentioned—or where the CPFSI identifies any kind of weaknesses in our local management approach to what we would do in the event of a fire at that site. It would then issue a Crown enforcement notice to us.
The enforcement powers of the inspector over directly operated Crown prisons are limited to these enforcement notices; it cannot prosecute us directly. But if the CPFSI feels that we have not been able to comply with an enforcement notice—for example, we have planned to bring in the automatic fire detection, but we know we are not able to do that for two years because we have our overall programme to work through—it has issued us with these step-away letters. As James says, I am sure you will take evidence from the CPFSI on the purpose and effectiveness of those.
In our understanding, the step-away letters put on record the CPFSI’s position that its inspection is complete, and HMPPS is on notice about its failure to comply with the enforcement notice. It is, obviously, a slightly unusual regulatory arrangement with that kind of Crown enforcement. Our assessment is that it provides independent regulatory scrutiny and judgment, as well as public accountability, but avoids the constitutional, operational and practical difficulties involved in the state trying to prosecute the state.
Beyond the CPFSI, as Cohen mentioned, we have audits from the British Standards Institution on our 9997 fire safety standard and a range of internal audits, which we can talk about if it is helpful. Our assessment overall is that this is adequate to our situation. We are not comfortable or complacent. We know we are not doing enough to be compliant with the fire safety standards, and that is why we have this programme of work. But we are trying to do that as quickly as possible without breaching the other difficult public safety risks that we mentioned earlier.
Baroness Buscombe: It sounds quite laborious in a sense, but then all regulation tends to be. Does it interfere, though, with the practical business of day-to-day managing something that is highly complex? Please comment. Also, do you find it helpful to share intelligence across the whole estate on this? Are you using technology to be able to do that, rather than notices, notes and the old-fashioned approach? I feel I have touched on something here.
James McEwen: Let me talk about CPFSI and then I can answer the second part of your question. In government, we rely on a three-lines-of-defence model. The first line of defence is local fire safety practitioners understanding the local context, the fire risks at their level, complying with national policies about the need for appropriate fire management strategies et cetera. In the second line of defence, we have the internal audit team—our fire engineers, who go out and assure me, as the accounting officer for the organisation, and our board that those measures put in place in the first line are appropriate. Then CPFSI provide that third line of scrutiny, that independent scrutiny. CPFSI’s testing helps us test whether our judgments about where the risk sits are well made or not. We really welcome that; we do not find it onerous.
Baroness Buscombe: You like the rigour.
James McEwen: We like the rigour. It certainly helps me, as chief executive, really understand a broad spectrum. As we said, given the nature of what we do, the inherent risk of fire on the estate is high. What they allow me to do is compartmentalise, alongside our own plans, where the risks in the estate are highest, and that gives me a much deeper assurance that the plans we have got in place are the right ones. That is how the regime works with our own internal assurances.
Q7 Baroness Buscombe: I am now going to ask a supplementary question. It is not really a supplementary to this, except, to me, it goes to the heart of everything that we are discussing today. One of you touched on managing arsonists. What are the consequences for somebody who deliberately starts a fire?
James McEwen: They will be part of an adjudication process, and, in many instances, that offence will be reported to the police. The police may investigate, and there may be further charges. Cohen, do you have any specific examples?
Cohen Lewis: There are currently around 1,000 known firesetters in the estate. Prolificacy is a problem, but not the problem that we focus on. Most fires are set outside of that cohort. Does your question relate directly to the punishment of that offence, and adjudication?
Baroness Buscombe: Yes, and thereby perhaps deterrent.
Cohen Lewis: And thereby potential deterrent. Where it is serious, an adjudication can offer awards of extra prison days. The biggest deterrent is where damage has been caused through an act of vandalism and therefore the police become involved and criminal proceedings pursue. I would say that that is the strongest lever that we have.
James McEwen: So, changes to your privilege. If you are on an enhanced regime, because you otherwise demonstrate good behaviour, you can then be moved back down to a basic regime. The adjudication process can add days to your sentence from within prison, but, if it meets the threshold for prosecution, you could find yourself back in front of the bench.
Baroness Buscombe: I am slightly concerned about this because, given the huge percentage of all fires started deliberately, the deterrent is clearly not working. On police involvement, how often do they bring forward prosecutions? What is the ballpark percentage?
Cohen Lewis: I do not think we have a percentage. Not all fires are equal. The vast majority of fires are wastepaper bin-sized, so we are able to manage them internally. You are right that our incentives or disincentives may not quite be weighted appropriately, but, where there is a serious fire, the police will not hesitate to intervene and support us with prosecutions.
The Chair: This is a really interesting point. It would be really helpful if you could just drop us a note with a bit more detail on this, because what we can do to try and prevent fires in the first place is clearly a big issue.
Baroness Buscombe: I would love to know what the budget is for this.
The Chair: We will come on to budget a bit later. Could the witnesses just drop us a note? I call Lord Dubs.
Q8 Lord Dubs: Good morning. Can I turn again to the question of the delayed improvement works, to which you have already referred? What further steps are you taking to mitigate the fire risks, given the delayed improvement works? Added to that, would you like to comment on the coroner’s comments on the tragic case of Clare Dupree? What are the implications of what the coroner said?
James McEwen: I will start with the second part of your question. We profoundly regret Clare Dupree’s death. We have written to the coroner with our observations on their judgment, which Cohen can go through in some detail. We accept that the lack of automatic fire detection in Clare’s cell was a contributing factor to her death—which was the judgment. Today, we have set out some of the measures we are taking to improve the position across the estate. As you would expect us to do with a coroner’s court, we have responded to its judgment, and our work continues to drive down this risk and try to prevent more death and injury in the estate. Is there anything further?
Cohen Lewis: Nothing on Ms Dupree’s death. On the additional measures, we have talked quite a lot today about the robustness of our existing measures. We have made some additional resource available to those sites impacted by ISG’s collapse. We have made additional FM resource available to make sure that we can more robustly undertake fire alarm testing and that sort of thing. Coming back, we have talked a little bit already about the resources already in place to manage fire.
James McEwen: I will talk about how we are looking at our programme of work to remediate the fire risk in the estate. I have been in my role about eight months now. When I arrived in the role, our programme of work was diligently designed to move prison by prison to fully remediate all critical measures across the big three: automatic fire detection, ventilation, and suppression. Ventilation and suppression works typically take longer, but the most important thing for safety, in terms of injury and loss of life through fire, is early detection. What Cohen and the team have been doing with me is looking at projects that we could rapidly pivot towards delivering automatic fire detection, prioritising that early delivery. That is the most important safety measure in many of our prisons, although not all, and, where there are other presenting risks, we will focus on those. We are pivoting towards “safer quicker”, or “most safe most quickly”. That means much more rapid deployment of AFD over the course of the next few years. That is going to have some really great benefit in making the estate much safer much more quickly. It is part of the pathway to full compliance.
It is clear that delaying AFD for other measures in some prisons—for example, leaving a prison without AFD while we complete ventilation work—would be irrational if your focus is on safety, so we have moved towards rapid delivery of AFD where we can. That will start to have immediate safety benefits, which will quickly accrue. That is something very tangible that we have been doing.
Chair, if I may, I was reflecting on your earlier question about the tenor of the conversation about our ability to understand where we were against our programme of work when were under acute capacity pressure. Even when we had the most acute pressure in the system, we had a commitment from the MoJ, within HMPPS, and from our Ministers that there would be a minimum of 1,500 cells out of use at any one time to deliver fire safety and other life-critical safety works, and we have not wavered from that. For most of the period, we have had more than those 1,500 cells out. Even when we were in the most crowded and difficult times, we made sure that there was momentum in the fire safety programme. I did not want to leave you with the impression that we were stuck in neutral and not able to work in the estate, and then ISG came along. We have been constantly working, even through the execution.
Q9 The Chair: I just have a straightforward, factual question. When this committee receives, as we do, the figures for the prison population, and therefore whether it is at capacity, beyond capacity or below capacity, are the 15,000 places that you say are effectively out of action—
James McEwen: Fifteen hundred.
The Chair: Sorry, 1,500. Are the 1,500 noted in that somewhere? How is that taken into account?
Alfie Jackson: The figures we publish are the total number of prisoners and the total operational capacity, which is effectively the amount of space that we think we have to use. The 1,500 would be separate from that.
The Chair: Right. So when you give us the operational capacity, you do not take off the 1,500.
Alfie Jackson: We have already taken off the 1,500.
The Chair: It is already off. So it is included?
Alfie Jackson: If you imagine there is a theoretical total amount of spaces possible, we take off the 1,500 that we cannot use for fire safety—it is not exactly 1,500 at any point in time but in that category. Similarly, there might be cells out of use for other reasons, if they are damaged or whatever. That gives us our total operational capacity.
The Chair: That is all I was asking. Thank you.
Baroness Buscombe: Can I check on that?
The Chair: Very quickly.
Baroness Buscombe: Is that freeing up of those 1,500 cells due to the early release scheme?
Alfie Jackson: Sorry, we should clarify. We are not freeing them up. If anything, we have more than that taken off now because we have more space in the system, and that is allowing us to do more fire safety.
Baroness Buscombe: Is that because of the early release scheme?
Alfie Jackson: It is a consequence of a number of measures, including that, which has left us with more space available in the system. We hope in the months to come, as some of the measures involved in the Sentencing Act come into force, that that will free up more space that we can then use for fire safety.
James McEwen: It goes the other way around. We are clear that there had to be at least 1,500 places out at any one time. That then supports our operational judgment as to how many places are available. From that, there are judgments about how you manage the demand, the places available and, therefore, what you have to do to manage demand in the system is driven from that baseline of, at the very least, 1,500 places, wherever possible. We are in a place where, at the moment, it is possible and we are doing much more than that. We are constantly reviewing supply and the demand to try and maximise our ability to get the fire safety works done.
Q10 Lord Hogan-Howe: I have one quick question following Baroness Buscombe’s question. In the information provided about the number of people who are investigated for fires, can we get some information about how many investigations and how many charges there are, how many attend court and what their sentences are? You can imagine that, for somebody serving life, the chances of getting back to court are limited. It would be interesting, not to be critical but to understand, because deterrence will not work for some people. It would be interesting to hear the numbers.
James McEwen: We will do our best. You can imagine how hard data is to come by.
Lord Hogan-Howe: Thanks for the clarification on the 1,500. But my understanding is that the 1,500 allows the builders to do their work. They are the spare capacity you have left for them to put in the AFD.
Cohen Lewis: It is not spare capacity; it is accounted for before we do any of our capacity planning. We say from the outset there will always be, under any circumstances, 1,500 places at least. Incidentally, today it is 1,800 places, but there will always be a minimum of 1,500 places available to the workforce to undertake.
Lord Hogan-Howe: It allows that spare capacity.
James McEwen: Yes, that is where we have the work.
Q11 Lord Hogan-Howe: My question is all about—we talked a little about this—the past decision made in 2024 and what impact that had on the work plan. This is really about the future, given the present circumstances and your experience of how that prison numbers reduction is helping or not. What are you now looking for as a timeline for the future here in 2026? By when will it be resolved? If the short answer is “I am not sure”, what are the milestones by which you would judge whether you are achieving some progress and hopefully getting to a point where you can say, “We have done this”? I support what you have said about prioritising automatic fire detection as the principal thing, so that you notice when there is a fire and then you have to do something about it. So I would be supportive of that, but what is the impact on your plan?
James McEwen: Let us start with automatic fire detection, because we have good confidence in our plan and some good milestones, and then we will come back to the overall issue of defining the endpoint—I have a philosophical difference of opinion about whether that is a helpful concept or not.
Cohen Lewis: The first 10,000 AFDs will be delivered by the end of next year.
Lord Hogan-Howe: By the end of 2027?
Cohen Lewis: By the end of 2027. That leaves a net 9,000 AFDs to deliver. They will come in on a rolling basis from that point. But we are surging resources at the moment, optimising our programme against—to your point—additional headroom in the system so that we can take a maximalist approach to rolling this thing out and accelerate the delivery of AFD to get us to 10,000 for next year.
Lord Hogan-Howe: You know the next question, which is: by when will you have done it? To be fair, you are also increasing the prison estate at some point—I know it is not immediate—but, given the present prison estate, by when will it have been achieved with a reasonable estimate?
James McEwen: We expect AFD to have been completed by the early 2030s. One of the lessons we have learnt is that it was not helpful to say that, by 2027, X would have happened definitively or Y consequences. That was offered as a good-faith commitment, but outside of our control we had a prime contractor that fell into administration. We have had many changes in the prison population since then—our modelling is quite sophisticated, but it is a complicated system—and it is hard to know with certainty where that is tracking. So it would be unwise of me to say that, by point X, we will definitely have delivered.
Also, I want our estates team, our fire team and our contractors to be constantly thinking about how we can get this done sooner. So the commitment is that we are moving as fast as we practically and reasonably can at any point, balancing public protection. As we said in our earlier conversation, we cannot simply take those cells out of use and have thousands of cells out of use. What we can do is stretch every sinew to make sure that we are looking at every technological development to see whether it could improve our critical path. I do not believe we will have completed that work in this Parliament. If I can, I will, and we will celebrate that success.
Lord Hogan-Howe: I can see why you are hesitating to be certain. You have two variables that you do not directly control.
James McEwen: And many more.
Lord Hogan-Howe: One of those that you have more control over is the builders—the people who do the work. You can mitigate the loss of a contractor by having somebody else who takes up the slack. There are various things you can do.
James McEwen: Of course.
Q12 Lord Hogan-Howe: Perhaps you can talk to us about how you decide which prisons and which cells to prioritise so that we can understand. If you can get 30% during a year, but you have two cells left in Cumbria, so what, in a way. How do you get to the majority being okay?
James McEwen: We have talked a lot about the layering of the planning and assurance work that we have done, what you can bring to life and how that adds up to a plan.
Cohen Lewis: We produce a tool called FiSIL—the fire safety improvement list—which draws on data from across the system. It will bring data in from our fire risk assessments: how many outstanding works there are, the current proximity to major works and how far away the site is from having a major upgrade. But it will also tell us how many arsonists are in that prison, how many fires have been set in the last six months and a host of other data. We take all that together and assign each prison a score. Every prison in the country is ranked. I do not want to oversimplify the approach, but number one is the highest priority, and number 120 would be the lowest, where you would expect systems to be in place. Broadly, that gives us our guiding principle for where to invest resources and where to mobilise the workforce to undertake the works.
On your point about if there are two cells in Bedford and three here, there is always low-hanging fruit that we should be targeting. Some prisons are easier to do work in than others, and it is quicker, cheaper and easier to mobilise the workforce—I am thinking about the open estate, for example. We do not want to be blind to the fact that, just because priority number one might take nine months to deliver, we should also take the opportunity to do priority number 50 because we have the resources and the ability now to do it. So, it is a sophisticated system, which I would be happy to go through in detail.
The Chair: Actually, not only would we be happy, but we would be very keen to see the report in which you have claimed you have “great confidence”—your phrase. Can I be clear that we would like to see the details of the plan that you are talking about, please? Does that cover solely AFD or does it include suppression as well? Where are we on suppression?
Cohen Lewis: It includes everything. It is a national risk picture for the prison estate. It is also shared quarterly with the inspectorate, which validates it on our behalf as well. It matches its national risk picture.
The Chair: Just so I am clear, both the NAO and the PAC have recently written reports, both of which say that the risks are not being reduced quickly enough. PAC talks of the slow pace of fire safety upgrades. Presumably you have been in touch with both those committees and assured them that things have changed.
James McEwen: We have written to all interested committees about our change to the 2027 dates. We have responded to PAC and any NAO recommendations in this area, and I am sure I will be enjoying the company of the PAC at some point this year. I am very happy to give an update to them and to the Justice Committee.
Q13 The Chair: We would be grateful if we could see correspondence you had with those committees about the change of plans as well. Can I just move us on, because you have developed a new plan—a new way forward? You have looked at all the risks and so on. You have done a prison-by-prison analysis, as I understand it, and we are going to have an opportunity to have a look at that—how you have decided priorities and all those sorts of things. We want to be clear about the barriers to achieving what you want. If I was to draw up the list of things—I wrote them all down—it would include specialist equipment that is tamperproof; we do not want to have ligature points in cells and all of those things. You also have to deal with the issue of overcrowding and with the issues that come from the age of the estate. But the other thing you have to look at is your other refurbishment programme in the prisons. Presumably you are seeking to integrate this work with the other refurbishment work that you are going to do. There is a linkage between those, is there?
James McEwen: Yes, there is. If we have taken a whole wing out for refurbishment work, we will ensure, when it is brought back online, that it will meet the fire safety regulations in full.
Q14 The Chair: Since we had the private conversation outside the room just before, let us therefore use an example of which I have given you notice: Block K in Wandsworth prison. You closed it 18 or 19 months ago to do fire safety work, shower improvements and boiler upgrades. To date, as far as I am aware, almost nothing has happened. Why?
Cohen Lewis: Places at Wandsworth were not closed for fire safety. They were closed for stability reasons. The decision was taken to remove prisoners from that prison to bolster stability. It has suffered for a long time with acute staffing shortages. That is the primary driver. Taking the opportunity in a central London prison with two empty wings, we sought to mobilise a fire safety project.
To your earlier point, I could not agree with you more. These projects are complex infrastructure upgrades in their own right, taking place in a Victorian setting and a live operational environment, so it takes time to mobilise those works. I am pleased to say that we are on site at Wandsworth now, starting the fire safety works. I would disagree with you slightly that we have not done anything. We have spent £100 million on healthcare and CCTV and site-wide shower upgrades, with the fire safety elements now starting, but it does take time to mobilise those projects.
The Chair: This concept of taking time to mobilise a project baffles me somewhat.
James McEwen: It is to get through the design and the planning. The live operational environment cannot be underestimated. We need to hire people to escort contractors around sites in many circumstances—I am not sure of the set-up at Wandsworth, with the level of escorting required—so that when people are on site, they execute the plan as planned. The lead time before boots on the ground can be longer than people would expect, but that is because, in that environment, you have to go in knowing exactly what you are doing and what you are facing, having done the survey work and having the workforce available to do it and go in and deliver. That can take time.
The Chair: The timescales would be exactly the same were Wandsworth a private prison? It is nothing to do with MoJ bureaucracy or anything like that?
Cohen Lewis: No. Fundamentally, it is down to the complexity of the works. The other thing I would say about Wandsworth, just to add to its complexity, is that when those places were taken out of use, there was already a major project on site delivering a new healthcare unit—a multi-year project that you might be familiar with. Wandsworth is a large prison, but it does not have a lot of space. Having multiple large infrastructure projects on site at any given point is just not practical. It cannot accommodate that number of workforces. I am just trying to sort of convey some of the additional complexity at the site.
Baroness Buscombe: Is that £100 million, did you say, spent so far? Or is that for the entire project?
Cohen Lewis: So far, on a whole new security infrastructure upgrade at the site, 20 shower upgrades and refurbishment.
Baroness Buscombe: A hundred million pounds?
Cohen Lewis: And a new healthcare unit.
Baroness Buscombe: That is completely staggering. I am sorry; that is extraordinary. Who audits what you do and how you spend it? Is it the National Audit Office?
James McEwen: NAO.
Q15 Lord Hogan-Howe: The Chair introduced the idea of the private estate compared to the public estate. The data we have suggests that, in fact, there are more fires on the private estate than on the public one, which is surprising given that most of the private is more modern, I think. Do you know why?
Alfie Jackson: There is a difference in the sort of prisons and the sort of prisoners that they therefore hold between the public and the private estate. In particular, there are no open prisons in the private estate, which is where we tend to hold the lowest risk.
Lord Hogan-Howe: Do you get more fires in open prisons or not?
Alfie Jackson: Generally not, because that would normally be a sign that someone is not suited to being in that environment and they would be returned to a closed prison.
James McEwen: You have to control for the types of prisons and the prisoners. It is actually quite hard to say, “The rate of fires being set in the public estate will be depressed because we have got the cat D”—
Lord Hogan-Howe: In the part of the estate which controls the same grade of prisoner, with one part private and one public, there is no difference in the fire risk?
Alfie Jackson: We should go away and look at that and we can write to you. We can take that question and look specifically at that.
Lord Hogan-Howe: I only ask you the question because the figures suggest it. If that is not true, it is not worth the question, but I am intrigued by it.
James McEwen: We will look at whether the evidence bears that out. Even in prisons with a similar sort of function, if you have a very different cohort in them you will have a different result, so it is quite hard to draw the comparison. We will go away and have a look at whether the hypothesis that more are being started in the private estate—controlling for as many variables as we can—comes up with anything interesting and then get back to you.
Q16 The Chair: Just so we have it on the record so we can have discussions with other people coming to give evidence, can you give us a very brief answer to the question about the new prison estate—the building that is going on? We know of the delays and all of that. Presumably they have built-in arrangements for both AFD and suppression in all of the new build. Is that correct?
James McEwen: Yes. All the new build will be built to all the relevant building standards, including fire.
The Chair: Just so I am clear on that, in the light of the last two or three years of experience, has the specification for the new prison build in relation to fire safety changed in any way, or have any changes been only because the official bodies have required it? Have you learned any lessons for new prisons from your experience of the existing ones?
Cohen Lewis: Specification has not changed, but the fire safety systems are not built to last for ever, so we tend to replace them every 10 to 15 years. We are thinking actively, for example, about HMP Berwyn’s fire safety system.
The Chair: Let us move on. We have already touched on the issue of training, but I just wonder if Baroness Hughes has got anything further she wants to add.
Q17 Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Yes. In particular, we know what the policy document says as to what training staff should be given; we have been given that information. But our previous work on prisons identified that there was a very big gap in training generally—in what the policy said and what people actually got. Can you just tell us, first of all, how far the delivery of training to staff on fire safety is actually monitored? What assurance can you give us, if any, that the amount of training that the policy document says people should have—when they are appointed, in their induction, when they are transferred, when it is repeated annually, and all of that—actually does take place? Do you register it? Do you record it?
Cohen Lewis: Yes, it is part of their required learning, which is recorded.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Who records that somebody actually had a training session on fire safety?
Cohen Lewis: Ordinarily, training instructors who deliver the training.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Are they fire safety instructors or general training instructors?
Cohen Lewis: These will be fire safety instructors, but training is undertaken by different people, depending on what it is.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Is that audited centrally, so that you have a view of the extent to which training is being delivered across the estate?
Cohen Lewis: We have a view into who is being trained. On the extent to which that is audited independently, we capture everyone who undertakes their training on a mandatory basis, as well as their annual refreshers, but that is not audited as such.
James McEwen: When the audit teams are going in, they look at the training records of the prison, which is part of that second-line assurance. Prisons put in place their systems and demonstrate that they are meeting our national policies. We then have fire safety engineers who work in HQ—for want of a better phrase—who then go out and mark the homework of the local prison. As part of that, they will review whether the training is adequate at local level.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: So you can assure us today that every officer has received the repeated training that the policy document says they should have had?
James McEwen: We recruit thousands and thousands of prison officers every year. There will be people joining our workforce today. As part of their training programme, there will be a plan for them to receive the necessary fire training. That is a hard ask. Do we have confidence that, as part of their induction into the organisation, they will receive adequate training on fire and fire safety and on how to respond? We have got strong assurance from the process that we have that that is in place. We are a workforce of tens of thousands of people. That strong assurance is only ever going to be from how our systems interact with each other, so it is very hard to give a cast-iron guarantee.
The Chair: Before Baroness Hughes continues, the reason I suspect that she is looking a bit sceptical about this is because, when we did our inquiry more generally into prisons, we discovered that it was an absolute requirement that all prison staff had regular sessions with the senior member of staff to check how they were getting on and so on. We were absolutely sure that that was the procedure. When we inquired into that, we discovered, first, that the vast majority of staff never have such things and, secondly, that there are no records kept about that taking place. So, in terms of the wider training of staff on everything other than fire, we express considerable concern. As I understand it, you are telling us that while we might be correct about all other aspects of training, you can give us a strong assurance that fire safety training happens for prison staff. I just want you to understand why we are pursuing this.
James McEwen: I inferred that fire safety training is a part of our mandatory training suite. As I said, we are a big system with tens of thousands of people across 120 prisons. We have systems in place to give us the best possible assurance that our policies on training are translating on to the ground and people are receiving them. That is the strongest assurance I can give you, short of me literally going around every prison and talking to every prison officer to make sure that they have had that, which would be a significant undertaking.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: I accept what you are saying. There are systems and there are people. The systems might be clear, but the extent to which those systems give you the assurance you need depends on how far they are being properly implemented by people on the ground. That is what we are trying to get at here, for the reasons that the Chair has outlined.
James McEwen: I accept that.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: If we had officers come to this inquiry and asked them when they last received their annual repeat of fire safety training, you would be confident that they would be able to tell us that that had been received regularly and on time?
James McEwen: I would be surprised if the answer was not, “In the last 12 months”, because of the data and assurances that we have and the systems we have in place.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Who delivers the training? In the prisons that you referred to, is it the fire safety teams?
Cohen Lewis: It is the health and safety advisers at site level.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: The policy also says that the training is “dynamic”—in other words, that it will be developed and is iterative, relative to new risks, and so on, that emerge. Who decides that the training needs to be changed? Is it on an individual or centralised basis? How does that work?
Cohen Lewis: We would look at that on a centralised basis. We have got resources centrally that would look at emerging trends and changes in behaviour. If I may, I will briefly give you two examples. We are currently working with our psychological services arm to look at behavioural changes among the prisoner population and see how we can feed that into potential future training modules. One of the current changes that we have made, given the pressures on prison officers’ time, is to trial part of our training package on to the virtual reality platform. That allows staff easy access, it is designed to be in the prison that they work in, and it is readily available. We are responding to staff needs as well as emerging trends and risks.
Alfie Jackson: Very briefly, can I just add that, as a practical example, the fire at Highpoint prison two months ago, which Cohen mentioned earlier, is probably the biggest fire of the past decade in terms of scale and property damage? That showed our staff reacting very swiftly to the situation and properly evacuating prisoners, and no injuries were caused. I say that not to give any sense that we are complacent and therefore think everything is fine; it is a helpful data point that shows that, in a real-world scenario with a very serious fire, our staff knew what to do and acted responsibly.
The Chair: Does the fire training take account of what to do in those prisons where there are staff shortages?
Cohen Lewis: The safe system of work assumes that there is always an orderly officer overseeing the necessary removal of a prisoner. There is no fixed number of prison officers required to undertake that intervention, but there will need to be a safe number, as well as a dynamic risk assessment at the cell door where the fire is undertaken. The training will not account for holistic, whole-system staff shortages; it will make sure that the orderly officer—the person responsible for responding to the incident—has the sufficient resources he or she needs to undertake the intervention.
James McEwen: It is probably worth adding that we have an overarching assessment of safety that requires a level of staff, and that is not just about fire safety but the safe operation of the prison. If we do not have sufficient staff to do that, we will take places out of use. We are only bringing places on where we have a minimum staffing level to run a safe prison.
The Chair: And this is all done instantly?
Alfie Jackson: It is not. It is done as a regular review.
The Chair: Exactly. So, would you not acknowledge that there are periods of time when some prisons will not meet that safety level?
Alfie Jackson: It would have to be a very acute phenomenon, because we very regularly review the level of staff that people have across the whole estate. In an acute moment, we will do extra overtime and try to bolster staff numbers by creating more staff locally and transferring staff from other prisons to support that. It is a theoretical possibility, but it would be a quite unusual set of circumstances.
The Chair: Okay. That is not based on figures we had, but anyway, I call Lord Hogan-Howe.
Q18 Lord Hogan-Howe: I just have one question. Part of training can be exercising, which you touched on a little earlier. I just wonder if you could say a little bit about exercising, because there are going to be different levels: there is a fire in the cell; there is a fire where you have to clear a wing, with the potential for a whole building—hopefully not—to have to be cleared out. Can you tell us a little about the exercising regime?
Cohen Lewis: For prisoners?
Lord Hogan-Howe: For staff. If you are working in the canteen, or if you are a cleaner or a prison officer, you need to know what to do in the event of a fire, when suddenly you have got prisoners wandering around handcuffed, or whatever you do with them. I am just wondering how often they exercise and give it a go. Do they?
Cohen Lewis: As in practical—
Lord Hogan-Howe: Yes, sorry, not as in “exercise yard”. I am not suggesting that you get some physical exercise during the fire exercise. It was about how often each prison is expected to test what they say they can do in the training.
Cohen Lewis: There are practical components to the training at the training academy, when prisoners first enrol.
Lord Hogan-Howe: I am probably not being clear. “We believe there is a fire in that cell. What are we going to do? What’s this wing going to do about it? That wing is going to have to be cleared. We are going to clear it. We’re going to need to put the prisoners somewhere”. Do they exercise that process?
James McEwen: Like we might, in an office building, say, “Right, there is an office drill. Everyone’s got to get out in 15 minutes”?
Lord Hogan-Howe: This place has a fire alarm every Monday. Nobody leaves, worryingly. The fire training is unremarkable, I have to tell you, at times. But testing something tells you whether the system works, and you find the problems that you might not have discovered until you have 100 prisoners on a landing that you have then got to shift somewhere else in a large group. If the staffing is not at that level, do they do it?
Cohen Lewis: That is much more difficult to do in the live operational environment, but it is another reason why staff are so regularly drilled to refresh their training. We have a safe systems of work procedure, which all staff should be familiar with; that is refreshed annually. That should negate the need for the sort of exercise that you are talking about—dummy evacuations and those sorts of things. Prisoners who need additional help will have personal evacuation plans. Those are bespoke to that prisoner. A prisoner with mobility needs or learning challenges, who in an event of a fire might not be able to follow simple instructions, will have bespoke packages. Those will be tested more robustly, but as a whole it is not common for us to do dummy evacuations.
Lord Hogan-Howe: Right. I am surprised it is not tried. I understand the logistical problems; I do not dismiss them in any way.
The Chair: It is an issue that we will pick up, Lord Hogan-Howe. We have two more questions, and we are going to have to be fairly brief on them. Lord Moraes?
Q19 Lord Moraes: I am going to ask about the powers of prison governors in this area. Do they have the powers they need to manage the risks effectively? What decisions relating to fire safety sit beyond their control and what do they actually need if that is the case?
James McEwen: Cohen will fill in the details. We have got the right balance between accountability at local level, and then national oversight and accountability with people like myself.
Cohen Lewis: I agree. Alfie set out earlier the more external arrangements and the perceived adequacy of those. Those are underpinned by our internal arrangements. Fire safety risks are reported all the way up to chief exec level, and beyond into the executive committee. We use our intelligence and data that we have talked about today to inform that risk and that risk oversight. We are fairly comfortable that those are adequate.
Alfie Jackson: It is fair to say that, when I talk to prison governors, they do not raise with me, “We’d like more powers over fire safety”. It is one of those things where I think we all recognise that you need a set of national standards.
The Chair: Finally, I call Baroness Bertin.
Q20 Baroness Bertin: Can I end on the jolly issue of funding? In terms of particularly the long-term funding, have you got a ring-fenced pot? Have you got money allocated to the long-term works that will obviously inevitably be needed to keep fire safety under control?
James McEwen: Some budgets are given to us by Treasury ring-fenced: our prison capacity budget, for example, and the new prison builds—that is ring-fenced. The department has a broad capital pot for maintenance. Money has never been a constraining factor on the fire safety programme. We have a budget for the year ahead that meets our needs, and our planning for the final years of our current spending review envelope is planned against our needs. But our needs can change so, actually, ring-fencing sometimes is not helpful. If, for example, we can more cheaply deliver our fire safety programme and we have surplus resources—we have not got to this place yet—then we might usefully deploy those to prevent drones on specific sites as well. The ring-fencing is not a big issue for me. Do I have the budget that I need to deliver on my commitments and move as fast as I can? Yes.
Baroness Bertin: In the difficult world of prison budgets, that is a very positive answer.
James McEwen: For the avoidance of doubt, we take the fire safety risk incredibly seriously. In terms of our budget planning, it is fire safety first and then everything else.
The Chair: You have a £1.8 billion backlog of maintenance in our current prison estate.
James McEwen: Yes.
The Chair: And you are not getting anything like that money to achieve it. There are all sorts of other safety issues as a result of that backlog of maintenance. Are you absolutely clear that, of all the other issues relating to safety, fire safety is absolutely the number one, and if you need extra money for it, that will come out of the maintenance budget and other things will have to go to the wall?
James McEwen: Fire safety is number one. We do have a significant backlog of maintenance issues in the estate, and I would love to be in a position to assure you that I have the budget for everything, but I do not, so I have to make difficult trade-off choices with Cohen and his team. Fire safety is the number one issue that we are addressing in the estate.
The Chair: On current budgeting, within the current pot that you have been allocated for maintenance, how much money in your current budget is set aside for fire safety in each of the next two, three or four years?
James McEwen: For fire safety for this year, the commitment is to spend £275 million, which meets the needs. As we approach the autumn, we will do more detailed planning for the year after, and so on and so forth.
The Chair: When you look at the question that was asked earlier, apparently £100 million has been spent on K wing in Wandsworth, and we still have not got the fire suppression sorted out.
Cohen Lewis: This might be a good point for me to issue a correction for the record. That £100 million is inclusive of the fire safety works planned at Wandsworth.
Baroness Buscombe: But it is not the works completed; it is the money spent so far.
James McEwen: Seventeen million pounds has been spent so far from a total planned investment across Wandsworth, not just K Wing, but yes.
The Chair: I was just being helpful, because I saw the note being passed and I thought you might want to say something to clarify the record before we come to an end.
James McEwen: There is a fantastic—
The Chair: I am sorry. We are going to have to cut—
Q21 Baroness Buscombe: If I may, I have a very important question. In recent years, has there been any policy discussion with Ministers about banning vapes from prisons?
James McEwen: Not that I am aware of.
Alfie Jackson: No. We went smoke-free and introduced vapes in, I think, 2017. Since then, we have not had active policy discussions with Ministers about banning vapes.
James McEwen: But we now have a safer vape pen that, to date, has not been used.
Baroness Buscombe: Yes, but the principle is costing £275 million.
The Chair: I thank all of you very much indeed for coming and giving us some very helpful information for our inquiry. As I said to you before you came in, if there are issues other than those we specifically asked for that you think would be helpful to us, we would obviously be very pleased to hear from you. There will, no doubt, be some further questions that will arise during our other evidence sessions that will lead us to come back to you, or you can brief the Minister before he comes in front of us a little bit later on.
