20
Examination of witnesses
Lord Timpson, James McEwen and Cohen Lewis.
Q77 The Chair: Welcome to this sixth and final session of the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into fire safety in prisons. We are absolutely delighted to have, as our final set of witnesses, the Prisons Minister and some of his officials. It would be very helpful if, to start, we could put on the record who each of you are and what your jobs are. Minister, would you be kind enough to start us off?
Lord Timpson: I am the Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending.
James McEwen: Good morning. I am the chief executive officer of HMPPS.
Cohen Lewis: Good morning, everyone. I am the deputy director for estates and the national safety group in HMPPS.
The Chair: Thank you for coming back again.
Cohen Lewis: Thank you for having me.
The Chair: It is nice to see you twice in one inquiry.
Q78 Lord Moraes: Good morning, Minister. Could I start with a general question? What assessment have the Government made of fire safety risk in prisons?
Lord Timpson: It has been a constant topic of conversation over the last very nearly two years since I have been doing this job. While I am conscious that there is a lot of executive work—James and Cohen will know a lot of the details—I have been fortunate that I have seen the training videos and I do a lot of prison visits, so I speak to staff about it. When we had the fire recently at HMP Highpoint, I spoke to the governor and wrote to the teams to understand what went on there. Getting over 100 people out in six minutes was a great example of it working. I know that there are further investigations going on on that. From what I see, the officials are very much engaged and on top of this, but we are not complacent.
Lord Moraes: You mentioned HMP Highpoint, and there are other incidents that we have been covering on this committee. We have interviewed both of you about this. Again, this is a general question. How do you feel we compare internationally in the way that we respond and the assets that we have to deal with this?
Lord Timpson: We are dealing with roughly 90,000 people in prison, of whom 1,000 are known fire starters. I am sure it is the same internationally as well. There are lots of good reasons why we need to compare notes and work internationally and nationally. We have had visits from the French, American, Irish and Australian prison services. I have been fortunate to go to Spain, Northern Ireland and Albania to have a look at what they do there. Those were not specifically for fire safety. The French, the Americans, the Irish and the Australians specifically came here to look at our processes and training, and what we have been doing on safer vapes. Maybe I can ask officials about what has been going the other way.
James McEwen: It is quite hard to get a complete picture on key international metrics as there are different systems and different prisons with different functions. We are keen to learn from others. At the moment, people are keen to see what we are doing. I am not here claiming that we are world-leading, but people are really interested in the progress that we have made over the last, say, 10 years and some of the work that we are doing on different technologies.
There is probably more that we can do to understand other jurisdictions, the frequency of fires and what they are looking at. Like Lord Timpson, I was in Northern Ireland recently. They have a very different set of risks. You can still smoke cigarettes in Northern Ireland prisons. We were talking about how they view fire safety risks. That is unimaginable to us now. We have been smoke-free on the estate for so many years now. We are still very curious about what is going on internationally. Cohen, you are close to this. Do you have anything specific to add?
Cohen Lewis: No, I do not have a huge amount to add. In answer to your question, we have positioned ourselves as something of a leading service in how we manage our controls, hence the United States, Ireland, Australia and France all seeking to learn from us over the last two years. If we look at our Irish and French partners, they have adopted some of our measures in terms of suppression technology. We are really pleased, but James is absolutely right: we need to lean in more to other jurisdictions to look at what they are doing.
Q79 Baroness Bertin: Could we get into the detail of staff training? We have had a lot of evidence, both written and verbal, suggesting that staff training simply is not where it should be. If I could just read to you one quote from the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, “Only 25% of Band 3-5 staff say they receive regular training that is relevant to their role”. I will just put a very simple question. Are you satisfied that all staff are appropriately trained in the event of a fire?
Lord Timpson: It has been helpful having Frank over here. Frank is seconded to my private office for the last two weeks. He is a band 3 officer with two years’ service at HMP Berwyn. He has been a fantastic addition to our team, but, in preparing for this committee, I have been drilling him on what happened, what training he has had, how it has worked, what can go wrong and so on. I have had a lot of reassurance from that, but also from going around prisons and drilling into the questions to get ready for today.
Operational staff receive regular annual training. Some 84% have completed the refresher course within the past 12 months nationally, and 100% for those who are night trained, who do night duties. The drills are mandated annually and compliance is at 95%. Because we are dealing operationally with other risks as well, we will never get to 100%.
As someone who has run quite a complex business—admittedly, it is not a prison where we are locking people up at night—from seeing the training videos, speaking to staff, knowing that the training that we do is very practical and seeing what has happened at Highpoint with a really professional and fast response, and no injuries or loss of life, I am satisfied that the teams have done a really thorough job, but there is always room for improvement.
Baroness Bertin: Thank you for that answer, but could we just drill into the detail of what you believe the training to be? Is it just doing a quick course on a computer? When we went round prisons ourselves, the prison officers were saying to us, “We don’t even have time for appraisals”. It feels inconceivable to me that the sort of annual training that they should be taking in addition to their induction training really can be that thorough just due to the high turnover of staff and workload pressures. I would love to know what you believe that induction training to be and what the annual refresher is.
Lord Timpson: I have seen the refresher video. I thought it was really clear. If the committee would like to see it, I would very happily send it over, if that would be helpful. As someone who has run a practical business before, I thought it was spot on. The pressure that the Prison Service has been under for a long time undoubtedly creates pressures across the organisation: on staffing levels, experience of staffing and the whole day-to-day operations. I can see why there is a huge amount of pressure going on within all the demands and the risks that we are managing.
From what I am seeing and hearing from the trusted people I speak to, it is pretty much there. I take your point that there will be some prisons where it is a lot more stable and it is a lot easier to get these things done day to day—the muscle memory of it. I will defer to James to fill in the gaps.
James McEwen: Two things can be true. Prison officers would like us to invest more in their skills and training. In fact, we are doing that through a programme called Enable, but that is not the subject of today’s conversation. There is frustration out there about the availability of general training in leadership and prison skills.
On fire, I note how much the committee pressed me and Cohen on this last time out. We have gone back and spoken to prisons to double-check the evidence that we gave to you in good faith. Having done a prison-by-prison check nationally, 84% of people have done the training in the last year. We are pleased with that. Being at 84% means that the roles in which it is necessary to have fire-trained individuals are staffed by people who have fire training. That is on both day and night shifts.
This is a must-do training course. I note the challenge from the committee, but, in good faith, we have gone back and looked at the data. This is an area where our internal audit teams go out and work with prisons to make sure that what we are asking them to do is being done. We are coming back with a good bill of health.
To the Minister’s point, we want to go and understand what it would take to get from 84% compliance to 90%, but, in a very busy operational environment, where people are often on leave or they might have been injured in the course of their duties, sometimes planned training for individuals cannot happen, and then refresher training might come a bit further down the line.
Baroness Bertin: Before we ask you about fire drills, if we were to ask prison officers, “Do you feel safe in the training that you have had? Do you all, in good faith, know how to evacuate and how to deal with a fire, in addition to having watched the video?”—I am not dismissive of the training video, by the way—would they answer with the same positivity?
James McEwen: I can only answer in good faith. The colleagues I have spoken to feel have played back to me that they thought the training was relevant and allowed them to do their jobs. We saw that play out at Highpoint. Cohen, you are closer to this.
Cohen Lewis: Sometimes the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have 3,000 fires each year but very few injuries. As Lord Timpson has said, six minutes to evacuate 100 prisoners suggests to me that prison officers know what they are doing.
Your point around pressures is absolutely right, which is why we are looking at new virtual reality platforms, so that prison officers can access training more on the go without taking much time off the landing. I completely agree with your point that we need to adapt to the pressures, but we should also look at what the evidence tells us about how staff respond to fires.
Baroness Bertin: Finally, I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to pull off a fire drill. Could we have a frank discussion about how often they are really happening and all the rest of it?
Lord Timpson: From the data that I have, they are mandated annually and compliance is at 95%. Operationally, we sometimes have challenges due to the nature of the risk that we have and the nature of segs, high-secure prisons and so on. It is not always the most straightforward thing to do.
Baroness Bertin: Is that the riskiest environment for fires, though?
James McEwen: It is more the nature of the drill. For some prisons, we can do a full-prison drill, so moving people around the prisons and taking people out of wings. In other prisons, it may not be safe enough to do that, in which case the drill is a desktop live simulation. “We’ve got a fire. What action is being taken?” Then the management team can check that the decision-making is clear and that their command structure is resilient to the fire.
Baroness Bertin: The prisoners are not actually moving.
James McEwen: For some prisons, the circumstances are such that it would be very difficult and challenging for everyone’s sake, staff included, to run a full evacuation and a full plan like that. It is different in different parts of the estate. Within the policy, we are seeing 95% of prisons compliant with that one-year requirement.
The Chair: Can we just be clear? Within that one year, the latest figures, can you tell us what percentage of the 95% who did it were testing it “in the real world” as opposed to doing a desktop exercise where it would be done by managers who would not be responsible for the evacuation anyway? What is the percentage breakdown between real-world and computerised exercises?
Cohen Lewis: The 95% are practical evacuation exercises.
The Chair: In 95% of prisons, there were real-world exercises of evacuation.
Cohen Lewis: Yes, with prisoners moving from their cells into exercise yards or wherever the cluster point is.
The Chair: I have one final question before we must move on. You are saying that at least 84% of prison officers effectively know what to do in the event of a fire. What percentage of prisoners know what to do in the event of a fire?
Cohen Lewis: It will be difficult to quantify that, but on induction every prisoner receives training on what to do in the event of a fire. We also set out very clearly to them what the role of a prisoner is versus what the role of the prison officer is. As part of that induction and training, we will set out to them what the consequences of setting a fire may be. We talked a little bit about that and we may talk about it later.
Every prisoner will have information readily available as part of their induction and perhaps signposted around the prison on what to do in the event of a fire.
Q80 Lord Empey: Good morning, Minister. What is the link between overcrowding and fire safety, and what is the link between overcrowding and fire safety improvements?
Lord Timpson: On overcrowding, when we came into government, we pretty quickly got to the point where we were 99.98% full. When you are that full, it is difficult to do anything apart from get prisoners three meals a day, a clean pair of pants and a shower. Rehabilitation and all the normal functioning methods that we have in a prison do not work.
No data exists to say there is a link between crowding and increased fire risk. If anything, it is the opposite. If someone is in a cell on their own, they may well be slightly more likely to set a fire. With our fire detectors, whether you have one person in a cell or two, we still have one fire detection system. In one cell, we have one alarm.
Today, we are running at 96.6% full, which is still very full, but, when we get the right staffing level and staffing stability, it is easier to manage that risk.
We want officers to know their prisoners and to be able to manage a more stable regime. We want them to get all the training done, to get the induction done and to be able to manage. If you talk about those 1,000 fire-starter prisoners, you need to be able to manage those well.
When you are 99.9% full, how do you move the estate around to get fire safety done? Do you know the game with all the little squares on it? You are doing a bit of that. How many cells are being done at the moment?
James McEwen: It is 1,800 at the moment.
Lord Timpson: Around 1,800 cells are out at the moment. Clearly, all the way through the prison capacity crisis, there has been pressure on getting those back quickly. I do not know whether it has been covered in other committees, but, with ISG going into administration and so on, there has been an awful lot of pressure to manage that capacity. The fact is that we need to have a cell space available for everybody the police want us to put up for the night.
Lord Empey: Minister, could I just refer to a letter you wrote on 17 April of this year to the chair of the Justice Select Committee? You said, “The only limit on delivery is the need to avoid breaching critical capacity and the collapse of the proper functioning of the prison and wider criminal justice system and the attendant intolerable risk to public safety”. Can we interpret that as saying that there is a risk in trying to refurbish or improve? If that capacity issue could be addressed, would more resources be available? You are saying in your note that the only limit on delivery is capacity. Does that mean resources would be available if you could deal with the capacity?
Lord Timpson: James McEwen can pick up the detail of this. Over the last two years, there have been a number of conversations around how we get this done within the capacity constraints that we have had. Maybe you could fill in the details, James.
James McEwen: As you know, we are currently operating several thousands of cells that are not fully compliant with fire regulations. That is why we are here or part of the reason why we are here. What the letter is pointing to is that, in terms of public protection risk, we do not have the ability to decant all the prisoners we would need to in order to do the work to make those compliant.
Going back to the 2027 commitment and moving away from that commitment, a judgment needed to be made. In a world where we were not able to get all of those cells compliant because of time constraints, would we be in a position to further increase headroom in prisons so that those places were not used? No, we cannot because of the public protection risks.
It is an interesting question. At some point, there will be supply chain constraints. At the minute, I have all the money that I need for fire safety work, so it is not a financial constraint. If I had a magic wand and were able to move prisoners to prisons that do not exist in order to say, “I now have 9,000 cells available to improve fire safety”, I would imagine that I would hit a supply chain constraint in the first order.
I have not been able to say to the Treasury, in a world where I had all the places available to do all the work that I would like, “Do you have the financial firepower to support me?” I can guess the answer, but I do not know because I have not had the luxury of asking the question.
As of today, I have the money, a supply chain and increasingly the space available in the estate to deliver the plan that we have, but we are not going to be able to take every cell out of use while we do the work.
Lord Empey: What modelling have you done on the Courts and Tribunals Bill and the Sentencing Act for prison numbers? Are you still working on the basis of it being in the high 90s?
Lord Timpson: We are building 14,000 new prison cells by 2030. That is on track and on plan. The fact is that there are going to be more people in prison and more people on probation than ever before. The Courts and Tribunals Bill sees the number of prisoners increasing. It peaks at about 900 by 2033 and then it starts declining.
Within all that, the goal has to be reducing reoffending because 80% of offending is reoffending. If we do not sort that out, we are going to keep needing to build more and more prisons. The Texas justice model was one that really inspired what we have done in the Sentencing Bill. They closed 16 prisons and crime has come down by 30%. It shows that it can be done, but you have to focus on reducing reoffending. That is how you get the proper capacity.
James McEwen: The annual statement that we give to Parliament looks at this. We produce an annual capacity statement for Parliament that shows the forecast on demand and supply. You are testing my memory here. It was published earlier this year in January or February time. That included the impact of the Sentencing Act. The Courts and Tribunals Bill, as you know, is going through the parliamentary process. The impact assessment for that has been published, setting out the 900 places that James spoke about. All that is on record. In the 2030s, the prison population will be over 90,000. We will have more people in prison than ever before.
Q81 Lord Anderson of Ipswich: I would like to focus on prevention, if I may. There is a technical aspect to that. I would like to start by commending the work that has been done on safer vapes. James McEwen gave us some remarkable figures last week suggesting that vape fires, which had been running at more than 2,000 in the last two years, were only 36 in the first five months of 2026.
On that, I would like to ask two questions before I move on. First, is there an argument for going further still and banning vapes in prison? Secondly, there has been a pro rata increase, perhaps not very surprisingly, in electrical fires and fires from other ignition sources. Is there any solution in place that could be as effective as the solution you have reached with vapes?
Lord Timpson: The fall in vapes starting fire is really good news. Since it has been introduced—you may have already had these stats; they are from May 2025 to May 2026—the MOJA safer vape pen has led to a 46% overall reduction in fires. That is really good news. Personally, I do not think vaping should be banned in prisons, but we need to keep looking at it. We need to keep promoting healthy lifestyles in prison. I have seen some really interesting work on this. When I was in Belmarsh—this just comes to mind—I saw the great work that they are doing on the healthy eating of food, health and fitness, people getting off drugs and alcohol, and so on. It is a very popular product that prisoners can buy from the canteen list. For me, it is about keeping going on looking for new ideas.
On the electrical side of things, we are testing in two prisons. I do not know which ones they are. We are working with a German company to work out how, when prisoners are trying to start an electrical fire, we can stop that. If it is okay, I will ask Cohen to give us a bit more detail on that.
Cohen Lewis: Thank you, Minister. We are immensely proud of the achievements on vapes. Over the last few years, vapes have become a ubiquitous problem for us. Every prisoner has access to them. We are really pleased that those numbers are coming down.
As you have rightly pointed out, prisoners are pivoting to other areas to start fires. We are piloting something called an arc fault detector, which, as the Minister says, has been borrowed from overseas. That can detect subtle signatures in electrical current to tell whether an electrical appliance is being tampered with and cut the power to the cell. It is hugely sophisticated stuff, but some of the pilots are showing some really encouraging signs.
It is true to say that we will always need to adapt, though. If it is not vapes, it will be electrical current or another thing. We are really keen to keep looking at new ways to fight this.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich: I wonder whether there is also a disciplinary aspect to fire prevention. We have been told that at Brinsford and Lindholme there has been a practice of destroying a prisoner’s belongings in the cell every time there is a fire. It is said that this appears to have had a deterrent effect and the number of fires has fallen appreciably. We have also been told that at Risley there has been a practice of prosecuting all prisoners who started fires and, again, this has been effective in reducing the number of fires.
I would imagine that one has to be very careful with the statistics in this area, particularly if these trials were conducted against a background of a falling number of fires started by vapes. I wondered whether you thought there was any value in the disciplinary measures that were taken at the three prisons I have mentioned and, if so, whether it might be worth rolling them out more broadly.
Lord Timpson: I have not heard about those examples. I will happily go away and look at those. That has not come across my desk before.
I start at this point. For me, well-run prisons are those where staff know their prisoners. A number of our prisoners are very complex or often very ill individuals. The better you know them, the better you can work out what is the right way, whether it is a carrot or a stick approach. How can we support them so they can get on with their sentence and get a good Parole Board hearing?
We have the adjudication system in prisons, which is well established. We have a number of ways that we are improving that with AI and so on. That is the standard process. Some cases will go to the police. I do not know the exact numbers that go to the police or the independent adjudicator. I suspect that some need psychological help.
It is a balance. Yes, there is a process, but you also need to know that individual because that might not be the right process to help that person not to do it again, especially with our 1,000 most prolific fire starters. These people are often not the ones who respond to the conventional punishments that we have in prison.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich: Yes. Just lastly, if I may, you have referred to the difficulties of making international comparisons, which I entirely understand, but a couple of thousand fires a year on the prison estate does sound rather a lot. I wonder whether the international comparisons suggest that numbers are significantly lower in other countries. Have other countries done a better job at attacking some of the root causes that you have touched on just now, whether that is boredom, frustration, protest or mental health difficulties?
Lord Timpson: What I would like to see us do more of is time out of cell. That means less boredom, more interaction with other individuals, more opportunities for us to see how people are progressing on their sentence, more time in workshops, getting out and about, in the chess club—I am a big fan of chess club in prisons—working on the wings and getting involved in things.
That will be the same internationally. We all want to see a more stable and settled regime. I may defer to officials on—
Lord Anderson of Ipswich: Do they have figures on the number of fires?
Cohen Lewis: It is very difficult to compare, but we do know that international partners are looking to us to learn.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich: You say, “We are very good at suppression”, and you cite some EuroPris data for that proposition. I have not seen any comparative data on the incidence of fires or success in preventing fires.
Cohen Lewis: I do not think we have that, but a host of countries have asked to see our management controls and take those back to their home countries. Ireland and France are examples, where they learned our management controls and implemented them in their own estate. You are absolutely right. It is difficult to compare apples with apples in terms of data.
James McEwen: We can work through EuroPris to see whether European partners have comparable data. If we get useful and comparable data, we will absolutely provide it to the committee.
Q82 Lord Bach: Minister and colleagues, can I ask you just briefly about private prisons? It is clear that private prisons can be subject to stronger enforcement action regarding fire safety than publicly run prisons. First, why is this the case? Secondly, by way of an example, why have private prisons been able to implement AFD while public prisons have not?
Lord Timpson: The reporting and investigation framework are the same across public and private prisons with inspections every three years. The only difference is that they are not protected by Crown immunity. The inspection set-up is the same. The majority, if not all, of privately run prisons are the more modern prisons in the estate. That is why they have the latest AFD systems in place. I am pretty sure that all the Victorian ones, which make up 25% of our estate, are publicly run establishments. It is because of the age of the estate above anything else.
Lord Bach: You going to be asked in due course about Crown immunity, so I am not going to ask that question. Does this not tell you something about the Victorian prisons? I know that in present circumstances it is not just hard but impossible to do very much about closing them down, but I have one in mind that should have been closed years ago. That may have had an effect on fire making in that particular prison. Are you still looking to close Victorian prisons where that is possible?
Lord Timpson: At the moment, we are far from that place because we need the capacity. If you had a magic wand, you would want prisons that have all the modern facilities, enough workshops, enough education places and enough health facilities. It is very hard to do that in some of our very tight sites in the middle of city centres.
The Chair: We have already raised—and indeed you did, Minister—the protection of Crown immunity, so let us pick that up with Baroness Buscombe.
Q83 Baroness Buscombe: Minister, the Howard League has said, “as long as Crown bodies benefit from immunity from prosecution, there can be no effective regulation of fire safety”. Crown immunity means a lack of accountability, a lack of deterrent and a lack of effective outcomes. This is me; this is my view and I am putting it to you. In essence, there is a lack of a core capability to prosecute individuals who wilfully start fires. Crown immunity was removed from some of our Health and Safety Executive organisations under the NHS back in the 1990s. Would that not be a good idea now?
I have heard what you have said about your preference for focusing on reducing reoffending and how you do not want to ban vapes, but this also has to be seen in the context of enormous staff turnover.
Lord Timpson: If I am an officer working for G4S or Sodexo, I am not a civil servant. I do not get that protection from Crown immunity. There are no plans in place for this to change. It is for Parliament to decide. It is not for me to decide.
What is important is that the inspection regime and the oversight is like for like. Whether it is a privately or publicly run prison, it needs to be exactly the same. It needs to be monitored and people need to be held to account when it is not done correctly. The fire regulations and the health and safety at work regulations that we work to should be the same.
There are no current plans to review that difference. What we need to keep doing is making sure that, whether it is a private or a public run prison, they are on it on fire safety and it is working well. The example at Highpoint is a shout-out to us all that these things do happen, sadly. We are carrying a vast risk with 3,000 fires a year in our prisons. That is roughly nine or 10 a day. We need to make sure that the oversight is working and it is in parallel.
Baroness Buscombe: The inspectorate, which we listened to before this session, carries out eight inspections a year. It is a tiny group of people. It costs just over £1 million a year. In the last three years, we have spent £364 million on fire safety improvement. There is some imbalance here, if I may put that to you.
I would also encourage you, as Prisons Minister, to push against government and those who would say that Crown immunity is a good idea. There could be serious progress in all this if Crown immunity were lifted. It would probably take primary legislation, but that could easily be tucked into a piece of legislation. I know there was a Private Member’s Bill, but it only got as far as First Reading in the last Session. It is a serious issue, if I may put to you, Minister, that is really worth exploring. Would you take that on board, please?
Lord Timpson: As I said before, that kind of conversation is well above my pay grade, but I will take that away.
One of the other points that you mentioned was cost. The cost of this is significant. I have been kicking the tyres on the cost to see why it is so high and what we can do to reduce it. I have been bringing my commercial experience into that. I would like to think we have made some good progress on that.
The overall answer to the question is that we have to make sure that every prison is safe. If you are a prisoner or a family member of a prisoner, whether you are in a public or a private prison should not make any difference to whether you are safe.
Baroness Buscombe: According to those we have just listened to earlier, if I may, they know that they are in a situation where regulation and any accountability is pretty ineffectual, if they are in a state prison.
Lord Timpson: James holds the responsibility for HMPPS. The prison governor is the responsible person within a prison. The chief property officer holds responsibility for all the fire safety equipment. It is a very rigorous structure that is well understood.
James McEwen: Just to reflect, I joined as CEO in October last year and fire safety was the No. 1 issue that I picked up. It was not through a threat of prosecution; it was because it was quite clear that we are operating outside of regulation. I was aware of all the CPFSI notices that have been set out for prisons. We acted because it was the right thing to do. It is very clear that we are in breach of regulations and it is very clear that, as a civil servant, my responsibility is to move us back towards compliance.
I can only give you my experience. We are doing everything that we can, even in the presence of, to your contention, Crown immunity. I cannot think that I would act in a different way if I had a different set of personal risks acting on me. I feel very accountable, but it is a big system.
On the inspectorate, we spoke last time about the different tiers that we have, the different separations of responsibilities and oversight. At a prison level, the governor is responsible. They will have fire experts at their disposal to make sure that they are running their prison in line with policies, as far as it is possible and reasonable to expect them to.
We then have, through Cohen’s team, a system of highly trained assessors, who go out and check the work of each prison and make sure that the risk assessments are expert or current, and that the right controls and mitigations are in place. We then have the inspectorate, which checks that all those systems are working. We are also, we understand, the first public body of our scale to be accredited to the right BS standard. We have BS 9997, which is refreshed annually. That is another independent view of our management approach and controls.
Yes, I can see that eight inspections a year feels a bit skinny from your perspective, but CPFSI is monitoring that the system is working as it is intended. It is a meta view of what is going on.
I was not able to see the evidence that CPFSI has just provided. It is for CPFSI to make this case. I would be very supportive, if it felt it did not have the resources available to meet the inspection regime that it wanted to run. I am very welcoming of more assurance. I feel much more assured, as the chief executive, where CPFSI is able to come in and say, from an independent perspective, “This is the sum total of all the activity. Are we in a good place or do we need to change?”
I welcome the scrutiny. You will have no argument from me. If someone from CPFSI wants to talk to their sponsor department and say, “We need more resources”, good for them.
Baroness Buscombe: Do take a look at what it has done and achieved through that.
James McEwen: We will, yes.
Q84 Baroness Berridge: In the previous evidence, we heard from the inspectorate that there were enforcement cases in relation to training where a step-away letter had been issued in 2024. CPFSI diplomatically said, “It is still an open case”. Is it not correct, though, that Crown immunity no longer applies to corporate manslaughter? A decision was made 15 years ago to apply the 2007 Act into the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. Is it not also the case that there may be a stick to use to tell people who are in that situation, when they have not complied two years later, that that kind of prosecution exists?
Could you confirm that? It is my understanding of the law that corporate manslaughter prosecutions apply to MoJ. If you have a step-away letter and you are the responsible person, were you to be prosecuted, that seems like it could be quite compelling evidence. Is that a stick that you could also be communicating to people appropriately if they are not complying with step-away letters?
Cohen Lewis: Yes, absolutely. That applies to all of us in all cases. Where there is evidenced negligence that has led to the harm or death of an individual, no civil servant is immune from that. Crown immunity has never covered us on that. However, CPFSI can go above step-away, should it wish to. It can issue a prohibition notice. Should it consider that our movement or perceived non-movement has reached an intolerable level, it can issue the Government with a prohibition notice. The fact that it has not says to me that it has acknowledged that there is movement in the right direction.
You are absolutely right. There are instances under common law and under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act where individuals can be prosecuted.
James McEwen: The premise of your question starts from a stick point of view. You have taken evidence from the PGA and you will have heard from other stakeholders. Our governors, our officers, I and my team, and Cohen and his team, are absolutely focused on this risk. We are doing everything we can. It is one of the risks that I wake up thinking about every day and I go to sleep thinking about it. I do not need the pressure of prosecution to behave in a different way.
As Cohen said, my understanding of the law is the same as yours. That is a massive responsibility that I hold and that we as an employer hold. It is a huge responsibility of taking this job, which is why from day one I have been working very closely with the team to make sure that we are doing everything that we can. That is why we wrote to Parliament and others to talk about moving to prioritise where we can the early delivery of AFD, because we believe that is an area where, if we deliver earlier, we can reduce the risks of injury and loss of life. That is why we have changed the way that the programme is orientated. Where we can accelerate AFD, we will accelerate AFD.
We are taking this extraordinarily seriously. I want the debate on incentives to be played out in a world where our account is that we are doing everything that we can.
The Chair: I am afraid we are going to have to move on. Thank you for that. In relation to the answer that you gave, prohibition notices can be served. How many prohibition notices have been served in the last five years?
Cohen Lewis: There has been one.
The Chair: Thank you for the time being. We will come back to you with some supplementary questions on that subsequently.
Q85 Lord Dubs: Good morning, Minister. Have you achieved the right balance between security and privacy concerns on the one hand and transparency concerns on the other?
Lord Timpson: I bring to this my previous experience of running a business where health and safety was paramount in lots of different parts of the organisation. From what I have seen here, we are transparent. We publish our data annually. Deaths are published through the coronial process. We have been very open on the Highpoint fire with the media, for example, and we have explained exactly what has been going on. When the investigation is done, we will let everybody know what the investigation says. I would like to think that culturally we are a pretty open organisation.
Lord Dubs: May I just ask a supplementary? If you are open, why do you not publish step-away notices or the FSIL?
Cohen Lewis: We do not own step-away notices. That would be a matter for the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate. It could choose to publish those, should it wish. It does publish, in its annual statement, the number of step-away notices that it has issued.
The fire safety improvement list is our internal dynamic risk management assessment. While there is no harm in publishing that document, it is a dynamic risk assessment, and therefore it changes on the minute. The moment it were published, it could become out of date. The version that we have shared with the committee is from June. It could look very different today. We would need to look at the value to the public in publishing something such as that, given the knowledge that it could change so regularly.
The Chair: Just so we can put it on the record, you have sent a copy of it to us and I have it here, with a startling number of reds appearing on the first page. As a result of you sending it to us, it will be published as part of our report, just so you are aware.
Cohen Lewis: I am.
Q86 Lord Tope: Who holds the risk for fire safety? Are these the people who always have the mechanisms of control around improving or mitigating those risks? In conclusion to that, should governors have more control over the mechanisms of improving fire risks?
Lord Timpson: HMPPS, from a prison perspective, is a large organisation. Despite all the complexity, at the end of the day, the risks rest with the man on my right here, as the responsible officer in the organisation.
The prison governor is the responsible person in an establishment. We often debate this question about how much autonomy or control they have or do not have. When it comes to fire safety, they are the responsible person for that organisation. I would not mind deferring to Cohen in a minute to talk us through what happens if a prison governor contacts you with a question or a concern.
Every member of staff at HMPPS has a responsibility. Every prisoner has a responsibility for the safety of everybody in that establishment. There are lots of people who work there who are not employed by HMPPS. They could be NHS staff, staff from third-sector organisations or maintenance people. It is a big community. At the end of the day, the risk sits with James. Cohen, maybe you could just explain how that works.
Cohen Lewis: Broadly, governors are responsible for management controls, so staffing, making sure that their people are trained and making sure that they have access to the right equipment through the property line. James discharges some of those duties through me. The built environment sits elsewhere. We separate those two issues because governors do not have direct levers over things such as capital investment and major investment.
Q87 Baroness Hughes of Stretford: In view of time, I am just going to cut straight to the chase, if I may. I would like to address the first question to the Minister. Minister, are you aware that CPFSI is of the view that the Prison Service instruction as it relates to fire safety policy does not comply with the fire safety order and needs updating urgently? In particular, CPFSI feels that, while the PSI protects staff, it is failing to protect prisoners as far as it could do. Have you been apprised of that situation?
Lord Timpson: I am afraid I have to defer to officials here.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Minister, I just want to ask you whether you are aware of it. Your official can say that he is aware of it. I want to know whether he has apprised you of that fact.
Lord Timpson: In preparation for this committee, I have been through all the papers and spoken to a number of officials. I am just trying to look for it in my notes. The PSI point has been discussed with me. I do not really know what else to say.
James McEwen: I met with the now retired chief inspector of CPFSI. This issue did not come up. Our policies were last amended in 2022. If in evidence today the CPFSI has expressed concerns about whether the policies are reflective of the order, we will absolutely go away and look at that. It has not been raised with me directly, so I will take it away.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: The Howard League has been clamouring for HMPPS to update the PSI because of this lack of compliance. I know the two job-share CEOs are relatively new and they may not have raised it with you, but other people before then surely must have raised this with you.
James McEwen: I have not met with either of them. I am sure it is known in the organisation. It has not been raised with me directly, but thank you for raising it. I will go and look at it.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: That is astonishing. Is it not astonishing that you are responsible for the policy in the Prison Service and the inspectorate, which you say must know about this—I agree with you because it has talked about it this morning with us—has not raised it with anybody in HMPPS?
James McEwen: I am not saying that CPFSI has not raised it with anybody.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: It has not been escalated to you. That is what you are saying. You did not know.
James McEwen: That is what I am saying.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Now you do know, do you agree that it needs to be updated so that it is compliant and, as far as possible, protects prisoners as well as staff?
James McEwen: In light of the knowledge, I will go and look at the issues, make sure there is consensus about the fact of the non-compliance and then look at what we are doing about it. We have a really constructive relationship with CPFSI. I would be surprised if this was an issue that CPFSI had focused on but we had not been responsive to or there was not work in train to correct, if corrective action was possible. Let me take it away and look at what is going on.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Another element of this that I would like to put on the record, if I may, Chair, as well as the general lack of compliance and failure to protect prisoners properly, is the issue of tenability. In this case, there is an explicit contradiction between what is contained in the Government’s current safe system of work annexe to the PSI, which provides for a cell door to remain closed for up to 20 minutes in certain circumstances, and recent research showing that, for a tenable atmosphere to be retained, the cell door has to be opened within 10 minutes and it has to stay open for three and a half minutes.
In that instance, the detail of the PSI advice contradicts what is known about the requirements for maintaining the tenability of the atmosphere in cells when there is a fire. Presumably, you do not know about that either. Does anybody?
Cohen Lewis: We undertake tenability assessments, most recently in 2024. There are numerous issues associated with that, most notably the level of moisture that we can put into a cell. That is single-handedly the most important element, not the length of time that the door is open or closed. Volumetric control is the second most important element. How many ignition sources are available in that cell? We contract with a company called BRE, which undertakes those tenability assessments independently on our behalf. We update policies as we need to on the back of those, and did so most recently in 2024.
Just coming back briefly, if I may, to PSI compliance, I have not yet seen CPFSI’s evidence to the committee. I will go away and review it. There are expectation documents that set out formally the relationship and how CPFSI engages and escalates into HMPPS. That happens annually. We are formally consulted on it. It would be surprising if a matter as serious as compliance had not been escalated or raised through the channels identified in the expectations document last published by CPFSI in June.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: What I said in relation to that was a quote from CPFSI. Finally, Mr McEwen, if you do take this up with the inspectorate and you make some progress in understanding what is going on and your response to that, could you write to the committee and let us know?
James McEwen: Of course, yes.
Q88 The Chair: Time really has run out, but I want to ask just one question. I hope there is opportunity to do it. You currently have a £1.4 billion backlog for maintenance and, as far as we know from the 2025 figures, you need about £1.4 billion for work to improve fire safety in prisons and bring them all up to standard. Can we be clear about what money is currently available and allocated to you, ring-fenced for use on fire safety work, over what period—straightforward factual figures?
Cohen Lewis: Chair, £275 million will be allocated this year.
The Chair: You have £275 million and you need to get to £1.4 billion.
Cohen Lewis: Yes, by 2030. We have the resources that we need to undertake the work that we can right now. How we reach £1.4 billion is a matter of negotiation between the department and the Treasury as part of the next spending review, but we were successful as part of this current spending review period in securing all the fire safety money that we need.
The Chair: Clearly, there is a big worry as to whether the resources will be made available for you to do it, but, with the money that you have, you are going to focus that. We have already discussed the priority list and so on. When are various things going to be done by? For example, when will all prisons have AFD? What is the target date for all prisons to have AFD?
Cohen Lewis: I will also invite James in on this. At the moment, we do not see value in putting a hard stop on when we will reach AFD compliance. It is true that we are prioritising compliance and the first 10,000 of the 19,000 currently without AFD will be delivered by the end of 2027 next year. Our motivation and our duty is to move as quickly as we can. We said at the last meeting that we would be unlikely to reach that milestone in this Parliament.
The Chair: I understand. We have had this conversation before, but I am going to press you on this a bit more. You say you do not see any benefit. However, I would think that the vast majority of people would see that there is a benefit because it would mean you could be held to account for the delivery of what is urgently needed, which is improvements in the fire safety conditions in many of our prisons. Given that you have £275 million, can you tell me how you are going to use it and by what date all the things will have been achieved?
James McEwen: The compliance date will be reached after the current spending review period. I have funding out to 2029-30, and we will need funding in the next capital round. This is a feature of the system, not a bug. Yes, of course we will be reliant on a future spending review negotiation to finish the job. That is a massive unknown that is outside our direct control.
As set out in the letter, as we referred to earlier, our ability to work on the estate is in large part dictated to by population pressures. At the moment, that is going our way and we are able to implement fire safety measures in more places than we had expected, if you rolled the clock back 18 months. Things change constantly.
It is for those reasons that it is very difficult to say, “This is the plan”. We know what we are going to do with the £275 million this year and we understand the projects that we want to commence next year. All of that will be contingent on the broader context and wider events. If there is a sudden surge in the prison population, our plan will have to adapt to that. That is the nature of the uncertainty and the risks that we run. That is day-to-day life in a prison context.
The Chair: You can sense, I am sure, that we do not feel very comfortable with the answers that you are giving.
James McEwen: I understand that.
The Chair: We are grateful nevertheless for them. I just want to put this very clearly on the record, very finally. I will address this to you, James, in particular, if I can. You said that you would be very supportive and welcoming of more measures to keep you in touch through the inspectorate system and so on. In those cases, with your expertise—it is unfair to ask the Minister this—can you tell us what additional powers it would be beneficial for the inspectorate to have?
James McEwen: To be very clear, I was talking about its capacity, not its powers. It is for CPFSI and the sponsor department, MHCLG, to decide the regime. As someone at the end of the inspectorate regime, it would be a bit hollow for me to say what it should look like. I genuinely do not have an opinion on it.
My point is that, if the inspectorate feels like it should have more capacity to come out and visit more prisons, I am not hiding from that. As I say, part of my assurance framework is understanding what the third line of defence, in the lingo, so the independent experts, is telling me about the state of my systems. I welcome that. Mine was a narrow point on capacity.
It is also not for me to interfere with the allocations between MHCLG and CPFSI, but, from the point of view of a chief executive who is inspected by CPFSI, I am not hoping that it goes the way of a bonfire. I really value what it does, the transparency that it brings and the advice and the rigour with which its scrutiny is provided.
The Chair: It is not for you to think of anything additional that it could do that would be beneficial to improve fire safety.
James McEwen: I would say it is not.
The Chair: It is not your responsibility.
James McEwen: I would be stepping into areas of public policy that are not my expertise. If I was a colleague in another department, I would be incredibly cross if someone like me was suggesting how I should do my work.
The Chair: Before we finish, Minister, is there any recommendation that you would like to see this committee make that would be helpful to you in your role as Minister?
Lord Timpson: If you are interested, I would like you to review the training documentation and videos that staff such as Frank see on a regular basis. I do not know whether you have seen that, but that may be helpful. I do not know about the timing of things, but it would be good to give you an update on the fire in Highpoint. If you could let us know when you need an update by, we can let you know whatever we know by then. That was a serious incident. A large amount of our capacity has been taken out for some time. The staff did an amazing job in a difficult situation.
The Chair: On behalf of the entire committee, a huge thank you to you, Minister, and your colleagues. Thank you very much indeed. The meeting is now concluded.
