Justice Committee
Oral evidence: HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on HMP Liverpool, HC 751
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 24 January 2018.
Members present: Robert Neill (Chair); Alex Chalk; Bambos Charalambous; David Hanson; Gavin Newlands; Victoria Prentis; Ellie Reeves.
Questions 1 - 115
Witnesses
I: Pia Sinha, Governor, HMP Liverpool; Michael Spurr, Chief Executive, HM Prisons and Probation Service; Kevin Miller, Director of Facilities Management, Amey; Kate Davies, Director of Health and Justice, Armed Forces and Sexual Assault Services Commissioning, NHS England; and Julie Dhuny, Head of Commissioning, Health and Justice, North Region, NHS England.
II: Rory Stewart MP, Minister of State, Ministry of Justice; and Michael Spurr, Chief Executive, HM Prisons and Probation Service.
Witnesses: Pia Sinha, Michael Spurr, Kevin Miller, Kate Davies and Julie Dhuny.
Chair: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming to see us. We will deal with the formal part of the meeting first of all and declare our interests. I am a non-practising barrister and a consultant to a law firm.
Victoria Prentis: I am a non-practising barrister who conducted a lot of law on behalf of the Prison Service while I was employed.
Ellie Reeves: I am a non-practising barrister.
Bambos Charalambous: I am a non-practising solicitor.
Alex Chalk: I am a barrister.
Q1 Chair: We are obviously here to have a hearing in relation to the inspection report on Her Majesty’s Prison Liverpool and some of the broader lessons that can be drawn from that. I am grateful to all the members of the panel for coming to give evidence. For the record, would you introduce yourselves and say what your role is?
Pia Sinha: My name is Pia Sinha. I am the current governor of HMP Liverpool.
Michael Spurr: I am Michael Spurr, the chief executive of the Prison and Probation Service.
Kevin Miller: I am Kevin Miller, director of facilities management, Amey.
Kate Davies: I am Kate Davies, director of NHS England for health and justice.
Julie Dhuny: I am Julie Dhuny, head of commissioning, health and justice for the north region.
Q2 Chair: Thank you very much. We have had the opportunity to read the full report from Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons. We have also seen the letters that were sent in relation to this and other prisons to the director. Mr Spurr, this is an appalling report, isn’t it? There is no other word for it.
Michael Spurr: Yes. It is a very bad report and we should not have allowed Liverpool to get to the state that it got to. We should have taken cells out of use much earlier at Liverpool than we did.
Q3 Chair: Why did that not happen?
Michael Spurr: It reflects a number of things, as ever when you have something as poor as this. It was not one reason. There was a whole range of things that came together that made things difficult at Liverpool.
In essence, the service had been operating under a lot of pressure, particularly around population and capacity. Some of the local governance arrangements at Liverpool failed, and cells that should have been identified as being not fit for use were retained. There are issues about that. We recognised that Liverpool was a prison of serious concern. Our own assessment of Liverpool was level one—a prison of serious concern. That was published only in July. It had an escape earlier in that year. There had been a focus on addressing those issues. There was a focus on maintaining capacity to be able to deal with the population generally, and we took our eye off the ball very badly in terms of decency at Liverpool through that period.
Q4 Chair: It should not have been a complete surprise, should it, because the inspection report in 2015 had been very poor too? What was done between 2015 and the unannounced inspection in 2017 to rectify matters?
Michael Spurr: The inspection report in 2015 showed some deterioration from the inspection in 2013, which indicated improvement and a prison that was well led. Through that period, we were implementing major change programmes across the service and we reduced significantly resources and staffing across the service. Some of that was reflected in issues that were beginning to deteriorate in 2015.
Following that, the governor had an action plan. I accept that that was not followed through sufficiently robustly through the period. We recognised that the service was under a lot of pressure and argued for additional support and resources to be able to tackle that. We were given that in autumn 2016. Liverpool was one of the first prisons where we looked to actually increase resourcing to address some of the issues there. We were beginning to get those resources at the time of the inspection.
We did not have the investment to put into the physical conditions at Liverpool. We should have reacted to that by taking out some of the accommodation that was not used. We had taken accommodation out of use at Liverpool earlier. We brought cells back into use that we should not have done. As I say, that was in the context of a significant amount of pressure across the service and pressures elsewhere in the north-west.
We had taken accommodation out of use at Haverigg because it was poor quality and there were issues about safety. We had closed Kennet prison because its lease with the NHS was up. We were planning to close Hindley prison, but we had to retain it in use. There were a lot of pressures through that period, and that was the context, but I am not excusing the fact that we should not have been running some of the accommodation we were running at Liverpool.
Q5 Chair: In terms of the action plan post the 2015 inspection, who was responsible for ensuring that that action plan was delivered?
Michael Spurr: The governor was primarily responsible for that. Again, I accept that our processes above establishment level for following through on how effectively that action plan was being implemented were not sufficiently robust. We did not know the inspection was coming in September. In May, before the inspection, the prison was reporting that 66% of the recommendations were green, on track and being delivered. That was not right. They had overestimated how well they were doing on the inspection recommendations.
In looking at how we could operate leanly with less money across the system, the regional manager’s team had been significantly reduced over the previous few years. He had two operational managers working with him and a secretary. He had 12 prisons to look after in the north-west, and a number of those prisons had significant issues. I have just mentioned some of them. Haverigg was closing some accommodation and Kennet was closing accommodation.
As I said, he had an update on where they were on the recommendations in May, but that update was not sufficiently accurate. There was failure at local level to follow through on the recommendations, and I accept that from an organisational perspective we did not have enough robust governance above establishment level to make sure that they were being delivered properly.
Q6 Chair: Back in September 2016, concerns were being raised from local level up to regional and national level about the need to take cells out of commission. Three meetings were held in 2016 and were minuted. The inspectors saw the emails. I assume that you were aware of the situation by November 2016, Mr Spurr.
Michael Spurr: I was not specifically aware of those emails and the correspondence between the then governor and the DDC group director. I am aware of them. It is very clear and it is documented, both in those emails and in visits that the group director made to the establishment. He was clear about the need to take unacceptable cells out of use. They took a whole host of unacceptable cells out of use; 50 were brought back into use shortly before the inspection. That should not have happened. It happened in a context of, as I say, significant pressure on the service.
Between May and August 2017, the prison population went up about 1,600. We did not say to anybody, “Use cells that should not be used.” Of course we did not do that, but I accept that we should not have used those cells. That was the wider context of pressure on the service overall. That increase in the prison population was unanticipated. It was much sharper than we normally see during that period. We had to bring accommodation back into use elsewhere and cancel closing prisons such as Hindley, and Rochester in the south-east, as a result. I say again that that does not excuse using cells that we should not have had in use, but it is the context.
Q7 Chair: The DDC clearly was aware because, as you say, he was copied into the emails and in on the meetings. Were you surprised to find that, when the DDC attended the inspection, he actually observed that he thought the prison was pretty good?
Michael Spurr: I was not there, and I do not know what he said about the prison.
Q8 Chair: But if that is right, it would be pretty bizarre.
Michael Spurr: It does not reflect my conversations with John Illingsworth, who was very aware of some of the failings of the establishment in terms of the under-investment.
Q9 Chair: You are saying that he was aware.
Michael Spurr: That individual was the governor in 2013 who was described as “a good governor leading the prison well.” He had just had an inspection at Whitemoor as governor, which was a very good inspection, and at which the inspectors said the prison was well led. This is a governor, now an acting DDC, with a strong track record of delivery and delivering decency. He was well aware that there were issues at Liverpool. He had been clear that cells that were not acceptable should be taken out of use.
There were failures in local governance. There was a RAG rating system to identify the cells that were not fit for use. It had not been operated effectively during that period. It should have been. Those are some of the lessons we have to learn.
Q10 Chair: The factual basis is that Liverpool declined from the 2013 inspection to the 2015 inspection, and then it further declined from 2015 to 2017.
Michael Spurr: That is true of the service overall really, if you look at that period. The service’s performance by 2012-13 was pretty strong. It coincides with a major period of change across the service. It coincides with a period when we have had to reduce costs substantially, with a 24% reduction in our budget. It coincides with significant changes across the way we deliver services, both in prisons and in probation, with the transforming rehabilitation reforms as well. None of that excuses the issues with basic cleanliness and decency in the prison. I accept that, but it is a context that you need to understand.
Chair: I understand.
Q11 Alex Chalk: Were you surprised by the report, Mr Spurr?
Michael Spurr: Yes, in the sense that I knew Liverpool was not a prison where we wanted it to be. We had declared it as one of a small number of prisons overall that we had serious concerns about. Yes, I knew Liverpool was not in a good state, but this was worse than I had anticipated.
Q12 Alex Chalk: If you say it is worse than you anticipated, given that there had been a bad report, why was it that you were not on top of the situation, seeing this coming down the track, and stopping it happening? You already accept that the action plan was not followed through. Should you not have been ensuring that that was taking place?
Michael Spurr: The organisation was managing a whole host of pressures, and there were pressures and difficulties at Liverpool. I have said some of that and I accept that we got it wrong, but my focus at Liverpool specifically at that point was the escape of a man earlier that year who was serving 30 years. We had done a security audit at Liverpool and we were not happy with that. We retained Liverpool as a prison of serious concern.
I knew that we were taking action at Liverpool to improve performance at Liverpool, not least by having it as one of the early adopters of the offender management model and putting more resource into Liverpool. I was well aware that there were issues at Liverpool. In relation to the deterioration in the accommodation, while it was there and the organisation knew about it—so I am accountable for that—I had not recognised the extent of the deterioration in the accommodation. That was a failing on my part and on the organisation’s part, given that the inspectorate made that clear.
Q13 David Hanson: Did the old governor resign or was he moved?
Michael Spurr: I changed the management team after the inspection. He has not resigned. He is still a member of the service.
Q14 David Hanson: What is he doing now?
Michael Spurr: He is working in my wider security, order and counter-terrorism directorate.
Q15 David Hanson: Was the decision taken by you or the regional manager?
Michael Spurr: By me, through the management line.
Q16 David Hanson: That came two days after the September report last year.
Michael Spurr: Unfortunately, the governor was not there for the inspection. It was an unannounced inspection. He was on leave. It was clear from the inspector that there were failings. He says there were failings at all levels and I accept that. There were clear local failings. It was clear to me at that moment that the team that was there could not take Liverpool forward and make the changes we needed, so I made those changes.
The then governor of Liverpool, Peter Francis, is a good man who delivered well in other prisons. He moved to Liverpool from Hindley. In March 2014, before he moved to Liverpool, Hindley prison got an inspection report with two fours, doing well; and two threes, doing reasonably well. He was the governor of that prison. He is not a man who has a track record of poor delivery—quite the reverse. But he clearly, with his team, was unable to manage the pressures and challenges of Liverpool sufficiently well. That is why we changed the team there.
Q17 David Hanson: In a sense, that is why I asked those questions. Essentially, we had the report in 2015, and 77 recommendations were made; 22 were achieved and 14 partially achieved, but 53 recommendations were not achieved. That came to light only in September with the unannounced inspection.
The question we are really interested in is, who was monitoring the achievement of those recommendations between the initial inspection in 2015 and the inspection in September? If the governor was not able to manage that, why did you only take the decision to move the governor two days after the unannounced inspection?
Michael Spurr: The local systems for assuring delivery against the recommendations were not sufficiently robust and accurate. As I said, their reporting of progress against those recommendations was much better than the inspectorate found when they visited in September.
Q18 David Hanson: What was the regional manager doing at this time?
Michael Spurr: I think I have just explained to you that the regional team was quite a light team above establishment level. That reflected significant structural change back in 2011-12, when we were required significantly to reduce our administrative spend outside prisons and probation trusts. We took 37% out of our expenditure above establishment level. We actually created smaller teams above prisons, and, as I said, the regional manager was engaged in a whole range of things. He went to Liverpool five or six times during that period. He had certainly addressed some of the issues, including himself commissioning a decency audit. He had been clear to the governor about the importance of taking cells out of use.
He had looked at specific issues of concern that had been raised by the inspectorate, including education and safer custody, but he had not formally got resource to track the individual recommendations. We had left that at local level. I accept that that level of oversight is not sufficient. It is one of the reasons why, last year, we began to introduce smaller groups of prisons, so that we can provide smaller spans of control for the regional managers—group directors as we are calling them—and to give them more resource to be able both to support governors and to ensure compliance across the requirements.
Q19 David Hanson: Did Ministers see the original report in 2015?
Michael Spurr: The original report was published, so I assume that Ministers would have seen that report.
Q20 David Hanson: Did Ministers track progress on the 77 recommendations?
Michael Spurr: I do not think there was a formal process for reporting individual responses to recommendations to Ministers in 2015.
Q21 David Hanson: Following the publication of the report in 2015, did any Minister, Lord Chancellor or Prisons Minister ask you for an update on the achievement of those 77 recommendations?
Michael Spurr: No.
Q22 David Hanson: This is a question we will return to with the Minister in due course, but in general terms what does that say about prison governor autonomy downstream?
Michael Spurr: It is important to give governors the ability to manage their prisons with greater empowerment and the ability to make more decisions locally. Generally, that means that establishments will run better. But it has to be—I have always believed this—within a framework that actually has proper accountability, and where we recognise that the system has to operate as a whole system.
One of the difficulties I am reflecting, and I am sorry to repeat it, is that Liverpool was operating with a lot of pressures and difficulties locally, but it was not the only prison in that position. The wider pressures across the service meant that we were dealing with a number of prisons that had particular problems. The problems at Liverpool, although they were important, were not flashing as red as they should have been. They were flashing red, but not as red as they should have been at the time.
We have to get better at doing that, and I am afraid that does mean more resource above establishment level to support governors, to provide additional specialist resource and to be able to identify things before others come to tell us where those things are poor.
Q23 Alex Chalk: The governor is sitting there saying, “Look, things are getting worse and they are not going in the right direction. We had a bad report and we are now in freefall. Accommodation is hopeless; conditions are going down; and assaults are increasing.” Would you have expected him to pick up the phone to you and say, “Michael, it’s going really badly wrong here and I need some support”?
Michael Spurr: That is a reasonable expectation, but again it is the context. Governors across the system have been coping with a huge amount of challenge. In one sense, they and their staff—Liverpool was the same—were in coping mode. They were saying, “We will make this work.”
From the autumn of 2016, we had had a run of significant difficulty. We had a number of disturbances in the autumn of 2016 leading up to Christmas 2016-17. Liverpool then had an escape. I believed, through 2017, that we were going to get better, but then the population increased and put more pressure back on establishments. The impact of psychoactive substances is a big issue in Liverpool and was a challenge for a lot of prisons. A lot of prisons were operating without the staffing they needed, so governors were coping.
Q24 Alex Chalk: If I may say so, you are making the same reheated excuses. The fact is that in Liverpool there were 549 staff against a benchmark of 466 staff. The report makes it crystal clear that this is not, perhaps unusually, an issue of staffing; it is an issue of leadership. The question is, is it just the governor or is it you? Who is responsible?
Michael Spurr: I think there is responsibility at local level. There is responsibility at organisational level. I would need to check those figures. I am not suggesting—
Q25 Chair: It is in the report.
Michael Spurr: Those are not officer figures.
Q26 Chair: I am sorry; are you challenging the figures in the report, Mr Spurr?
Michael Spurr: No, I am not challenging the figures. I am saying that that is the total number of staff in the establishment. The point is about benchmark figures and where they are at the minute. I am not saying that Liverpool was short of officers. I said earlier that one of the things we were doing was putting additional officers into Liverpool. The difference in having staff above the benchmark was because we were recruiting staff to deliver the offender management model. Many of them were not yet trained and delivering, but they were on the books.
I have made the point more generally about staffing, not just at Liverpool. I accept, and I have accepted again, that, yes, we should have recognised the failings at Liverpool and dealt with them earlier. Yes, there were responsibilities for that at local level and there were responsibilities through the organisation, including at my level. I am not ducking that. I am simply putting a context in place.
Q27 Victoria Prentis: The governor moved to another job within the service.
Michael Spurr: Yes.
Q28 Victoria Prentis: Above the governor is Mr Illingsworth, who is the regional director. Is he still in post?
Michael Spurr: He is. He is an acting director at the minute. He is a governor. We asked him to do that job in October 2016.
Q29 Victoria Prentis: He has some operational managers who work with him.
Michael Spurr: He does, yes.
Q30 Victoria Prentis: Are they still the same ones that were in post last year?
Michael Spurr: Yes. We have strengthened the number of people at above establishment level, and we are moving to a new structure with smaller spans of control for group directors in April. At the moment, we are going through the process of reorganising to go to that structure, which will have greater oversight above establishment level.
Q31 Victoria Prentis: Who is responsible in headquarters in London?
Michael Spurr: In terms of?
Q32 Victoria Prentis: Who deals directly with Mr Illingsworth and his team?
Michael Spurr: At the moment, there is a director for prisons north. Again, that is an acting director. There is a selection process taking place to fill that post permanently. He works to a director for prisons, and I am responsible for prisons, probation and all other aspects of the service.
Q33 Victoria Prentis: Have the personnel changed significantly in the last two years in any of those layers?
Michael Spurr: There have been a number of changes in role and responsibility. The director of operations for prisons left the service in September 2016. We then appointed a director of operations to replace him on an acting level in October 2016. That is when Mr Illingsworth took over for the north-west.
Q34 Victoria Prentis: Broadly, he has been responsible during a period of real decline.
Michael Spurr: Yes, he has. Then we restructured because the agency was restructured in April 2017. We split the responsibilities at director level because, frankly, the span of control and the expectations on them were too great for individuals to deal with. We recognised that, and therefore we are taking action to provide more capacity to oversee establishments by splitting the responsibilities and by reducing the span of control at each level above establishment.
Q35 Victoria Prentis: We have heard that Mr Illingsworth thought he was running quite a good prison in Liverpool. What evidence do you have that he understands the true reality of the situation, and that he has been trained or supported to change his behaviours to make sure that this situation does not continue?
Michael Spurr: We are obviously reflecting deeply on what happened at Liverpool, as you are in this Committee. I want to reassert this point: Mr Illingsworth is an experienced and extremely able governor.
Q36 Victoria Prentis: So why didn’t he notice what was going on?
Michael Spurr: He did notice that there were issues at Liverpool. The concern was specifically around the physical conditions. He took action. The action was not sufficient to have made a difference by the time the inspection came. He identified the problems in terms of the physical accommodation. He was taking action with Amey and others to improve that. I accept that it should have been accelerated, but I do not accept that he was not doing his job. He was doing his job. The one thing that should have happened was that they should have escalated the whole issue about the cells, and we should not have brought cells back into use over the summer period.
Q37 Victoria Prentis: I want to ask you about a specific point. The IMB report tells us that Amey were 1,000 jobs behind at the end of 2016. The inspection report states that Amey were 2,000 jobs behind by September 2017. How did that situation escalate? How was that allowed to happen? Did anybody flag it to you? If not, why not?
Michael Spurr: Again, I am afraid I am going to say that it was within a wider context. There were issues about the facilities management contract at Liverpool with Amey, and across the whole system. The reality is that in handing the responsibility for facilities management to contractors in 2015, as part of the contract requirement, they did a full asset review of the state of our establishments. What they found was a set of assets—buildings and so on—that were in a worse state than they and we had anticipated.
They were primarily employed to deal with preventive maintenance and had been getting on with that. At the same time, as a result of a range of other issues, we had less regime than I would have wanted in prisons. We had an increase in vandalism in prisons by prisoners themselves. That meant that the requirement to do reactive maintenance, to fix things that had gone wrong, was much higher than had been anticipated in the original contract.
The level of vandalism at Liverpool more than doubled over the period of the contract. There were issues for them about having the staff to respond and react to that. That is what Mr Illingsworth was dealing with through 2017, with Amey. It was not, “Oh, we hadn’t seen it was happening.” He was dealing with it, but I accept—
Q38 Victoria Prentis: But it doubled.
Michael Spurr: Yes, it did.
Q39 Victoria Prentis: So he was not dealing with it very well.
Michael Spurr: We were not resolving it as fast as we could, but again it was in the context of Amey doing facilities management across the north of England.
Q40 Victoria Prentis: Mr Spurr, are you telling us that you cannot cope?
Michael Spurr: No, I am not saying that we cannot cope. I am giving you the context of a system under pressure, where people have done exactly that; they have coped and they have kept a lot of things working. In some areas, they have improved actually. But this was not acceptable, and we should have done better at Liverpool.
Q41 Chair: Not resolving it as fast as you could implies some progress, but actually it was getting worse. How much of a grip did you and your senior team have on this, Mr Spurr?
Michael Spurr: The problem at Liverpool was that there was a cycle of prisoners in cells that were not good vandalising some of those cells. The staff recognised that and accepted it. It was a coping mechanism, rather than saying, “This is not acceptable.” We should have taken more cells out of use. I have said that and I repeat it.
The contractors had resource on site but were not able to cope with the reactive maintenance as well as the preventive maintenance. Then you have to go through a process of getting additional resource into site, and that takes time. It is not something you can just magic up overnight. We are addressing that now. There is additional resource coming into the establishment. It is not just at Liverpool. We have to reset the contracts to recognise that reactive maintenance needs a much higher profile than preventive maintenance.
If I may say so, one of the things that this exposes is that for years we managed to keep things going with reactive maintenance at the expense of preventive maintenance. That has been exposed through outsourcing those contracts.
Q42 David Hanson: If the prisons inspector had not returned in September last year, would the governor still be in post?
Michael Spurr: Well, he did return. It would have depended on the engagement between his line manager and him about whether or not the progress that the line manager was seeing was sufficient. He had identified that there were issues to be dealt with at Liverpool and was working those through. I cannot say whether or not he would still be in post now. The fact is that the inspectorate did come. They demonstrated that we were not where we should have been at Liverpool, and it was clear to me that we had to change the management team as part of our recovery plan for Liverpool.
Chair: Mr Charalambous, did you want to ask about maintenance? If not, I will just wrap up the maintenance point, if I may.
Bambos Charalambous: Yes. I will move on to something else.
Q43 Chair: Mr Miller, it is a pretty woeful failure by Amey, isn’t it?
Kevin Miller: First of all, I would like to thank the Committee for inviting me here today to give evidence.
I fully acknowledge and accept the fact that this is not an acceptable situation. There have been some failings, and we recognise that. Since the beginning of January, I have been to the prison twice and I have seen improvements compared with what was reported. We have been working a lot closer with Pia and her team, and the estates team, to make sure that we address the issues.
Q44 Chair: Had you ever been there before?
Kevin Miller: I had never been there before the beginning of January.
Q45 Chair: Who would normally run the contract?
Kevin Miller: There is an appointed account director who runs the contract and the team associated with the 61 locations for the contract. Between them, he and his senior team are very frequent visitors to all the locations in the contract.
Q46 Chair: When were you first aware that the number of outstanding maintenance items had doubled between 2016 and 2017 rather than slowly recovering?
Kevin Miller: I was made aware when the report was made available to me. I would like to point out that I was appointed to my role just prior to Christmas. As soon as I was made aware, the key priority for myself was to make sure that the Amey site team and the regional team working with the estates team were prioritising with the governor and her operations team, to make sure that we were tackling things in the right way.
Q47 Chair: How many staff do you have on site normally at Liverpool?
Kevin Miller: The baseline on site is 32 members of the works team, including the management locally. We are currently recruiting another eight members of staff and we have been doing that since September. We have had difficulties with recruiting. We have offers with eight people, depending on security clearance, with a view to those persons starting in the next four weeks, we hope.
Q48 Chair: Does the contract specify what the number on site should be?
Kevin Miller: At the beginning of the contract there was what we call a target operating model, but over the last year, working with the previous governor and the estates team, it was recognised that we needed to recruit more people to deal with the workload.
Q49 Chair: But was it specified in the contract?
Kevin Miller: The original specification was an operating model of 21.
Q50 Chair: You have increased that.
Kevin Miller: We have.
Q51 Chair: How did that compare with the previous in-house provision? Do you know?
Kevin Miller: I do not know that information.
Q52 Chair: Perhaps we can find out by writing later on. Can you help me with one other thing on contracts? Then we will move on a bit. Mr Spurr has referred on a number of occasions to issues of vandalism of windows. Is repairing damage caused by vandalism part of the basic facilities maintenance contract that Amey has?
Kevin Miller: It is. There is an element of what we call a reactive service, to go and repair.
Q53 Chair: The one Mr Spurr was talking about.
Kevin Miller: As Mr Spurr said, the number of jobs and instances far outweighed what was expected from the beginning of the contract.
Q54 Chair: But clearly you were not even keeping on top of the basics, by the sound of it.
Kevin Miller: It has been a struggle to keep on top of the basics. Resourcing and recruitment has been a factor. The rates of vandalism at that particular location are 200% over any other location in the contract.
Q55 David Hanson: Who is accountable for the performance of the contract? Is it you, Mr Miller? Is it the governor? Is it the regional manager? Is it Mr Spurr? Ultimately, who is accountable for the performance of that contract?
Kevin Miller: I am responsible for the performance of that contract, for contacts with Amey and delivery to the customer.
Q56 David Hanson: Over the number of prisons that you mentioned.
Kevin Miller: Sixty-one prisons.
Q57 David Hanson: This is also a question to Mr Spurr and, potentially, the Minister. If there is underperformance in the Amey contract over a period of time, what sanctions are available to the MOJ and to the service for underperformance, if any, by your company?
Kevin Miller: As a mechanism of the contract, we are measured on key performance indicators, and associated with that for each location there is a pay mechanism or a penalty mechanism associated with each of the service lines that we have agreed to do in each location. If we fail against those measures, we are suitably penalised.
Q58 David Hanson: Has any penalty been incurred at any time by your company for any underperformance to date?
Kevin Miller: We have realised penalties since the beginning of the contract in 2015.
Q59 David Hanson: Were any penalties imposed in Liverpool?
Kevin Miller: Yes, there were.
Q60 David Hanson: Are you at liberty to share with the Committee either privately or now what that penalty was?
Kevin Miller: If it is okay with the Committee, we will share that information through Michael and the team.
Q61 David Hanson: Who triggered that penalty?
Kevin Miller: The penalty was part of the mechanism. We present the information at a local level, so it is between the site manager and the site service delivery manager. They agree whether it is a pass or fail. Sometimes we can come in and think we have failed, whereas the service delivery manager might think we have done better on a particular service line. That is agreed at local level and then we wrap it up through the mechanism of the contract and the relationship with the estates team to look at it on a regional and on a contract level.
Q62 David Hanson: I have a final question, Mr Spurr. Are you happy overall to date or not with the performance of Amey on the contracts in 61 prisons?
Michael Spurr: I am not happy with performance on facilities management across the whole estate with Amey and Carillion, who are now in a different place. We have already recognised that Amey, to be fair, had worked with us, recognising that what is being delivered at the minute is not right. We need to reset that contract, and look at what the issues are in terms of the asset base and the reality of what they are actually facing, to address the point that we need more resource on reactive maintenance. It is not just at Liverpool, although that is clearly a place where we do, but across the service. Because we had been effecting penalties, and recognising that the service was not where it should be, we were already in a process of resetting the contract and engaging in commercial negotiations with Amey and with Carillion. Obviously, we are now dealing with Carillion in a different way through the official receiver, but current performance on facilities management across the estate is not right.
Q63 David Hanson: What is the length of the contract?
Michael Spurr: It was a five-year contract, let in 2015.
Q64 Chair: It goes to 2020.
Michael Spurr: Yes.
Q65 Victoria Prentis: How is the rat issue? In the report, it is clear that there are rats and cockroaches visible in the daytime. Has that got any better?
Pia Sinha: It has. From the moment I took the position in November/December last year, we doubled the number of pest control facilities that we provide in the jail. We have also initiated a deep clean of all external areas, and we have increased the number of what we call area yards party complement. Initially there was an issue with the prisoners, who are part of the yards party, not having inoculations for Hep B, which we have now provided for them. We have increased the supervising capacity from one member of staff to three, and they are out on a daily basis, providing a deep clean. In addition, we have systematised what the cleaning programme needs to be so that people know what good looks like.
Q66 Victoria Prentis: If you walk around today, you will not see rats or cockroaches.
Pia Sinha: I do not think I would be so brave as to say that we will not see them. I would say that we are tackling them very robustly. There is a very visible difference in the level of cleanliness in the jail, but we are at a very early part of the journey. We need to keep at it, and we need to keep our focus.
Q67 Alex Chalk: You have seen the issue, and it seems, from what you are saying, that you have a grip on it. Is there any good excuse for its not having been gripped by the previous governor? I am hearing a lot about the previous governor being a good man. It seems that he has been moved into a new and important role. Mr Illingsworth is a good man, and there is nothing wrong with him. Is there any good reason why a governor could not grip this if they were conscientious and doing their job?
Pia Sinha: It is a difficult question for me to answer, but I think that cleanliness is definitely within our gift. There is no excuse for an unclean jail. Those are issues that we have to tackle and we cannot make excuses for them.
Q68 Alex Chalk: On that point, Mr Spurr, I wonder whether in fact you feel slightly guilty about the fact that the previous governor did not get the support that perhaps he deserved. It seems an odd situation to me that things that are clearly within the responsibility of the governor, such as running a clean jail, manifestly did not happen in this case. Yet he is taken out of it and appointed by you to an important role in counter-terrorism in prisons. Is that just you feeling guilty about not supporting him, or are you rewarding failure?
Michael Spurr: I am not rewarding anything. I have said very clearly that there were failings at local level. If you take a governor out of an establishment, I do not think that is seen as anything other than a very serious thing for that individual. He has faced a good deal of press interest over what happened to him.
There were performance failures at Liverpool, and I think the governor will have to address those through the normal performance arrangements in the organisation. The point about removing him at the time was that clearly, with that inspection report, we needed to do urgent recovery. It was not realistic for him. We have strengthened the management team more broadly than just the governor. It was necessary to do that.
His individual performance is subject to proper performance appraisal. That will take place. That is not something I am prepared to discuss in this Committee, but I do not want you to think that it is not an issue. Of course it is an issue. I said that Mr Francis had moved to a post in my directorate of security, order and counter-terrorism, not that he was doing counter-terrorism.
Q69 Chair: It is not just a failure at local level, is it, Mr Spurr? It is a failing at regional and national level too.
Michael Spurr: I think I have already accepted that, Chair.
Q70 Chair: You have accepted that, so your comment to Mr Chalk is in that context.
Michael Spurr: It is indeed.
Q71 Bambos Charalambous: The failure at the prison was not just about cells and infrastructure. It was also about the management of healthcare and safety for prisoners, and the wellbeing of prisoners. The report talks about how 43% of prisoners were locked up for up to 22 hours a day. It talks about how they missed their healthcare appointments. They were not completing courses. There were three self-inflicted deaths in 2016-17, with a further two after the inspection. Who is responsible for maintaining the wellbeing of the prison? Is it the governor or NHS England? Who is responsible for that?
Michael Spurr: The wellbeing of prisoners in Liverpool prison is the responsibility of the governor. It is right that too little was being provided in terms of regime for those prisoners during that time. The report makes the valid point that we were implementing the new offender management model at Liverpool as an early adopter. A lot of emphasis had been given to that. While the emphasis was being given to what we were going to do in the future, some of the eye had been taken off the ball in terms of what was going on daily. That was a failing and it should not have happened to that degree.
The new governor has implemented new profiles and arrangements for staffing and resourcing to make the regime work more effectively. That should have been done earlier. I understand that there was a desire to wait until the new arrangements were put in place, but it actually affected day-to-day running during the 2017 period, and it should have been done earlier.
Q72 Bambos Charalambous: There is not currently a healthcare contract in place with NHS England and HMPPS. That has not been in place since April 2017. What is the delay?
Michael Spurr: I am sorry. What is the contract in?
Q73 Bambos Charalambous: Healthcare.
Kate Davies: There is a contract. As director nationally for NHS England, and to answer a number of questions that have already been asked, I have responsibility for ensuring that healthcare is commissioned and then delivered by a range of providers across the adult and the children and young people’s prison estate.
In HMP Liverpool, as in other of our northern and north-west prisons, we have local commissioners who work to procure to ensure that we have healthcare services in those prisons. Answering your question, we have to work in partnership with HMPPS and the MOJ, and Public Health England, in order to be able to deliver equality of healthcare in every establishment.
I sat in front of this Committee a few months ago and you asked me questions then. I repeat that at the moment we are probably commissioning and providing healthcare at probably the most challenging time in prisons. That is to do with pressures, but also, as Mr Spurr said, it is to do with changes within the estate strategy and how healthcare, in many respects, reacts to those changes.
We have been aware of long-standing issues at HMP Liverpool. In fact, we recommissioned and changed the healthcare provider back in 2013. That was first notified to me, and then those changes took place and we initiated a new contract. The current provider is Lancashire Care Foundation Trust, who will cease their contract in April this year. We are in the process of establishing a new healthcare provider.
Apologies to you, Chair, and to the panel, because it is not good enough to provide healthcare that we feel has been under immense stress and strain. I have discussed this with Michael, and Julie and my team discuss it daily, as I have as well, on visits to all our establishments. We have to have enabling environments. We have to have a flow of prisoners. In Liverpool, we feel that we did not have healthcare across the establishment. We did not have the flow or the input that we needed at reception, particularly because of the pressures on the system. That may be a reflection of some of the issues around lockdown, but it is no excuse for some of the issues that we would like to have seen done better. The report established that there were some improvements, particularly in primary care and therapeutic support and, we would also argue, in substance misuse. It has been a very difficult time and we are working very closely with Pia, the governor, to re-establish the contract and increase the funding.
Q74 Bambos Charalambous: Part of the problem is that staff were not unlocking prisoners for them to make the appointments. One prisoner had to wait 10 weeks for an appointment for a psychiatrist. That is clearly unacceptable. Was the problem resourcing or was there some other issue? We have heard that staffing was not an issue, because the staff were up to a high level.
Kate Davies: We keep very strong indicators on when people are first seen in reception, as part of assessing when someone may need more specialist intervention and care. That means same-day screening as well as 72-hour screening. We also have a system of self-referrals and referrals on.
We are aware, as the report highlighted, that there have been some failings in the system in ensuring that those appointments were given. Sometimes it was through the structure, as Pia was saying, and the systems within the prison officer and healthcare regime. Sometimes it was just because of the pressure of the numbers of very poorly people in that establishment. We are recruiting additional staff, and that is something that we will reflect on in the new structure.
Julie Dhuny: There have been particular challenges on recruitment of staff. Over the last year or so, they have lost a lot of experienced staff. It is reasonable to say that there have been some leadership challenges at all levels within the care provider.
I am recently in post. I came into post in October and very quickly commissioned a health needs assessment. I put a project manager in to work alongside the project manager on the prison side to clearly identify all the risks and develop an action plan. We have put a board in place, jointly chaired by myself and Pia, to monitor those improvements.
The workforce challenges are significant. I have spoken to staff to get an understanding of where we are and where we need to go. There is a general sense that a lot of the challenges from an enabling point of view and accessing prisoners have actually impacted on their ability to do their job, and caused a large number of them to leave. With the new provider coming in, we are hoping to develop the infrastructure and leadership. We are starting to see some green shoots. I have been working in Liverpool since October and I am now seeing some real improvements, which I have to say have been brought about by joint working between myself and Pia and getting some of that infrastructure in.
Q75 Bambos Charalambous: Are you confident that the contract is properly resourced and will be properly staffed?
Julie Dhuny: Yes. It will be, but it will take some time.
Kate Davies: We are commissioning across 110 adult prisons. We all have to ensure within the NHS environment that we get the flow of care right as well. I need to stress that, at the same time as I visit HMP Liverpool, I quite rightly visit my community providers working with people in the courts and police custody. One of the elements is to support the new governor. That means that Liverpool, as a community for offenders and healthcare, is also working with our partners, and increasing, as we are, services in police custody and the courts. It is absolutely crucial that both pre and post-custody, we get the right assessment for people with specialist needs, both physical and mental health needs.
For some of the issues that we identify, we can name the patients—obviously we would not do that, Chair, in the Committee—making quite sure that they are at the right place at the right time. Quite often, they are social care needs and not just mental health needs. There are some very serious offenders, but there are also some very poorly people.
Q76 Chair: Are you confident that you will get a new provider to take on the contract?
Kate Davies: I knew you would ask me that question, and you are quite right to ask me that question. It has been very difficult actually. We put out the due process around procurement. We have obviously had a lot of publicity around Liverpool. We had a lot of interest initially. I have to say that pre-Christmas, around 13 December, there was a lot of media coverage of Liverpool. That certainly had an impact on the confidence of the market and the confidence of bidders.
We are now going through the second stage of our procurement with what is called a single tender action. We are very well developed and confident that we have established very good quality providers. We are now moving into a mobilisation plan.
Q77 Chair: Ms Dhuny, how much time is wasted in staff having to wait around for prisoners who are not brought down for their appointments and so on?
Julie Dhuny: I could not give you exact figures around that, but there is a general sense that there is a lot of frustration for staff, particularly the mental health teams and primary care colleagues, accessing patients.
Pia Sinha: Since the inspection, we have increased the number of staff that are dedicated to provide enabling for prisoners. Our DNA—did not attend—rates have reduced significantly. When I first arrived, they were at the 40% mark. That has now reduced to 20%. The profiles have given an extra member of staff for the in-patient facility so that a lot of the therapeutic work can happen. The regime provided there feels a lot more constructive.
Q78 Ellie Reeves: Following up on the healthcare point first of all, my understanding is that, in April 2015, there was the death from an asthma attack of a prisoner who had not been prescribed the proper medicine on arrival in the prison. Looking at the inspection report though, it looks as if lessons might not have been learned from that, with it taking a long time for people to see a GP and there not being pharmacy-led prescriptions. Are you confident that there would not be a reoccurrence of that sort of incident, when someone who has been in the prison for less than a month ends up dying because they have not been given the proper medicine?
Pia Sinha: Who is that directed to?
Q79 Ellie Reeves: Mr Spurr or you, Ms Sinha, might want to comment on those points.
Pia Sinha: From a local point of view, what has been done and the emphasis being placed on healthcare provision is quite considerable. Julie Dhuny was talking about the fact that the project board has been implemented, and it looks specifically at the areas that need to be improved. A composite action plan has been drawn up that will monitor those levels.
I feel that partnership working is the key bit in making this work better. In the past, there was a tendency for partners not to work as closely, collegiately or collaboratively with each other. I think that is an important part of what makes prisons work better; we have to work constructively with our partners and share a common purpose. Once those values are reinitiated, and it certainly feels like they have been reinitiated at Liverpool, I would feel more confident about such cases not occurring.
Q80 Ellie Reeves: You feel confident.
Pia Sinha: Yes.
Kate Davies: One of the things that is really important as part of a national principle for local prisons, regardless of the governor or the healthcare provider, is that under clinical assessment, if someone’s healthcare need is paramount, their healthcare need is paramount. Sometimes within the everyday working of a very busy prison, it takes quite a lot to challenge, particularly for a healthcare member of staff, when there is a judgment that is obviously a clinical or prescribing judgment. That is not an excuse, but it goes back to how the partnership works between the healthcare provider, the healthcare commissioner, who is there to support the quality end, and the governor. Sometimes, escorts and bed watches are a good example of that within a prison. I know that in Liverpool that was something we had questions on as well. We have to make sure that our clinical judgment, with the governor around safety and security, comes into play.
I share Mr Spurr’s overview that there were a number of prisons in the north-west where we were following different elements of need around healthcare. HMP Kennet closing was one of those. We were very clear with HMP Kennet that we could not keep HMP Kennet open—or the governor, the MOJ and HMPPS could not—without healthcare. Without that, it cannot exist and this situation stresses that point again.
Q81 Chair: The partnership agreement expired in April 2017. Has it been replaced?
Kate Davies: The partnership agreement, which was formally done, has been agreed between all partners. It was carried over for April 2017 and 2019 because of the prison reforms.
Q82 Chair: Is there one or isn’t there?
Kate Davies: I have meetings this afternoon and tomorrow when that new partnership agreement will be signed off. It is on schedule, Chair, to be signed off by all seniors for 1 April.
Chair: That is helpful.
Q83 Ellie Reeves: On the general regime at the prison, one of the things that came out of the report was the lack of time that prisoners spend out of cell; 43% of prisoners said that they spent less than two hours out of their cell on a typical weekday, and only about 500 prisoners were fully employed. Obviously, a big part of rehabilitation is spending time out of cell and being engaged in education or other rehabilitation activities. What are you doing to address those issues now?
Pia Sinha: Liverpool has 90 extra staff. There was agreement that it would happen in January 2017. By the time we had recruited, we were at the position we are now, with full staffing. We have a regime that now incorporates those 90 staff, which means our ability to provide a safe and decent regime has become much more effective. The re-profile means that staff are there at the right times and it allows prisoners to be unlocked, as they are supposed to be.
Liverpool does not have enough activity spaces for prisoners, so a large section of our prisoners are on part-time work. The regime they have now, which is called a core day, is published and they all have access to it. It allows for people who work in the mornings to get up and go to work in the morning, and in the afternoon period they have what we call a domestic period. They are able to use the showers and make their phone calls. That results in a much better time out of cell regime for prisoners.
We have targets for prisoners attending activity. We are not quite at target, which is 80%. For industries and work, it is approximately 75%, which is a big improvement. We need to increase the figures for education. That is our next goal. It is hitting roughly around 55%, which is not good enough. That is what we need to build into it. In order to encourage prisoners to attend education, we also have to work at the provision, making education more interesting and worth while. Those are the steps we are taking so that we get better attendance in education. If you were to visit Liverpool now, you would see that prisoners are engaged in much more constructive activity. They have a lot more time out of cell.
Q84 Ellie Reeves: Typically, how long are prisoners now spending out of their cell?
Pia Sinha: If you are a part-time worker, you would spend about two and a half hours in the morning in work or education, and then you would have two or two and a half hours in the afternoon for your domestic period. It has gone up. Ideally, it should be 6.25 hours for a local prison, but it is a bit stretched for us to reach that and not many locals are reaching it. I would say confidently that it is roughly about five or five and a half hours, which is much better.
Q85 Ellie Reeves: Do you think that over time you will be able to increase that?
Pia Sinha: Yes, because we have set up the regime in such a way that the staff are in place to provide the regime we say we are going to provide.
Q86 Ellie Reeves: How long do you think it will take to get to a level where it is over six hours?
Pia Sinha: When we publish a profile, we build in a three-month review of it. What we would like to do is increase the number of hours that prisoners are out in the evening period. That is what we are aiming to do.
Liverpool has reduced its population, which means that the number of prisoners in full-time work or employment has increased. The initial profile meant that there was a small number of people who could come out in the evening, but now we have a much larger number who come out in the evening and we do not have the staff proportionate to provide a safe regime for that. We will re-profile that, bringing in more work during the daytime, which allows staffing to be better in the evening. That will allow more prisoners to come out in the evening.
Q87 Ellie Reeves: Mr Spurr, you have heard the measures that the new governor has put in place. Why was none of this done sooner?
Michael Spurr: A lot of those were planned. The additional staffing and the offender management model that enabled that regime were all things we had set in train, as the governor said, in January 2017. I said earlier that I believed they should have tried to move to the new regime earlier in the year rather than waiting until everybody was in place and everybody had been trained and then moving to it. I understand why that was the case, but, in planning for what they were going to do, they lost sight of what was actually happening on a daily basis.
It is not that we have just suddenly invented this whole idea post inspection. The inspection references the work on one wing where the offender management model had been implemented, but we were not able to implement all of that earlier. I think more attention should have been paid to the regime that was operating day to day through the summer period. The governor has been able to take that forward and has all the staff in place now. The fact is that the population has been reduced. I have taken 172 places out of use at Liverpool. Fewer prisoners means that more of them can have more activity and more support. Again, that was something we did not do in the summer for the reasons I gave earlier.
Q88 Gavin Newlands: I want to go back to your point on the action plan. You said there was a failure to follow up on the action plan that the prison had. Can you talk us through the processes involved in an action plan? Was it a failure of those processes, or did no process actually exist for you to follow up on specific action plans?
Michael Spurr: What we were doing and what we are doing are probably two different things. What was happening prior to this inspection, because of the changes I mentioned earlier about reducing the amount of oversight above establishment level, is that the response to action plans was primarily driven at local level. They responded to the action plan, and that was approved at regional level. The action plan response was published on the inspectorate website. The governor is responsible for following through on those actions and reporting progress against those actions. That is what happened.
What is happening now? The previous Secretary of State had been clear about his expectation and determination to follow through on the inspectorate reports and action plans in a much more transparent, open and detailed way. He set up a separate unit within my organisation to enact that and gather all the information in response to action plans, to put a much clearer process in place above establishment level. That is part of why we have the new urgent notification procedure and transparency.
As I mentioned, I was already strengthening the oversight of establishments above establishment level. My expectation is that group directors who have smaller spans of control will have much greater personal engagement and oversight of the delivery of action plans, and will report that both to me and to Ministers under the new arrangements.
Q89 Chair: Ms Sinha, your primary responsibility is to deliver the action plan.
Pia Sinha: Yes.
Q90 Chair: Who monitors your delivery of it?
Pia Sinha: The first time HMIP produced the action plan, before it was finalised, we were in the room with the group director, the executive director of the north and my senior team. Together, we produced this action plan.
Q91 Chair: But who does the monitoring of it? Is it the regional director or the group director, and then up again?
Pia Sinha: On a day-to-day basis, it is my responsibility and then above that—
Q92 Chair: And then up, yes. Exactly; there is no external monitoring of it.
Pia Sinha: Yes, there is.
Chair: Unless members have any more questions for this panel, Mr Spurr will stay with us and the Minister will join us. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and your evidence. We are grateful to those who are leaving us after the first panel for helping us in this matter.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Rory Stewart MP and Michael Spurr.
Q93 Chair: Minister, thank you for your patience and thank you for joining us. Welcome to your post and your first appearance before the Select Committee. You have been in post a fairly short time, and you are not the first Minister we have had to say that to over the years. I think you have been to Liverpool already.
Rory Stewart: I went to Liverpool on Monday and I saw both the Liverpool prison, which we are discussing today, and Altcourse prison, which is the G4S prison a mile and a half away. That was quite an interesting comparison, because they are similar-sized and similar category prisons drawing on a very similar population, but with very different inspection reports.
Q94 Chair: The other one had a very good inspection report, didn’t it?
Rory Stewart: Correct.
Q95 Chair: Have you yet been able to draw conclusions as to that, or is it too soon?
Rory Stewart: Some very preliminary conclusions. Clearly one element is the age of the building, but we should not talk about age of the building endlessly. I think it is possible to run a decent prison in an old building. Stafford prison, which was built in the late 1700s, is a good prison in an old building. There are some issues around the building, but it is also true that even the Altcourse prison is 20 years old and is very well maintained. They remain on top of their maintenance tasks.
Part of it is about leadership. I had a very good interaction with Pia and the senior staff. I am impressed by the plan they have brought together, but the key is implementation. The key is the grip. The depressing thing for me coming into this is that superficially the 2015 action plan, read quickly, also looked quite plausible. There were a number of statements about all the things they were going to do in 2015, and clearly they were not done.
Q96 Chair: Does that say something about the way follow-up is conducted on these inspection reports and action plans? Is there perhaps a lack of independence in that?
Rory Stewart: Again, I am very new to this job, and I am very conscious that Michael has been in post for eight years and has been in the Prison Service for many decades. He knows much more about prisons than I will probably ever know in my life.
However, it seems to me that we could make much better use of the inspection reports and really use them to drive cultural change. Michael referred to some of the things that were introduced by David Lidington, such as the urgent notifications and setting up a new unit. We should make the inspection reports absolutely front and centre in how we judge prisons, rather than what I fear may have been the case in the past, which is people not seeing inspection reports as the key management tool for driving change.
Q97 Victoria Prentis: Would it be a good idea to equip the inspector, Peter Clarke, with another team who could go in and check whether recommendations are acted upon? We know it is something he is willing and able to provide. Would that service help you, as a Minister, to manage what is going on?
Rory Stewart: I am very sympathetic to that idea. I need to look at it. He is a deeply impressive individual. These reports are fantastic. Without the reports, this change would not be happening, so I am very sympathetic to the idea that we should be bolstering the inspections.
Q98 Chair: There is a pattern that struck us. Mr Spurr, you have been in post throughout this period. Between 2013-14 and 2017-18, the current year, the number of recommendations accepted has actually increased from 79% to 83%, but the number of recommendations achieved has reduced from 46% to 37%. That is a pretty damning indictment, isn’t it, Mr Spurr? Your people are saying more often, “Yes, we accept these reports,” but you are actually acting on them less.
Michael Spurr: Again, it reflects what I described earlier. I do not want to have to repeat all of that again. I think prisons were improving generally up to 2012-13. The amount of change we have delivered over that period has meant that, regrettably, across the piece we have not delivered the performance that we would have wanted.
The inspectorate has expectations that we would aspire to get to. We are not resourced to deliver against some of those expectations. For example, every inspection report, including the one at Liverpool, will say that there should be no prisoners held in a crowded cell, but we cannot deliver that. It will say that prisoners should have full activity. I agree, but we cannot deliver that. Our acceptance is a recognition, and we need to be clearer, as the previous Secretary of State said, about what we want to get to, and then what we are going to get to, and make sure that we deliver against what we say we are going to deliver. That is something I absolutely want to do.
Rory Stewart: Let me put in a point of clarification there. It is important to distinguish recommendations that are accepted and those that are not accepted. The two recommendations that Michael just mentioned would not be accepted. We would expect to be monitored against his recommendations that are accepted. On those, you are correct; we are failing to perform.
Chair: That is where the relative decline has been.
Q99 Victoria Prentis: If recommendations are made, whether or not they can immediately be achieved, we are concerned that your views as to why they cannot be achieved are fed right back to the top in the Ministry of Justice. For example, if you feel that Liverpool is running a better regime, because there is more resource and there are fewer prisoners on site, it is something the Minister needs to know. What confidence can we have that problems and the solutions to them are fed through?
Michael Spurr: The issues that are clear across the prison estate, which have had a good deal of coverage, including through this Committee, have meant that there has been regular engagement with Ministers about the problems across the estate and what we are doing. Population is obviously one of them.
The Minister is absolutely right that we need to be clearer on what we can deliver, and then deliver it. I am not at all reneging from the fact that, if we accept a recommendation and say we are going to deliver it, we should deliver it. We need to be clear where we cannot deliver something, and not aspire. Accepting in principle is something we used to do. We should not be doing that. We should be saying, “We accept that and we will deliver it.” We should be held to account for delivering it and be clear about it.
Yes, there have been conversations. There is a whole set of reforms in place that will improve the performance of the service. Some of those are now beginning to get traction at Liverpool. The offender management model is now, and will be by April, in place at Liverpool. That will make a difference. That is because we have been engaging with Ministers about some of the difficulties the service has. That is why £100 million was put into the service in autumn 2016. That is why there is an investment programme to improve the quality of accommodation. That is why that investment programme will reduce the level of crowding. That has come from direct engagement and reflection on the wider external scrutiny that the service has appropriately been subject to.
Q100 Chair: Minister, I know that you and the current Secretary of State are as committed as Mr Lidington was to the transparency approach that has just been referred to. I think you said to us earlier that you wanted to see more done to make inspection reports central, as a management tool. You will be aware of the phrase “marking your own homework.” Is that an issue you think we need to look at in terms of improving transparency in this matter?
Rory Stewart: Yes, absolutely. We need somehow to get the balance between inspection reports and project plans, and people simply getting on the ground and seeing what is happening. Clearly what seems to have gone wrong from 2015 to 2017 is that an action plan was produced with a lot of fine words in it. There was a general sense that the last governor of Liverpool prison was meant to have a good reputation and was popular with the prison officers, but the reality was that already in 2015 the inspector said, “This place is filthy; there is dirt all over the place and nobody is cleaning it up.” Two years later, it was even filthier and there was even more dirt all over the place, with people not cleaning it up.
Again, this is a question of culture. I am coming to it brand new. I have been in the job barely two weeks. My instinct is that we need to get back to basics. We need to absolutely insist that we are going to run clean, decent prisons. From my point of view, over the last few years there has been too much abstract conversation about grand bits of prison policy. They are important, but we cannot lose the basics. I sometimes feel as though we are turning up and saying, “This is a filthy prison. Why are we not cleaning the prison?”, and people want to talk about grand issues of sentencing policy, reoffending and the policy context.
These things can be dealt with and they are being dealt with. Pia has dealt with them. She has dealt with them by increasing the number of prisoners on yard duty from five to 18. She has dealt with them by giving them hi-vis vests. She has dealt with them because that has been her priority. It is making sure prisoners feel that they are in a safe environment without a broken window, which incidentally is what enables you to pull in the drugs from the drone outside your window.
A broken window is also what creates a general morale problem for prison officers. Without being over-simplistic, broken windows are really important. One of the depressing things is that, in 2015, the previous governor mentions broken windows as one of the things he is going to address, and by the time I saw Liverpool prison almost every window in one of the wings I visited was broken.
Q101 Victoria Prentis: Most of what you have just said, Minister, was music to our ears. Have you taken on board the fact that Pia is clearly doing well at Liverpool because there are fewer prisoners, so she has more resource and more staff to deal with fewer prisoners?
Rory Stewart: Yes. That is a really important point, but I am afraid that statistically—I would be very happy to be corrected by Michael on this—compared with other prisons that are performing better than Liverpool, Liverpool is well resourced in terms of staff. If you were trying to compare Liverpool with prisons that perform better in inspection reports, you cannot account for it by Liverpool having fewer staff. Of course, things get easier with more staff and fewer prisoners, but I believe—this may be a difficult thing to say—that within those staff resources we could have had a clean and decently run prison. There was nothing about the staff resources that prevented people from picking up rubbish.
Q102 David Hanson: Minister, we have to focus on your role in all of this. I just want to get a sense of that. The objectives you have set about clean, decent prisons, with no broken windows and so on, are very valid and very important. What is the ministerial role in setting and monitoring those challenges? I was quite surprised when Mr Spurr said that, when we had the previous reports on Liverpool in 2015, no Minister had asked for an update on the 77 recommendations, their implementation or delivery, in the period between then and the report in September last year. Presumably, you have seen the action plan. What is the ministerial role in this from your perspective?
Rory Stewart: It is going to be a question of different Ministers. I do not want to comment on my predecessors, but in terms of my own approach to this, when I was a DEFRA Minister dealing with the Environment Agency and Natural England, when there was a flood going on I did not accept the idea that those were independent operational agencies. I want to be in on the details and I want to challenge the details. I want to take full responsibility, and I want you to hold me accountable for prisons failing.
One of the problems has been that we have set up an indirect model where the Ministry commissions and an agency delivers. For better or for worse, I do not know whether this is true in this Department, Ministers sometimes feel it is not their job to get into operational details. They set the grand strategic policy. I disagree. I think this is an operational job and I have responsibility to make sure prisons are clean. In order to do that, I need to get into the prisons and I need to ask difficult questions about the reports.
Q103 David Hanson: I accept that. This is not a party judgment, but the question for the Committee is, how does the new governor empowerment model and the governor devolution model work with the aspirations you have just set out?
Rory Stewart: I hope that it is helpful. I hope that giving somebody like Pia a sense that it is her prison, and that she owns and controls the prison, is exactly what gives her a sense of pride and responsibility in making sure that everything that happens in the prison is her fault and her responsibility. If the floors are dirty, she feels it is on her, rather than feeling, as might have happened in the past, “It is not quite my responsibility. It is a contractor here, it’s a manager there or the politicians or the budgets.” I would like to feel, as you would feel with a military unit, that the commanding officer on site is responsible for what goes on in that place and feels a deep sense of pride in what it looks like and feels like.
Q104 David Hanson: For the next Liverpool, because there will always be the next report and the next series of 77 recommendations, I am trying to get a sense of how ministerial accountability will respond to the challenges, and how you will see your role, with Mr Spurr’s leadership, in dealing with the next set of recommendations that come up.
Rory Stewart: I would expect, the next time this happens, for you to drag me in and give me a very hard time. The kind of thing that I would be looking at in terms of recommendations—this is one of the differences between the 2015 and 2017 action plans—is not just, as happens again and again in the 2015 plan, that a new process has been approved with a new training package in place and a new committee set up.
What is striking about Pia’s 2017 plan, much more commonly as you read through it, is the sense that there is a single individual held responsible and with whom the buck stops. Again and again in the 2017 plan, we hear about a particular person being put in charge of violence reduction or focusing on healthcare delivery. It is that that we need.
Q105 David Hanson: The Prison Service is a very complicated, multi-purpose body. The governor will have a responsibility. We now have Amey and the contractors having responsibilities. We have Michael Spurr having responsibilities and we have the Minister having an overall accountability to Parliament. With a regional management structure, a commissioning structure and with facilities management contracts, what the Committee is trying to get to is, who ultimately has a grip of all these issues? Mr Charalambous will ask about the performance of the contractor in a moment, but ultimately who has a grip of that performance?
Rory Stewart: I think the answer has to be myself and Michael. I would be interested to get a sense of how you feel this has changed since you yourself were doing this job. My sense is that in the end we are in charge, and we have to be held accountable for it. There is no point making excuses; it is not good enough.
David Hanson: I was the longest serving Prisons Minister in British history, and I did two years and one month. That tells you where we are coming from. We will perhaps debate that outside the Committee.
Q106 Alex Chalk: There are two points I want to make, and the second one picks up from that. In my time on this Committee, I am now on to my fourth Secretary of State. Do you think the level of churn within the ministerial team is undermining the ability of the MOJ to hold prison governors to account and to keep the quality of our prisons high?
Rory Stewart: Personally, I believe that the longer you are in office, the more you can achieve. Transforming the Prison Service and all the issues we are talking about is a five to 10-year project. To begin to put the framework in place to do that is something that takes time. I hope I am going to have the time to do it, but I am not in charge of that.
Q107 Alex Chalk: I want to ask about the whole principle of governor empowerment. It is a great idea as long as you have governors who are really high quality. You give them all the power to do it and you hold them accountable, and that is all fine. Does this experience, however, undermine the whole principle of governor empowerment? If you cannot get the calibre of individual to do it—you have shown how measuring this one side by side with the prison up the road is night and day—does it not give you pause for thought? “Hang on a minute, we can’t afford to do this because the reality is that it is an incredibly demanding job and at the moment we haven’t the quality of people doing it.”
Rory Stewart: Respectfully, I disagree. I think the only way to run good organisations is real delegation—putting people fully in charge of the leaders—but you then need the layer above to catch the few people who are not delivering to task. In a military analogy, the best armies in the world run by putting the colonels, the commanding officers, in charge of their units. Ultimately, of course, not all those people are going to perform, which is why you need the brigadier on top to notice when a regiment is going wrong.
The way to solve it is not to try to pretend that the people in Whitehall with a 300-mile screwdriver are going to be able to manage every detail of what goes on. What you need to do is to be out on the ground enough to spot pretty quickly if somebody is not performing.
Q108 Alex Chalk: Whose fault is it that the brigadier, to use your analogy, was not in place? What is so striking to me is that there was a prison that was failing and a governor who was failing and no one knew it. No one spotted it. Mr Spurr had not spotted it, and it appears that there is a great vacuum between Mr Spurr and the governor to actually get a grip on this. Who do you hold responsible for that failure?
Rory Stewart: Again, I am very new to the job and I need to look at that very carefully. It is just a guess, but my instinct is that it is about culture and the way you exercise leadership. My instinct is that the person at the regional level would have been very busy and working very hard, and would have been a very dedicated public servant, but would not have felt that their job was to spend hour after hour on the wings looking at what was going on, and would not have felt a personal sense of responsibility for the litter on those wings. It is about changing culture. That person probably would have felt, if you had interviewed them, that they were operating at a grander strategic level and that a lot of those operational things were somehow below their pay grade. The key would be changing that.
Q109 Alex Chalk: Can I respectfully suggest that it is also about resource? You have to have a man or woman filling that post who, yes, has the right culture and motivation but whose job it is to ensure that governors are not dropping the ball, because otherwise this problem is going to happen again and again. You will have a disobliging, highly critical report and nothing will change.
Rory Stewart: Absolutely. In the past, the role of the next rung up—the person working in the area of regional manager—was more operational and more involved. It involved them spending more time in prisons, and my suspicion is that we need to return to that.
Q110 Bambos Charalambous: On the performance of contractors, we have heard that Amey were contractors for managing the maintenance of the prison, and there were over 2,000 jobs outstanding. How would you deal with that situation? Do you think the performance is acceptable?
Rory Stewart: First, the performance is not acceptable. Secondly, in addition to the problem that you have identified, which is the problem of a spike, there is an underlying problem with what Amey is doing. There is a baseline of jobs that have not been dealt with that is far too high. In other words, there is a backlog. There is no excuse for that kind of backlog. It can be cleared by focusing on it.
We have put another £2.5 million into replacing windows, which is important in terms of trying to get some of the infrastructure up to speed. Amey is bringing in more contractors to try to deal with it. It is not good enough. From my point of view, there are too many people trying to manage through bureaucratic process. There is too much, “We’re going to deal with this by setting a new key performance indicator and we’ll deduct some money if you don’t meet your KPI,” rather than spending time on the ground saying, “This is disgusting; sort it out.”
Q111 Bambos Charalambous: We have heard about big contracts failing recently. Do you have any thoughts about what steps could be taken if, say, Amey failed on a mass scale?
Rory Stewart: That is a much bigger issue. It is a big contractor for the Government and that is going into Carillion territory. My instinct is that this is not a question of the public against the private sector. I have seen some very good public sector prisons with very dedicated public sector governors. As I said, in Liverpool, I then went to a very good private sector prison run by a company that has sometimes had a difficult reputation but which was doing a really good job and had a really clean and well-maintained prison. That was not a Government prison, so it can be done. In the end, it is a question of leadership.
Q112 Bambos Charalambous: Would that be leadership at local level by the governors or further up the chain?
Rory Stewart: Right the way through. The whole system and culture needs a set of getting back to basics and the minimum standards we accept.
Q113 Bambos Charalambous: Would the buck stop with you then?
Rory Stewart: Absolutely. If I am not able in the next 12 months to achieve some improvements in making these prisons basically clean, with more fixed broken windows and fewer drugs, I am not doing my job, and I would like you to hold me to account for that in 12 months’ time.
Q114 Chair: Minister, that is very frank. As a measure of it, of course, Liverpool is not unique, is it? We know that the urgent notice procedure that Mr Spurr referred to was triggered in Nottingham. We have also seen letters in relation to Wormwood Scrubs, where the basic standards of decency that the inspectorate expected to see “were quite simply nowhere to be met.” Similarly at Oakhill. We have seen a declining pattern of the inspector’s recommendations being met. It was 14% from the last inspections at Brixton and Swansea, and only 25% at Nottingham. It is a big task. At the end of the day, how do you think you should be judged and how are you going to set about it?
Rory Stewart: Again, I am new to this job and I am aware that making grand statements about how the Prison Service is run is quite difficult when I am two weeks in. I am on a back-to-basics campaign. If I achieve nothing else in this job, if we could have those places clean and decent, with a proper broken windows policy, if we could reduce the flow of drugs into those places and if we could have a house for someone to go to when they leave the prison and a decent set of educational provision, I think that is a good start and good reason to be proud of this job.
Q115 David Hanson: Could you tell the Committee, if not now at some point, what the baseline investment was in facilities management prior to the Amey and Carillion contracts, and what the baseline contract value is now for Amey and Carillion? You indicated that you have put an additional £2 million-plus into the service. I would welcome further information about the baseline on investment.
Rory Stewart: We will send that to you.
Chair: Minister, thank you very much for undertaking to do that. At the end of the day, we wish you a long enough tenure to be able to make a difference—not so long as to blight the whole of your career but enough to get on top of the job. This is the first time our Committee has ever inquired into an individual inspection report because, frankly, we were so horrified at what we saw.
I am grateful to you, Minister, to Mr Spurr and the previous panel for giving your evidence. Obviously, we will follow up with appropriate conclusions drawn from the evidence we have heard. I am grateful to you, and we certainly look forward to seeing you again, Minister.