Titan Prisons my arse

Titan Prisons my arse



House of Lords
Wednesday, 29 October 2008.

Prisons: Titans
3.01 pm

Lord Dubs asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether they will review their plans to build Titan prisons in light of recent projections of future prison populations.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bach): My Lords, large prison complexes are about more than just additional capacity. They will enable us to seize an important opportunity to modernise the prison estate by decommissioning worn-out, ineffective prisons, and use these gains in efficiency to support improvements in the delivery of rehabilitation by delivering the interventions which help turn prisoners away from a life of crime.

Lord Dubs: My Lords, I welcome any improvement in the prison estate, but will the Government consider pausing in their plans to build Titan prisons until they can review more fully the nature of the prison population, particularly the numbers of mentally ill, many of whom might do better with treatment elsewhere than in the prisons?

Lord Bach: My Lords, we await the report by my noble friend Lord Bradley into the mental health issue which is due in December this year. The most recent projections show that 94,200 places will be needed by 2014 and we aim to provide 96,000 places—hardly a great margin. If the end-of-custody licence scheme were to come to an end, we would need an additional 1,300 places. However, I have to emphasise that the projections are based around estimates, and estimates are not an exact science.

Lord Elton: My Lords, the Minister has emphasised the importance of turning prisoners away from crime.

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Does he recall paragraph 1.195 of the Woolf report in which the noble and learned Lord said:

“It is also highly desirable for the stable running of a prison and”—

I emphasise “and”,

“for the prospects for the prisoner leading a law abiding life after release that, whenever practicable, he should be accommodated as near to his home and community as possible”?

What has happened to change the Government’s enthusiastic acceptance of that view?

Lord Bach: My Lords, nothing has happened to change our enthusiastic support of that proposition. We are looking to build the larger prisons in areas where there is a large amount of demand.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Bach: My Lords, I am afraid that is the uncomfortable truth. At the moment, of course, many prisoners have to be dispersed a long way from where they live, sometimes to smaller, sometimes to larger prisons. We need new prisons in certain parts of the country, and when these larger prisons are in place it will be easier for families and friends to visit those incarcerated.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, taking into account delays which are inevitable in the processes of building prisons, what is the earliest date on which it is expected that the first of these prisons will receive the first prisoner?

Lord Bach: My Lords, it is not possible to answer the noble Lord directly. He knows that consultation on the operation and direction of these larger prisons is taking place. That is due to report soon. When the report is made public, it will be easier to say when the first larger prison will open.

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, in ancient Greek mythology, the Titans were a pretty unsavoury lot. One of them cut off the unmentionable parts of his father with a sickle, married one of his sisters, swallowed five of his children and finally, along with his siblings, was cast into the dreaded Lake Tartarus. Will the Minister comment on that scenario in relation to these horrendous prisons, about which, in spite of his wonderfully sanguine demeanour and voice this afternoon, many of us are deeply sceptical?

Lord Bach: My Lords, that is why we now call them “larger prisons”.

Lord Henley: My Lords, as the Government have made up their mind fairly comprehensively on Titan prisons, or what the Minister has now rechristened “large prison complexes”, why are they consulting the public and others on their future? Have they decided to ignore the consultation in advance of its results?

Lord Bach: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord has misunderstood the consultation. It is not about the principle of whether larger prisons are appropriate, but about how best to organise, direct and manage such prisons.


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Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My Lords—

Baroness Corston: My Lords—

The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change & Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, there is time for everyone. If the Lib Dems will go first, there will be time for the Labour Benches.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My Lords, the Minister will have seen the Justice Secretary’s speech from Monday, where he almost crowed that the UK spends most in the OECD on law and order. Does he subscribe to the view that that is a good thing, or does he subscribe to Professor Ian Loader’s view, expressed in yesterday’s Guardian, that:

“In a civilised society, punishment should be a matter for sorrow and regret, not a badge of political pride”?

Lord Bach: My Lords, I have read the speech fully and agree with every word of it. What I am proud of is the significant and sustained drop in crime—it has fallen by one-third since 1997—which represents an enormous success in social policy. It is an achievement of which we should all be proud. We should be proud of the cultural and structural reform of the police, of prisons, of probation, of the courts and of youth justice, which has breathed life back into a system that had too many deficiencies in the past.

Baroness Corston: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that Government do not plan to provide any Titan prisons for women? He will know that the Government accepted 41 of the 43 recommendations that I made in my report two years ago, where I said that women should be held be in small custodial units close to home. Will he confirm that that is still government policy in relation to women prisoners?

Lord Bach: Yes, my Lords.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, what is the Government’s budget for tackling the cycle of deprivation in families to prevent offending and reoffending, compared with the £2 billion that they propose to spend on Titans, which are almost universally condemned?

Lord Bach: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Baroness the first figure that she wants, but she should know that a huge amount of public money is being spent on what she referred to in the first part of her question. We will continue to spend that money, because we want to keep people out of prison. However, it is unfortunately necessary, unless the noble Baroness disagrees, for persistent, violent and dangerous offenders to be put in prison.

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So, the government response so far has only been to change the name from Titan Prisons to "large prison complexes"? Lord Bach is wrong to claim that Titan Prisons "are about more than just additional capacity", a 2,500 space human warehouse is just that and it has inbuilt overcrowding in its design. Modernising the penal estate does not need or require Titan Prisons, this is clearly a retrograde step. True, the decommissioning of Victorian prisons would be a step forward. However, if the intention is to replace them with Titan Prisons elsewhere then this is like taking a step forward to take two steps backwards! Is Lord Bach thinking about gas bills when he refers to "gains in efficiency"? What makes those prisons ineffective in the first place is their size and excessive capacity. As the Woolf Report pointed out, the way forward is smaller more manageable units. This allows for one to one counselling to take place which would ensure "the delivery of rehabilitation by delivering the interventions which help turn prisoners away from a life of crime".

I feel that there is something distinctly dishonest about a so-called consultation exercise which leaves out of the equation the big question "whether larger prisons are appropriate"? Oddly, including these questions in the consultation exercise "how best to organise, direct and manage such prisons"? Is it now being claimed by Labour that Jack Straw and the Director General of the National Offender Management Service, Phil Wheatley, are not capable of organising, directing and managing prisons?

By contrast, the ECtHR has already decided that it is a breach of human rights to deny convicted prisoners the vote. And yet, the Ministry of Justice consultation asked the question "whether prisoners should have the vote"? This was the issue which required looking at to see how it could be implemented, not whether it should be. For example, by postal vote like in Ireland.

Lord Bach answering Baroness Corston's point has fallen into the trap of admitting that the Labour government is in danger of breaking the law as it relates to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. The Titan Prisons are unfairly just for men and will be built far from their homes in most cases. Whilst women prisoners will be treated fairly, in smaller more manageable units closer to their homes in most cases.

Finally, in this economic downturn I fail to see how £2bn can be justly spent on a Titan Prisons project which will benefit nobody save for the builders.