We now move to item 5 on the agenda. Unfortunately, Donald Gorrie is not here yet; however, I ask Michael Matheson to report back briefly on his visit to Kilmarnock prison yesterday.
Where is this on the agenda?
It is under item 5, which is our consideration of the prison estates review. I thought that we would just hear a very short report about yesterday's visit to Kilmarnock prison before we took oral evidence.
Donald Gorrie and I, accompanied by the Scottish Prison Service's controller and representatives of Premier Prison Services, spent a useful day at Kilmarnock prison. We visited the workshops, the medical centre, the education centre and one of the halls. We also met prison officers privately. Although Premier Prison Services intended to take part in that meeting, I was not keen for them to do so, because it might have had an impact on how candid the prison officers would be. Premier Prison Services eventually agreed to that.
It will be of interest to members that the Audit Committee will take evidence on the SPS accounts at its meeting on 30 April. As Paul Martin is a member of that committee, would the committee consider appointing Paul—if he is prepared to do it—as a reporter on that item, which clashes with our meeting.
That is very kind of you, convener.
You should be more sincere. Do members agree that we should have a formal report on that meeting of the Audit Committee?
The clerks are trying to arrange a videoconference evidence session with Professor Bill Marshall, who produced a report on Peterhead prison. We have seen the relevant reports, but we think that we should question Professor Marshall.
Is the briefing intended to be for all committee members?
Yes. We intend to have an informal briefing, if members think that that would be useful.
In previous evidence to the committee, it was said that it is difficult to compare the public and the private sectors because the key performance indicators for the public sector are far higher than contractual obligations in the private sector. Will the witnesses describe how the performance indicators for the public sector are higher? Has the analysis of costs in the SPS estates review taken that into account?
The estates review did not take that into account. It is important to make the point that the public and private sectors operate with two different ethos. Kilmarnock's contract is set up on a work basis, not on one of challenging offending behaviour. Other prisons are targeted at providing direct training to tackle offending behaviour and the other courses that go with that, which include sex offender treatment programmes.
Are you saying that, if a Kilmarnock-type prison was to be built in the public sector, it would be cheaper to build than the same prison in the private sector?
That is correct.
I want to pursue the building angle. In a written submission to the committee—
Before Maureen Macmillan moves on, do other members want to follow up on the point that was made? I understood that Lord James Douglas-Hamilton and Paul Martin wanted to go into the costings.
You will be aware that the Parliament debated the subject last week. Would it help if further costings were made available on a range of different options before final decisions were made? I understand that costings were done for a 350-place prison at Peterhead but not for a 500-place prison. I also understand that it was not clear whether the prison was to be built by the private or public sector, whether it was to be built by the private sector and administered by the public sector, or built and operated by the private sector.
That would be a commonsense way to proceed. I will hand over to my colleague John Shannon, who will respond on one of the issues that Lord James Douglas-Hamilton raised, which is public-private partnership. The report sets out that PPP would not work, but we have evidence to suggest that it can.
I refer members to the review, "Review of PFI and Market Testing in the Prison Service", which Patrick Carter produced in January 2001. One of his findings was:
Will Mr Shannon provide us with a copy of that report so that we can distribute it to others?
I will leave a copy of the report.
That will be useful.
I was fascinated by Mr Shannon's response. Could you also send in a short paper that outlines your views on mixed management and the other options that you mentioned?
Yes.
That will be a great help.
I will touch on Jim Dawson's point that prisons can be built more cheaply in the public sector. You said that a civil engineer told you that. We must be more specific about the source of such information. How do we best explore obtaining an independent report? The independent status of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report has been questioned and a report from your association would also have difficulties in that respect. How would the committee best obtain an independent report that clarified once and for all whether it is more expensive for the public sector or the private sector to build a facility?
Paul Martin makes the valid point that we should verify independently the numbers that are involved. I can advise the committee only of how we intend to proceed. I will not simply write a report about the sector. We are seeking a firm that is wholly independent of the Prison Officers Association. We will commission an independent report that we will present in our findings for the consultation process. I brought the committee anecdotal evidence because I did not have the time to commission a report to bring with me today.
When will such a report be available?
I hope to have it by the end of the week.
That is useful.
The association's presenting that report will create some difficulties for its independent status.
We seek an independent engineer, who will be appointed by an independent party. That engineer will produce the report on the basis of what we have found. I am told that the matter is basic civil engineering. If the committee wants more independent views, any firm could verify for the committee what I have said.
We will note that and consider whether we require other witnesses.
I am extremely interested in Mr Shannon's evidence. I presume that he agrees that the private and public sectors are both capable of building and operating a prison and that there are probably two criteria that fall between the two and on which we must base a decision. The first is cost and the other is service quality. Given that, I want to be clear about what Mr Shannon said. Are you telling the committee that you have evidence of prison facilities in other countries that are privately built and owned, but publicly operated?
Of the 25 prisons that were built in France, four remained in the private sector. The rest remained privately built and publicly run and their services were linked to the contracting out of the residential function to a private operator.
In many respects, that arrangement is similar to many of the PFI options in this country in other areas of the public sector.
Yes.
You mentioned a name attached to the report. What organisation sponsored the report?
The report was the "Review of PFI and Market Testing in the Prison Service", which Patrick Carter produced for the Home Office.
Although Lord James asked us to put this information into a paper, I will state it publicly: there is no trade union side resistance to a public-private partnership if the money and the facility are provided by the private sector and the public sector runs it. We have no difficulty with that.
Does that apply to all the witnesses? The witnesses from the POAS are nodding their heads. Is Prospect of the same view?
We are of the same view. We have no difficulty with the concept of private build, as long as the prisons are publicly operated.
Will you clarify whether the French prisons to which you referred are run by the public sector? Are the officers from the public sector or are the services bought in?
As the review states:
Might not a risk be involved in that? Risk transfer is often talked about in relation to PPPs. It is said that a private operator would find it unacceptable for a prison that they owned to be run by the public sector because the public sector would think that the risks involved in, for example, private sector maintenance workers coming in would be too great.
The estates review highlighted that it could find no comparators in the world to compare a privately built, publicly operated prison with a publicly built, publicly operated prison. However, such comparators exist. Even Peru has privately built, publicly operated prisons. There are plenty of comparators to look at in the world. Either those who commissioned the report decided not to examine them, or for some reason the specification that they suggested for consideration did not meet any that are in use. If they put their own barriers up, they will find that there is no private build, public operate with which to compare the public build, public operate option. However, if we compare the public build, public operate option with sectors within which privately built prisons are publicly operated, comparators do exist.
Are you saying that the comparators were deliberately not found or that they were not found through ignorance?
If I were being cynical, I would say that it was deliberate.
Jim Dawson made a point about the different standards that are used when commissioning public and private prisons. Will you illustrate the difference? If the SPS was going to build a prison tomorrow, what would it specify that is different to what Premier Prison Services specified when it built Kilmarnock?
We try to put higher-specification facilities in the house blocks to make them self-contained. We also build them so that it is not possible to see from one directly into the other. That is deliberate; it is done for control purposes. It is in Kilmarnock possible to see from one block into the other. That fact has been commented on. We found in the 1980s and 1990s, when the SPS suffered concerted indiscipline among prisoners, that it was important that prisoners in different areas could not see what was happening in other areas because that would make their indiscipline even more concerted. We custom-build our house blocks according to that criteria. We are not constrained by trying to build them as cheaply as possible.
Are you saying that the fabric of a public sector built prison is much more robust than that in a private prison such as Kilmarnock?
Yes. A public sector built prison provides more facilities.
Are you also suggesting that there are security implications around prisoners' being able to see into rooms in another block, or at least being able to see from one block to the next?
That can have security implications in times of difficulty, as we found in the 1980s and early 1990s and, indeed, as we saw a couple of weeks ago at Shotts prison. Keeping prisoners in residential blocks that are isolated from other blocks allows a degree of control at difficult times.
I seek clarification. We heard an interesting question about whether the fabric of buildings was more robust. Your answer was that there is a broader range of facilities. I think that the robustness of a structure and the range of the facilities within it are two slightly different issues. The specification of whether it is a public or private sector prison depends entirely on the specification that is asked for by the public sector management when it commissions a building. For example, the Scottish Prison Service could commission exactly the same specification of building from the private sector or the public sector.
That is correct, but that is not what was asked for in this case. That is why there is the major discrepancy in the figures. In Great Britain today, it is possible—believe it or not—to buy a prison off the shelf. The prison arrives on a lorry and is bolted together.
I understand that.
You are correct to say that what you ask for is what you get.
In this debate, we need to arrive at a conclusion that will allow us, forensically and properly, to compare like with like. If it is implied that the private sector or the public sector cannot innately do something, we will not be able to compare like with like. I want us to be clear where we are going in that matter. However, I am satisfied by Mr Dawson's answer.
That is a fair point. Previous evidence suggested that we should be comparing, for example, the costs of incorporating a health centre or a gymnasium in a housing block with the costs of building them separately. The former would be more costly.
My questions might help the committee's search for better figures and how we get comparisons between the public and private sectors. Yesterday, I visited HMP Low Moss, which is in my constituency. It was brought to my attention that approximately two years ago a plan was commissioned by the public sector for new build at Low Moss. I understand that the proposed cost was about £40 million. Are our witnesses aware of that plan for public build at Low Moss? Do they know what happened to that plan and whether PricewaterhouseCoopers had access to that information? I would have thought that that information would have given PWC a good comparator of a plan for a public sector build.
A feasibility study was done on 21 April 2000 on the redevelopment of Low Moss. The study was commissioned by the Scottish Prison Service and was carried out by the prison estates department. Two separate costings were done for two different types of prison. One figure came out at £42.5 million, inclusive of VAT; the other figure was £41.25 million, inclusive of VAT. The study also used the costing for HMP Kilmarnock as a comparator. The figure for that prison was £35 million, exclusive of VAT. I have a copy of the report for the committee.
That is another document that we would like to be forwarded to the committee for distribution to members.
That is useful information, which I think the committee will also find useful. Do you know whether PWC had access to that information? If it did, is there an explanation of why it did not use those figures?
There is no evidence that PWC had any access to, or saw, those figures.
So there might be a problem because PWC did not have access to full information.
We will come to our conclusion about that later. Does Stewart Stevenson want to ask anything on comparative costings?
First, I apologise for being late. I was at an earlier committee meeting in Fort William, so it took me a while to get here.
Yes.
Right. So, we are not breaking new ground in having private contractors working inside a prison. The security issues and all the issues in relation to prisoners in bringing private contractors in are already well understood.
Yes.
Right. We are obviously focusing a lot on risk transfer. Do you share my understanding that in the private prison at Kilmarnock—I believe that the same is true in England and Wales—the private company seeks, in turn, to transfer many of the risks to other people? For example, the contract for Kilmarnock prison requires that Kilmarnock Prison Services Ltd exhibit proof that it has insurance to cover all the risks that are associated with the fabric of the building. Do you believe that such a risk transfer would be available to the Scottish Prison Service if it were operating a building that was owned by a third party and that therefore the risks would not bear upon the Scottish Prison Service?
Yes.
Those were rather long questions. You are making statements. Could we have questions please?
What proportion of the value of the construction cost of a new prison do you believe is delivered to the Scottish Prison Service at the end of the 25-year contract, according to the net present value calculation?
I am not sure whether the gentleman can answer that.
It is a difficult question to answer. It depends upon how you view the net present value—NPV—figure. The NPV is an accountancy tool that, in my opinion, is used to cloud the figures. I would like to give the committee an express and recent example of that.
We have a copy.
I have an example. The most chaotic prison in Scotland is Barlinnie, which is mayhem daily. It presently operates on a cost per prisoner place of £18,969. Kilmarnock prison operates on £26,000 per prisoner.
I remind you, Mr Dawson, that most of us on the committee are aware of the difference between cost per prisoner place and cost per prisoner—although perhaps some of the newer members are not. Perhaps you could just repeat that difference to the committee because it took us a year to find that out.
It is difficult to explain. Cost per prisoner place is the allocated budget that we have and what we pay out per prisoner. If you look at our annual report, it gives you an overall figure called cost per prisoner place. That figure is massaged because it includes all our overhead costs such as prison service headquarters and everything else.
You are not following me. That was not my point. My understanding is that the cost per prisoner place is based on the number of places notionally within a prison. However, when a prison is overcrowded, there are more prisoners so the cost comes down even more. That is what I was trying to get at, just in case some of the newer members had missed that. I know it took 12 months for the penny to drop for some of us. Is that correct?
Yes.
No.
Michael Matheson says no.
It is difficult to understand, but it is true. The budget stays the same regardless of the number of prisoners.
Is it not the case that, in 2000, an options appraisal was produced with a view to building a new prison at Peterhead and another phase at Shotts? Do you have any inkling why that was dropped? Is it not the case that PricewaterhouseCoopers did not mention that options appraisal or the figures in its report?
What you are referring to is stage 1 of the estates review, which, for some reason, disappeared off the face of the earth. That considered phase 3 of Shotts and the new build at Peterhead, although I think that a new build at Peterhead was first considered in 1990 or 1991 and through various Governments. It did not go ahead.
We should now move on to an issue that James Douglas-Hamilton touched on earlier—the extension of prisons. Peterhead has already been mentioned.
Yes, we should pursue that. In your written submission, Mr Dawson, you said that a number of establishments in Scotland, not only Peterhead, had sufficient expanses of land—within an already secure wall or fence—that could be built on. You also said that to build house blocks of a modular design might take only about 18 weeks from start to finish. The Scottish Executive claims that the building of a new house block is extremely resource intensive for the Scottish Prison Service because each house block has to be integrated, both physically and operationally, into the main prison, a process that demands considerable input from prison managers. Could the required increase in capacity be provided by building new house blocks on existing sites? I believe that that will be done anyway, to cope with part of the increase, but can the increase in prisoner numbers be absorbed by building within existing prisons?
That process has recently started: construction is under way at Edinburgh and Polmont. We believe that what you suggest can be done. There are various suitable sites across the estate. However, there is a problem with bureaucracy, which mainly comes down to the working practices of the SPS estates department. Nothing says that the way that it is doing things is correct, and it is certainly not the way that the private sector would do it. In respect of building and commissioning, the private sector has more expertise and is better at providing buildings.
Are you suggesting that the private sector could build the house blocks?
Yes. The private sector would come with less bureaucracy, as it did at Kilmarnock, where a project engineer was responsible for the project and liaised with the builder and the customer until the building was finished, at which point it was handed over. The bureaucratic policies of the prison service mean that we have several prison managers all putting their penny's worth in and all wanting changes put in for their own benefit. In the words of one contractor, "It's an absolute nightmare to build for them."
Are you talking about a PPP option for house blocks in a prison? Surely not?
The public-private partnership can work as well for house blocks as it can for a new prison. There is nothing to prevent the use of PPP for house blocks. I speak with some knowledge on that, because the secretary on the trade union side and I were involved in putting together a specification for Polmont and Edinburgh. That is now being held against us. We were asked to say what we wanted in the building and we made proposals after first considering what the ideal building would be. Several of those proposals were incorporated, but we were then thumped over the head with the costs during the estates review.
That is interesting. Would anybody like to follow up on that? I am sorry—that was for you to ask, convener.
Thank you, but before I let you slip into deputy convener mode, Angus MacKay has already indicated that he wants to ask a question.
How many house blocks have been built at Polmont and Edinburgh?
One has been commissioned at Edinburgh and it is fully in use; it is an excellent facility and a second is now under construction. At Polmont, the first is now under construction.
How quickly was the first one in Edinburgh built?
I could not tell you how quickly it was built from start to finish.
Has there been any delay in the occupation and use of the house blocks, either at Edinburgh or Polmont? Once built, have they gone straight into operation?
There has been no delay in the house blocks. When we received the designs for the two new house blocks that are currently under construction, and we learned of the move towards a partnership approach in industrial relations, our local branches at Polmont and Edinburgh entered into a without-prejudice agreement on staffing levels. That developed through looking at the blueprint, talking to local management about what the regime and the class of prisoners would be, provisionally agreeing on staffing levels and costs, and then starting the building. It was a new approach, developed for the future.
And it meant no delay?
It meant no delay.
One of the lines that we get from the estates review is that, if things were to be public build, public operate, it would take a long time—some 11 years—whereas private build, private operate would take a much shorter time. Bearing in mind the background of things such as slopping out—which is demeaning, not least for prison officers—what is your opinion of the time scales?
If we adopted the principles that the private sector adopts for design, commissioning and building, long time scales would not apply. The only impediments to a short public sector time scale are bureaucracy and political will. We could choose to adopt the same method as the private sector. If we asked our preferred partner, Skanska, to design the building and manage the contract—Skanska has the experience to do that—and to give us a liaison officer in case we want any changes to be made, we could build on the same time scale as the private sector. There is no doubt about that.
I am concerned about comparing apples with apples. We must know that we are talking about exactly the same model of prison, so that a proper comparison can be made. Angus MacKay raised that. Are the figures based on the building of exactly the same kind of prison?
The figures are based on the building of prisons that would not be exactly the same. The figures that you have been provided with are based on our £1.3 billion specification and the private sector's £600 million specification. The differences in managing the contract arise because the Scottish Prison Service says that it does not have the technology or the people. The SPS has included in its price the cost of having to get the technology and the people, but it does not need to do that.
Are you happy for the public sector to take on the risk of the project costs escalating? I dare to mention the Scottish Parliament building, which is effectively a public sector project.
That is a different situation.
The same principle of asking the public sector to take on the risk of escalating costs is involved. We know that a prison building is a complex project, as is the Scottish Parliament. What are your views on that? Should the public purse take on such a risk? I do not have any particular views on the issue—I merely want to explore it.
Your point is perfectly relevant. The debate in the Parliament last week dealt with a hypothesis. On the basis of that hypothesis, the private sector builder's risk is exactly the same as the public sector risk. Both sectors would have a risk. If you are asking me whether we should opt for the public-private partnership and let the private sector take the risk, I am not really in a position to answer. There is a risk regardless of whether the public sector or the private sector builds the prison. Somebody must take that risk.
You mentioned the two figures that were being talked about—the figure for the public sector option and the figure for the private sector option. You said that comparing those two figures did not represent a comparison of like with like, as the specifications were different. Perhaps you could forward to the committee an indication of some of the differences in the specification, so that we are clear about that. That would help us with future evidence taking.
Yes, we could do that.
You mentioned internal facilities as opposed to central facilities. Clarification would be helpful.
You painted quite a dire picture of estates management within the Scottish Prison Service. You seemed to infer from that that giving a new build to the private sector was the only thing that could be done to manage it effectively. Surely PWC should have looked at why the SPS estates department is in the position that it is in. Should the SPS estates department be examined?
That is a hypothetical question. In my opinion, that should not be done. We have such a picture of the estates department because it has not been asked to commission a full prison in more than 13 years. We just do not have the expertise to do it. When we commission a new prison build, it would be prudent to commission the necessary expertise and technology with the build. That would mean that when the build has been completed, we would not be left with an excess of experienced staff who do not have a job. We do not want to operate that way, with people on short-term contracts. We should buy the technology and the people with the contract. It is unrealistic to expect the SPS to have carried all the relevant experience for the past 13 years, during which time it has not been building prisons.
Do I recall correctly that the PWC report shows that the risk cost associated with a private contractor to Kilmarnock Prison Services—because it did not build the prison; another company did—was of the order of 10 per cent of the total build cost? That made it possible to identify and transfer the risk and make a choice about it. Is that the figure that you recall?
I think that that figure is right. I am not always confident about what is quoted as a risk transfer and how it is dealt with. Perhaps I am a cynic, but I think of the excessive amount of money that the taxpayer may have to pick up in respect of Yarlswood detention centre. Until there was a riot there, none of us knew about that. What would happen if there were a serious riot at Kilmarnock prison and the fabric of the building was destroyed? What would we pay? I do not know the detail of the contract's small print and what we would end up paying—I do not have all the intricacies of the contract. People had a view on what we would pay if anything went wrong at Yarlswood, but it turns out that they were not correct.
I have lodged parliamentary questions on the matter. Following the Auditor General's report, I am still not clear who has taken on board risks in respect of Kilmarnock prison. I have written to the director of Kilmarnock Prison Services to find out. Committee members can see on the website what the Auditor General says. Apparently, each side thinks that it has transferred risk to the other side. Is that your understanding of the situation?
Yes. However, with respect, matters are more complex than that. It was brought to our attention that Premier Prison Services accounts show that Kilmarnock prison was transferred to the Home Office for £37.7 million. We have done some background work to establish who actually owns Kilmarnock prison. The question was posed to Miss Christine Carlton, the deputy director of human resources, who assured us that that was a mistake. We have written to Premier Prison Services. It has been alleged that the mistake was pointed out some time ago, but has never been corrected, so we do not know who owns the prison, far less who takes the risks.
I asked who has the registered title, but I do not have the answer. We will not go further into the matter, as questions are still up in the air and we await important answers. Angus MacKay has a further question.
Before we leave this general area, I want to touch on a matter that the trade union side raised. It was said that you were not hostile to a public-private partnership for building new prisons in respect of the private sector building and perhaps owning and the public sector operating services. As part and parcel of that, are the trade unions willing to negotiate with flexibility on new working practices? I do not necessarily mean changing or reducing terms and conditions, but rather discussing and agreeing new working practices in such establishments. Is that what you have in mind?
In the past 12 months, we have made considerable advances on industrial relations in the SPS. We cannot colour that we had a sad day in our history on 23 April last year that resulted in industrial action, but since then both sides have worked constructively. We have signed off a voluntary industrial relations agreement that monitors how we do business and resolve conflict. There is no longer a need to strike. We have signed off new attendance systems. Both sides worked pragmatically to produce a new pay system, which was accepted by more than 70 per cent of staff membership.
I hear what you are saying. That is a full description of a range of activities in the past year. There seems to be an improvement in the relationship between the staff side and the management side. On the back of that, are you optimistic about prospective negotiations on working practices that might have to take place between the trade union side and the management side in respect of any possible future PPP prisons in Scotland?
Our confidence in the management of the Scottish Prison Service is probably higher now than it has been for many years because of the voluntary industrial relations agreement and the commitment to a partnership agreement. For example, although there is a national framework for attendance systems, the national committees were not involved in the local negotiations because the need to be flexible was recognised. There is no single attendance pattern that will suit all sixteen of the establishments and the two special units. The national framework is agreed and then the governors and the branch committees decide what best suits their establishments.
I would like to say something about the report that I was asked about earlier. It is called the "Review of PFI and Market Testing in the Prison Service" and deals with the question of how best to develop the contribution of the private sector—particularly through the private finance initiative—to the objectives of the SPS. On the issue of who should build and run new prisons, it states that there are three alternative operating models: public sector; private sector; and mixed management, which involves responsibility being shared between the public and private sectors. It says:
As we heard in the debate in the chamber, many members have considered the options that have been assessed in the prison estates review and are aware that there are only those three options. There is nothing fancy about it. Many members have asked whether it is possible to fashion a joint model that could impact favourably on the overall level of costs while meeting the objectives of management and trade unions. A lot of us feel that, in order to do that, there will need to be a further coming together of management and trade union thinking. I am asking you this question in order to allow you to put on record your willingness to talk constructively about new working practices in new prisons.
Working constructively in that manner is not new to us. As long ago as the beginning of the 1990s, Barlinnie market tested privatisation of the works areas. Private contractors still do maintenance in Barlinnie, but with our assistance rather than being in conflict with us. The pharmacy is private and we have private services for social work, medical care and dentistry. All of those elements are part and parcel of any prison establishment and we all work towards making them work. We do not try to put spanners in the works.
I see what you are saying, but the information that we are receiving indicates that the terms and conditions for prison officers, whose salaries make up the largest cost for a prison, are not as good in the private sector. We understand that the working conditions, promotion structure, pay, hours and so on are different in the private sector. I would like to hear your views on that.
In 1995, we went through a staff and structure review that brought in a two-tier system for prison officers. That recognised that not all prison staff had the same input and quality of contact with prisoners and that, because of that, officers who do peripheral activities should not be paid as much as those who work intensively with prisoners. For those who do peripheral activities, the starting wage went down by £3,000 to £12,500 and has not increased in seven years.
Is that in the public sector?
Yes. Those officers also have a comprehensive pension scheme. I make no apologies for that scheme being in place. The political view at the moment is that everyone should make their own provision and should not be a burden on the state. However, if we did not have that pension scheme, where would the bill go? Kilmarnock and other Premier Prison Services establishments provide no pension scheme, which means that the public sector picks up the bill, albeit from another budget.
You have addressed that point, but—forgive me, I am not sure whether I heard correctly—you did not address the differentials between private sector pay in Kilmarnock prison and SPS pay. Could you address and clarify that for me?
We will clarify that as best we can. In last year's pay negotiations, we repeatedly had thrown at us the competitive position of Kilmarnock prison. We repeatedly asked for information so that we could make the comparison, but that was not provided. Our information and understanding is that there is a significant difference in pay. The rate at Kilmarnock is possibly as low as 60 per cent of the SPS pay rate for the operational front-end prison officer or staff member. That is reflected in the report of the chief inspector of prisons. Why else is there a lack of commitment to the job and a 30 per cent turnover in the number of staff at Kilmarnock? People there have no real commitment to the future of the rehabilitation programme and the prisoners.
How many days' training a year do staff get in the public sector on average, and how many do they get in the private sector?
In the public sector, every officer is guaranteed five days' training per year and every first-line manager is guaranteed seven days. We could not comment on that in relation to Kilmarnock, as we do not know the figures. However, in the establishment where I work, a new member of staff was recruited from Kilmarnock. He was a fully qualified prison custody officer, specialised in short-duration breathing apparatus training and control-and-restraint training. He already had all the skills required to work at Kilmarnock. When he joined the SPS, he asked whether he still had to attend the full training course, given that he had those skills. The answer was yes, because the public sector has far superior training compared with what is required in the private sector.
I would like to raise a point about Kilmarnock prison, but are we on to that yet?
Not quite, but bear with me.
Could I put this point to the witnesses in any case? I was at Kilmarnock prison yesterday, and my understanding is that staff who work there undergo training similar to that undergone by those in public sector establishments. I understand that they undertake a seven-week training course. What would the unions' view be if an officer in the public sector who had completed his seven-week training programme were put straight into a hall to work with long-term offenders?
We would view that as slightly reckless. We would be endangering the health and safety of the newly trained custody officer. Our system involves a probationary period, during which the officer undergoes six Scottish vocational qualifications. He can move on to certain parts of his training only on attaining those SVQs.
If the SPS said to you that it wanted all the new recruits to go straight into the halls, what would you say?
I would say that that would be most disingenuous, bearing in mind that the staffing structure review and the two-tier prison officer system were the idea of the Scottish Prison Service—the trade union side never agreed with it. We must be the only industry in the past 40 years to have gone down the road of introducing demarcation lines. Before the staffing structure review, we had a fully flexible work force in which everyone could do every job. We do not have that now. That was the route that the SPS chose to follow in 1995. We would be happy to return to a one-tier prison officer system.
In your experience, is a custody officer who has completed his seven weeks' training ready to move into work with long-term offenders immediately?
Yes, but not on his own. When my colleagues and I did our prison officer training, on return from the training school we went to work with prisoners, but only as the second man. We were never in charge. We always had a number one man in the gallery as a mentor and leader. The number one man was responsible for running the gallery and the second man was still undergoing training. We did not get to be in the number one position until we had successfully completed all our training.
How long would that take?
At that time it was a year.
Can I go back to comparing the costs of running the public sector and the private sector? I hear what you say about pay and conditions in the private sector, but I am not sure whether we are comparing like with like. In the review, there is a vast difference between the costs of running a prison in the public sector—even a privately built prison in the public sector—and the costs of running a prison in the private sector. Is the review comparing what it would cost to run a similar type of prison in the public sector and private sector, or is everything that is done in the public sector lumped together? Have you any idea how it was worked out? Do you think that the costs in the public sector could be brought down?
I do not know what mechanism was used. The comparator that one would use is the cost per prisoner place. Clive Fairweather's report breaks it down by individual establishment. The Scottish Prison Service's annual report, which is available in libraries and such places, includes the cost per prisoner place, across the board. This year, that figure is something like £29,000, which takes into account the fact that we have a central stores area, the SPS headquarters and the college. Those are all costs that we bear but Kilmarnock prison does not. Indeed, we do some of the training for Kilmarnock, which has neither a training school nor a prison service headquarters. I am not saying that that is wrong, but it is a fact. Kilmarnock is one prison and has no need of a prison service headquarters.
Thank you. I do not think that we have got that.
I want to go back to the issue of pensions. I wonder whether you are selling the current position a little short. For the benefit of the committee, can you tell us what sort of pensions scheme the Prison Service operates? Is it a fully contributory scheme?
With respect, you could answer your own question. We are all in the same scheme—the principal civil service pension scheme.
Right.
The answer to that question is fundamental to the argument about employment costs. Contributions to the Scottish Prison Service pension scheme vary between 12 and 26 per cent. From my experience, I would say that the average figure of 16 per cent that was supplied to the committee is probably correct, because there are more people in the lower ranges of the pay scale.
I understand the general comparison that you are making. However, I was cavilling at the suggestion that the value to individuals of benefits or of a state pension would be equivalent to the value of the Scottish Prison Service pension scheme in which your members currently participate. I do not say that to suggest that there is a possible cost saving from private prisons. I am trying to make the point that we are dealing with individuals' terms and conditions, which are clearly important to them, their families and their communities. I want to be clear about the worth of the Scottish Prison Service pension scheme.
Angus MacKay is correct. However, with regard to pension schemes we need to decide what is right and what is wrong. The political will of the moment is for people to make provision for their retirement themselves. In the past nine or 10 weeks, it has been projected that people will need to work until they are 69 because of shortfalls in private pension schemes. In the public sector we do not face that situation because of the prudence of the Treasury and of chancellors, and because of contributions that have been made to the principal pension scheme. That scheme is about to change, as the new Prison Service pension arrangements will soon come to fruition.
We agree that the pension scheme is a valuable benefit to your members.
Clearly it is.
I would like to extend this evidence session by another 20 minutes. Would members like to proceed to consider specifically the situation at Barlinnie and Peterhead, or would they like to address other issues relating to staff morale that we have touched on? I am in the hands of the committee.
If necessary, we must have an extra meeting. This issue is so important that we cannot neglect any part of the evidence that the prison officers have to give.
That is perfectly all right. I will take guidance from the committee.
We intended to ask some questions about Kilmarnock. However, yesterday Donald Gorrie and I met trade union representatives at Kilmarnock, who are timetabled to give us evidence. I suggest that we omit consideration of Kilmarnock now and move straight to questions about the SPS establishments.
I would be happy to do that. Are members content with the suggestion that Michael Matheson has made?
Do members have any further questions about staff morale?
Yes. How do you think that negotiations with management in the SPS will be affected if proposals to build one or more extra private prisons in Scotland go ahead?
We will have to deal with that if it happens. Although the building of further private prisons would cause consternation among our members and on our national committee, it would not prevent us from acting professionally or from representing our members in the remaining public sector prisons. We will continue to do that. We acknowledge that to some extent decisions that are made as a result of the estates review are not the responsibility of the board of the Scottish Prison Service. We recognise that the SPS is our employer and that we must work with it.
As trade unions, we have wide experience of decisions being taken that we do not like. We take a pragmatic approach to representing our members after such decisions have been taken and do so in a professional way.
The witnesses do not have the privilege of seeing our list of prepared questions, but question 7 was effectively dealt with in previous discussions. I will run through my remaining three questions briefly.
No, I do not agree with that at all. The evidence in the report that my colleague just quoted is that such a prison could be operated successfully and pragmatically without our taking on extra costs. The report talks about areas where we do not have experience, but I think that we should buy that experience with the contract. That is a hypothetical question, because we have not operated such a prison, and there might be a degree of suck-and-see in it.
Why does the public sector have to build to standards that price us out of the market, although the SPS is quite happy to accept the private sector building prisons to the standard and specification that have been prescribed?
It depends on what one wants a prison to be like. We are not talking about the same kind of build. The operation of a prison is integral to the build. Either a prison has men all moving about—as they do just now at Kilmarnock—to centralised health centres or gymnasiums, with a great deal of movement of prisoners, or those facilities are built elsewhere, in the house blocks, where no movement is necessary. That changes the balance of the costings. That is the problem for us.
I presume that the spec of Kilmarnock was approved by the SPS.
Yes.
Yes.
The SPS obviously felt that what was proposed by Premier Prison Services was sufficient for its purposes. However, when it comes to building something in one of its own establishments, it sets entirely different standards.
Yes.
Why?
That is the question that we are asking and which nobody can answer.
When did the SPS last build a prison?
It built Shotts prison 13 years ago.
When was Kilmarnock prison built?
About three years ago. However, in that time new house blocks have been built.
That is different from building a whole new prison, although it is building work. This is perhaps not the place to ask about that. We should perhaps ask SPS representatives.
I apologise for the lateness of my arrival at the committee.
It is all right, Donald. I meant to welcome you some time ago, for the Official Report—you have not just appeared.
I was working on the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Bill, which we will have to struggle with tomorrow.
I think that 700 is a reasonable figure. If we get the staffing levels and regimes right, we can deliver what we want to deliver. The report makes the point that the smaller the prison and the fewer inmates it holds, the greater the costs are. There is a balance to be struck. I speak from my experience of existing prisons. Barlinnie has sometimes held up to 1,300 inmates, which gives a really chaotic day-to-day mix and is a nightmare to run. As a figure to aspire to having, 700 does not seem unreasonable. It is manageable.
I have a further question about the building, what you are building it for and how you are going to operate it with prisoners. We have not addressed rehabilitation and I do not want to open up the whole package. However, if rehabilitation is higher up the agenda, how will that impact on the design of the prison? I do not know whether that will have an impact—I am asking you. Will it change the requirements in any way?
Rehabilitation could impact on the design. It could also impact on the financial returns. The Kilmarnock contract is a work contract, not an offending behaviour contract. There is a return through its work sheds and what it produces. Obviously, less time is spent at work on a rehabilitation and challenging offending behaviour contract. I note that, according to the chief inspector of prisons, penalties are imposed on prisoners if they miss a certain number of work periods, for whatever reason.
We are now digging deeper into the business of comparing apples with apples.
The estates review states that, for the same cost, two prisoner places of an equivalent quality can be provided by the private sector for each place that the public sector provides. Do you agree with that statement? I would be very surprised if you did. What are your views?
It depends on the type and standard of facility that you want prisoners to be incarcerated in. If you want us to build Kilmarnock-type prisons, we can do it for the same price. If you want us to maintain our high standard of specifications—with the sort of facilities that the convener has hinted would be available in the new buildings, such as weight-training and fitness rooms, medical rooms and pantries—either we can sacrifice standards and provide the same number of prisoner places, or we can maintain our standards with a view to encouraging the private sector to increase its standards at some point in the future. It is a matter of balancing what you want, and we have to ask, "Do you want like for like?"
My problem is that the question does not really leave much room for fudging the issue. Somebody is wrong, because the SPS's assertion in the estates review is that the private sector could provide two prisoner places for the same cost as the public sector could provide one place of an equivalent quality.
I fundamentally disagree with that statement.
It is important to note that that is based on the assumption that the estates review is comparing apples with apples. That is where those figures come from. Our contention is that the comparison that is made is completely inappropriate.
We shall raise the matter with representatives of the SPS when they come before the committee, but it is useful to get your views on record.
In other words, we are looking at the difficulty in costing prisoner places. That takes us back to what you said about all the factors that are involved and how you can tease out the other assets of the SPS that are put into that prisoner place cost.
My question refers back to something that was mentioned earlier. Do you know how many staff in the Scottish Prison Service and how many staff employed by Kilmarnock Prison Services are in receipt of working families tax credit?
We have only anecdotal evidence. We know that some of our own staff are in receipt of family tax credits, because the low starting wage that has got them out of unemployment does not meet the basic standards. As far as Kilmarnock is concerned, we have heard stories, but they are no more than that and we could not say anything specific about them.
That is a question that the committee might want to direct to Kilmarnock Prison Services or the unions that represent Kilmarnock staff. Because working families tax credit is paid through payroll, the statistics will be available to the employer.
I would like to close this part of the discussion. I know that everybody feels constrained and rushed, and it is extremely difficult to get all the answers that members want. I will try to return to issues that we have not managed to address. I now want to move on to Lord James Douglas-Hamilton and Michael Matheson, who have questions about the situation at Peterhead prison and the sex offender programme, which is the kernel of the argument about whether to keep Peterhead open.
The minister suggested that the buildings at Peterhead were out of date and would have to be renewed. In your experience, how do the buildings at Peterhead compare with other elderly prisons, such as Barlinnie, Saughton, Perth, Aberdeen and Inverness? Are they considerably worse or are they on a par?
I will refer to Aberdeen, where I work. Aberdeen prison is a Victorian prison that was built at roughly the same time, to the same design and with the same internal dimensions as Peterhead. Every cell in Aberdeen prison has integral sanitation and power.
Peterhead's structure is not unique.
To reintegrate sex offenders into society, such contact is extremely important. I do not necessarily agree that having to transport such prisoners at the end of their sentences is a minus. What is important is having such prisoners in a facility that can concentrate more on challenging their offending behaviour and delivering the treatment and rehabilitation that they require. The fact that we bring them to a central position—although it is not always central, as the whole of Scotland is used—for release is not a drawback.
In other words, social workers could travel to Peterhead, if necessary.
Yes.
The Prison Service's agreement on the areas from which prisoners come is that no prisoner will be liberated from Peterhead into the community without first returning to the prison that is nearest the community from which they come and to which they will return.
In a written submission last October, the Prison Officers Association said in relation to the proposed closure of Peterhead that
There are a couple of reasons for that comment. One is that success is being met with closure. For example, the governor of Dungavel achieved 100 per cent drug-free status, which is a commendable achievement, only for Dungavel to be closed. Staff see success being attacked. Peterhead is in the top three in the world for what it provides, so why would we consider closing it? That has a demoralising effect that will pervade other prisons.
Do you imply that closing Peterhead and moving the sex offenders unit to Glenochil would displace a large number of prison officers at Glenochil, who would become unemployed or have to move elsewhere?
There would be a domino effect. I am talking about what the closure of Peterhead would mean for people in other areas.
The rest of the staff in the service hold Peterhead in the same esteem as committee members and people who have visited the prison do. The concern is that if such a well-renowned establishment faces a threat, the rest of the service is a hell of a lot more vulnerable. If Peterhead is up for closure, no establishment is safe.
Have the prison officers at Peterhead discussed or been given information on their options? The association has taken the position that all the staff should go together, but have the staff been party to any discussions?
The staff have received a visit from an operational director, who has explained the recommendation, its possible ramifications and how long the procedure will take.
As you may know, we are to have a presentation on Peterhead.
I wish to focus on the STOP 2000 programme, which is predominantly delivered at Peterhead, although there is also a unit at Barlinnie, which I will come to later.
I cannot answer that question fully without knowing where the prisoners are going. I can say that the success of Peterhead prison is based solely on the fact that there are no prisoners there other than sex offenders. The result is that prisoners are not under constant physical and verbal abuse, as they are when they are contained in other establishments. More importantly for the prisoners, their visitors do not get verbal and physical abuse in the visit room or in the run-up to the prison.
If Peterhead prison were closed, prisoners would be transferred to specialist units within other SPS establishments, for example HMP Glenochil. Can STOP 2000 be delivered as effectively in an isolated unit within another prison as it can through the current arrangements at Peterhead?
A prison that is not a total sex-offender prison would be an absolute disaster, and the Scottish public deserve better.
Why do you say that it would be "an absolute disaster"?
Because prisoners who are sex offenders who are integrated into other prisons, where normal prisoners are going about, are looked upon as being second-class citizens—and I have heard a lot of other adjectives. The effect of that is that the sex offenders shut themselves away and stay behind their doors, in their cells. They will not participate and they do not integrate. That would be an absolute disaster. It would wreck our programmes for challenging offending behaviour.
In evidence last week, the former governor of Barlinnie prison pointed out that the STOP 2000 programme is delivered in the sex offenders unit there.
There is nothing in the evaluation that has been carried out to suggest that the STOP programme satellite units are anywhere near as successful in the long term as the facility at Peterhead.
Let us be clear: which evaluation are you referring to?
Any evaluation. There is nothing to show that the small satellites that operate at Shotts, Edinburgh and Barlinnie are achieving as high a success rate as has been achieved at Peterhead. Peterhead has been evaluated not by us but by international specialists. That has not been done at the small units at Shotts, Edinburgh or Barlinnie. Until there is evidence to suggest that those small units can be successful, I would very much doubt any anecdotal evidence that is supplied.
Would it be fair to say that your view is that it would be wrong even to consider closing Peterhead and moving towards having segregated units in other establishments until the existing segregated facilities at other prisons have been properly evaluated?
That is the first step that is required. We would need to see evidence that such segregated units can work. Our experience to date suggests exactly the opposite. The pressure on prisoners comes not only from what happens to them or how they are treated, but from what happens to their visitors and how they are treated. Not every establishment in Scotland has the ability or the facilities to separate visit arrangements for sex offenders and ordinary prisoners, if I can put it like that. If such facilities are not available, we denigrate the STOP programme and take a road to ruin.
Are there any further questions from Donald Gorrie or Lord James Douglas-Hamilton on the STOP programme, before we move on to discuss the fabric of the building? Donald Gorrie visited Peterhead.
I am content with the information that we gained when we were at Peterhead.
I see that Stewart Stevenson wants to come in. Could you be brief? I have been very generous because I know that you have a great interest in the issue, but we will have plenty of other opportunities to discuss the points.
I am immensely grateful for your indulgence.
That did not sound sincere, but on you go.
Oh it is sincere, believe me.
We would need to know the effect on the provisions that staff may have made. It is highly likely that some staff will wish to transfer, but some will wish to stay where they are—mainly, I imagine, because they are approaching retirement, have made provisions for that and feel that it is late in their career to consider moving away. We do not have a cost for staff transfer.
Do the reports that are before the Parliament take no account of any transition costs?
It is impossible to have a guesstimate figure.
I did not want to crush you, Stewart: the constituency MSP is perfectly entitled to ask questions.
We have been told that Peterhead is on its last legs, that is has no integral sanitation, that it has problems with power and hot and cold running water, and that its foundations are crumbling. Mr Rattray, the former governor, said that water was seeping in. I would not have thought that there is much life left in the building. We are considering the best options.
What you say about the building is perfectly fair. Around 1989 or 1990, plans were drawn up for a replacement prison on the site. For whatever political reasons—from a bygone age—it was decided that the replacement would not go ahead. However, the plans have been kept to one side.
What size would that prison be? The figure of 300 places has been mentioned.
If we include the satellites and the main prison, the ideal figure would probably be around 500.
Would that figure include young offenders or offenders with very short sentences?
One reason for excluding young offenders is the rules in the Prisons (Scotland) Act 1989, which say that adult and young offenders should not be integrated. With the lack of facilities at Peterhead, it would be impossible to keep them apart. If keeping them apart was on a wish list for a new build, there is no reason why it could not happen. I do not have the figures for young offenders or sex offenders to allow me to say what would be feasible or cost-effective. That would require further research.
It may not be good practice to have young offenders in with the older offenders, even if they are all sex offenders.
I agree that it is not best practice to keep them together. If we are going ahead with a new build, and if we have identified a need for a specialised unit for young offenders, such provision could be made. We have two units within Shotts prison that operate completely independently of the main prison.
What about short-term prisoners? It has been said that it is important for short-term prisoners to remain close to their communities because they need a lot of interaction with social work and housing services and so on. If they are in prison for only a couple of years, they should not be sent as far away as Peterhead.
We need to reconsider what we mean by a short-term prisoner. It is a fallacy that a short-term prisoner is one who is serving up to four years. That is not short term in my view. I consider a short-term prisoner, and so someone whom I would not seek to put in a specialist unit so that they could keep in contact with various services and so on, to be someone who is serving seven, 14 or 21 days—certainly not someone who is a sex offender. Whatever they do with the prison rules, someone who is serving four years is not a short-term prisoner. Furthermore, somebody who is serving two years should not be denied access to specialist treatment and courses if they require them, simply because they are called a short-term prisoner.
If there was a 500-place prison in Peterhead, it could be filled with prisoners of like offences without any difficulty.
I want to clarify something about the building having reached the end of its useful life. I visited the prison and I accept that there is no sanitation or electricity in the cells, but the building itself seems sound. We are not talking about the huts at Low Moss—Peterhead is a solid-looking establishment. What is your view of the structure of the building?
The building's structure is robust and with repairs it could last for quite a long time. However, that is not the problem. The problem is its suitability for upgrading, to provide the 21st century facilities that we want to provide. Our newer prisons and house blocks have in-cell sanitation and power sources.
That was not a challenge. I want to clarify the situation. At Low Moss, the building is ready to fall down, and that is not the case at Peterhead. However, Peterhead lacks other facilities and it may not be possible to adapt it. My point is that the building is not about to collapse.
The problem is not the building, but its upkeep and upgrading.
I believe that the chief inspector of prisons' report on Peterhead, which is due shortly, will cover extensively the state of the building.
Am I correct in thinking that there are something like 500 sex offenders in the prison system and that a prison for 500 would broadly accommodate the current number of sex offenders? Is it correct to say that of those sex offenders, many offended against members of their immediate family, so that the demand for visiting is not the same as in other prisons?
That is correct. It is fair to say that a 500-place prison would be full almost as soon as it opened, because we would seek to centralise all sex offenders. We would not have satellite provision at Shotts, Barlinnie and Edinburgh.
For good reasons, the deputation was keen that the new prison at Peterhead should be for 500 prisoners, rather than 350 as it is at present. Is there enough space on the Peterhead estate to build a modern prison that is suitable for 500 people?
I have walked the estate and its size is more than adequate for a 500-place prison.
When you say that the size of the site is more than adequate, is it more than adequate without knocking down the existing prison or are you allowing for knocking down the prison that is there?
We could build without knocking down the existing prison. That might mean sacrificing some regimes while we do that. Once we had completed the task, we would have a custom-built prison, with areas available for work parties, social work rooms, visit facilities, or any specialist facilities that we wanted. The site is very large.
I know that members are busy, but I recommend a quick site inspection. It is difficult to appreciate the site and the facilities without going there.
A percentage of prisoners at Peterhead—those who have not offended against family members—are entitled to visits. How do we deal with that? We should move away from family members being prevented from visiting on medical grounds. I understand that about 40 per cent of prisoners have not offended against family members. Are not those prisoners entitled to local access?
They are entitled to access; whether they are entitled to local access is the subject of debate. We must examine our experiences to date. No prisoner has gone to the prison ombudsman about being incarcerated in Peterhead because it is too far away. We have an accumulated visits system, whereby a prisoner can serve so long and then return to a prison near his home for a number of visits. Such measures are in place and are used by prisoners. We make every effort. I must stress that incarcerating people in Peterhead does not represent a conscious decision to cut people off. A percentage of prisoners deserve and want visits and every effort is made to give them those visits. Organisations such as SACRO—Safeguarding Communities Reducing Offending—run special buses to Peterhead every month to accommodate people who are probably not in a financial position to make the visit under their own steam. Those people are well looked after by such organisations.
I am conscious that we are running well over time. I ask for the forbearance of the members of the Association of Visiting Committees for Scottish Penal Establishments. We had expected to finish the present part of the evidence-taking session by 3.20 pm, but I will allow Paul Martin to ask about Barlinnie.
What are the union's views on the proposed reduction in capacity to 500 prisoners?
I refer you to our Barlinnie resident, Mr Still.
We would like Barlinnie's capacity to be brought up to 800 places. Further public investment would be necessary to achieve the required standards. Renovation is going on. B hall has recently been renovated and untried prisoners have moved in. C hall is about to be renovated and D hall has been renovated. We seek further investment to bring Barlinnie up to a capacity of 800 places.
The survey that was carried out in August 2001 identified serious staff morale issues, one of which was connected to communication with management. Has communication improved since the publication of that report?
Staff morale is still very low, although we hope that things will improve during the coming months.
Is morale low because of communications with management?
There was a communication problem. We have had a change of governor at Barlinnie. We welcome the change and await the results of his different style of management. It was a lack of communication rather than the style of communication that caused a problem. It is difficult to slate the local management for that because, like us, it was waiting for information from the estates review. The fact that there was not a lot to communicate was the reason for the impact on staff morale, not just at Barlinnie—which, I appreciate, is your special interest—but right across the board. A domino effect takes place when negative announcements are made. Even a prison officer who was not in a prison that was going to be closed would have worried about what would happen to his prison as a consequence of the review. That feeling was pervasive across the prison estate.
The estates review considered a number of options for improving conditions at Barlinnie: full refurbishment of the halls; rebuilding on the site; and the retention of the fully refurbished hall, coupled with the building of a new house block, which is the recommended option. What is the union's view on those options, particularly the recommended one?
There are various ways of looking at the question. I am told that the building fabric of Barlinnie is second to none and that anything can be done with it because it is robust and thick. The problem with such a building is that it is expensive to change. I would prefer a custom-built facility—such as Glenesk hall in Edinburgh prison, which I recommend that members visit—which is easily heated and has good facilities, to be the option for the future.
That is almost a political answer. Are you saying that the building of new facilities would be your preferred option?
Having seen what can be incorporated in new buildings and how much more user-friendly they are, obviously I consider that to be my preferred option. Barlinnie, Perth and Peterhead do not want to move into the 20th century; they want to move into the 21st century with everyone else. Glenesk hall demonstrates the sort of prison building that it is possible to build. It is much more user-friendly for staff and, importantly, prisoners.
We have made arrangements for some of us to visit the new build at Edinburgh prison.
I am the representative for Low Moss and can tell you that staff morale there is the lowest that I have ever seen. As I said, a feasibility study was published on 21 April 2000. As far as staff were aware, work on that was moving at a rapid pace under the then governor, Eric Murch, but the issue seemed to fall off the shelf at some point and nothing has been done with it since.
Do you agree that the buildings at Low Moss are past saving?
Yes.
Without a doubt. The local branch committee and staff accept that and were happy with what the report said about new build on the Low Moss site.
We will read that report and get back to you with some written questions if we have to.
The association has a representative from each prison visiting committee. Every prison and every young offenders institution has a visiting committee. The association elects a convener for three years and I am just approaching the end of that sentence. Neil Powrie is on the committee to represent open prisons. Again, that is a three-year appointment.
What is a visiting committee's role?
Every prison is visited by two of us every fortnight. We look at whatever we want to look at. Mostly we take complaints from prisoners, but we generally talk to prisoners, members of staff and the governor. We are obliged to make a report. We try to solve any problems that arise with the prisoners. We do that all over the country in every prison.
How does the work of the individual committees filter into the association's role at the top of the pyramid of committees?
The association meets every two months and goes round the prisons as well. We always meet in a prison so that we can judge for ourselves what the place is like. We have recently visited prisons such as Peterhead and Low Moss, which were mentioned today. That keeps us up to date on exactly what is happening. We know what the worries and high spots are in the different establishments.
To clarify for the record, are your visits to prisons prearranged?
The visits that we make as the association are prearranged. The visits that we make as visiting committees are not prearranged. We are entitled to drop into the prison at any time of the day or night. We try to carry out our visits with sensitivity to lock-up arrangements, but we have the right to visit whenever we have a worry.
Perhaps this is not a lady-like question—I have greying hair too—but how long have you been involved in visiting prisons?
Thirty years.
And how long has Mr Powrie been involved?
Since 1996.
I know that, in its juvenile days, this committee was remiss in not asking the visiting committees to present evidence, but I am glad to say that problem has been remedied. You have expressed concern that the Minister for Justice did not take into account your report, which you forwarded to members of this committee. Will you comment on your relationship with the Minister for Justice? For instance, how often have you met him this year? What topics did you deal with?
We have not met him at all and we have not had a reply to our letter. He has not been able to come to our conference or to any of our meetings.
Have you had any response at all from the minister or from his department?
Our only response was from someone saying that the minister could not come. Perhaps Neil Powrie can think of something else.
No. That about sums it up. I might add that Mrs Russell and I have just returned from attending the annual conference of Northern Ireland's Board of Visitors and Visiting Committees, which receives excellent back-up and support from the minister, who attends the conference and dinner. That is slightly different from our experience with our current minister.
What was the position prior to the Scottish Parliament? Did you have communications with the then minister at the Scottish Office?
Yes. In fact, I remember Lord James Douglas-Hamilton attending one of our conferences. Brian Wilson also came, as did Michael Forsyth.
So is it only with the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and with the current minister in charge that things have deteriorated?
Yes. It has deteriorated.
With the committee's leave, I think that we will want to contact the minister about his failure to respond to the association's overtures. That seems to be completely different to what is happening elsewhere. In my role as convener, I will write to the minister about that situation. I do not want to cause alarm, but I find that pretty disgraceful. Were your views sought as part of the prison estates review?
Yes. Two and a half years ago we were asked about it. You may have seen the report that we produced at the time, in which we said that we were very disappointed. We wanted vision. Do you have the bullet points that we issued today?
We do not.
I have them with me and will give them to you later.
Were the bullet points sent by post to the clerks?
Our clerk was planning to fax them to you.
Nothing has landed on our desks or on those of the clerks. We met at lunchtime and nothing had been received. Clearly, something has gone wrong.
I shall leave a copy of the bullet points with you.
I would like to explore this issue further. I may be wrong, but from what you are saying I detect that you feel the estates review is based on figures that indicate a rising prisoner population and that it does not address the wider issue of alternatives to custody. Is that a fair reflection of what you are saying?
Yes. We have read about all the alternatives that were going to be tried, but at the end of the review we discover that more people will be imprisoned, even though it was said that attempts would be made to prevent that happening.
The estates review suggests that any new prisons will be for males rather than females.
I accept that only 3 per cent of prisoners are women.
Do you believe that an evaluation of alternatives to custody should have been part of the estates review and that the possibility of expanding those programmes, with a view to reducing the number of people who are placed in custody, should have been considered? Should we have done that before considering how many prisoner places we require in our prisons?
Yes. We assume that correctional excellence will reduce recidivism and that consequently the number of people in prison must fall. To build for 25 years seems mad to us.
Am I correct in saying that you believe that there should be an emphasis not only on alternatives to custody, but on rehabilitation of people who have to be placed in custody? Is that correct? I do not want to put words in your mouth.
Yes.
We cannot view the predicted movements in prisoner populations as heading unequivocally in one direction or another. It is absolutely right to try to pursue a more consistently rehabilitative approach in prisons, but Executive policy on drugs, for example, means that an increasing number of those who have committed drug-related offences will be incarcerated for longer periods of time, particularly those who are accused and convicted of serious drug-dealing offences. That means that the picture of the number of prisoner places that will be required cannot be considered in any rose-tinted way. There will be conflicting demands on the system.
Forecasting is difficult, but we were disappointed that all the forecasts were going up. There was no suggestion that forecasts might go down.
Do you mean that an integral part of the estates review should have been positive alternatives to custody being worked into balance sheets? I accept what Angus MacKay said: sentences are handed down by the courts. Should that have been part of the estates review?
Yes.
I want to explore that issue further. You said that you thought that the estates review looked at raw prisoner numbers. You know that the debate is about whether the public sector or the private sector can provide the prison service that Scotland needs. I take it that you are concerned that the prison estates review should have considered not just numbers, but services that are provided to prisoners. Did the estates review do that? If it did not, are we unable to compare public service provision of not just a cell but a support service with private service provision of a cell and a workplace?
It is difficult to compare even apples with apples. We have all found that there is far more to a prison than just a cell and far more to a prison than integral sanitation. I do not want integral sanitation in the middle of a cell where a prisoner must eat all their meals and I do not think that many people want that, but it is an improvement on slopping out.
What do you consider to be the key challenges that will face the SPS over the next 20 to 30 years? Is the top priority to end overcrowding? Is it to implement a more advanced rehabilitation regime? Is it to end slopping out? What do you consider to be the key priority or priorities?
The most important priority at the moment is obviously to end slopping out. We support the moves in that direction. The estates review seems to be a rather long obituary notice for the SPS. It is crammed with things such as public-private partnerships, best practices, best value, benchmarking, measuring outputs and building platforms, but it fails to address the most fundamental matter—rehabilitation of the offender. A greater emphasis should have been placed on addressing reoffending and on education.
You mentioned a range of terms. Do you object to those terms or practices?
Not as such, but I do not understand how we can make progress when the estates review is totally isolated from ensuring that adequate rehabilitation regimes are in place. The debate seems to be about who provides prisons, not why we need them, for which categories of crimes we need them and how best to rehabilitate. That all seems to have been missed out.
Let me check that I have understood you correctly. I think that you said that the first objective is to end slopping out and the second objective is to improve the quality of rehabilitation that takes place in prisons.
That is what I said.
The committee's work has a long way to go, particularly on drilling down into the figures that have been presented in the estates review conclusion, which is out to consultation at the moment. We do not know where that consultation will go. If we come to a point at which we are faced with a choice of ending slopping out more quickly by taking the private sector option or not to do so, what would your view be?
We do not necessarily need to privatise to end slopping out. I do not understand where the SPS is coming from. The thrust of the estates review seems to be that the SPS is incapable of achieving its objectives and that the only way to achieve them is to privatise.
I did not ask for a view on that; I asked a direct question. We may come to a view that the figures that we have been given do not add up and that we can go for the entirely public sector option, but we may not. If, having scrutinised those figures, we come to the view that the only way in which the Executive can afford to proceed with new building is to build, for example, two new private prisons, what would your position be on your primary objective, which is to end slopping out?
Could you clarify that? Are you referring to private prisons that are privately run?
Yes. I am trying to work from the same basis as the estates review. We may move away from that proposal—which I assume is a worst-case scenario for most people—or we may not.
You really cannot separate the rest of the package and concentrate solely on achieving an end to slopping out. If the only way forward is to build two new prisons by private means, then okay—go ahead. I think that we should support a view that was expressed earlier, which is that that is okay, provided that the public sector runs those prisons. That is where we believe the expertise and professionalism exists. If private build is the way to end slopping out swiftly, that is okay.
In the light of your remarks about education and our visits to prisons, what is your view on short sentences, which have led to a revolving-door situation? Is there a period that you consider so short that a prison cannot do any proper rehabilitation or education work within it? If so, what length of time would that be?
There are definitely short sentences that are no use to anybody. Sentences of two nights give rise to a lot of extra bureaucratic work and, in my opinion, are totally unnecessary. Short sentences of six months are also a waste of time as far as rehabilitation is concerned. Three months of a six-month sentence tend to be served, at which point prisoners will not even have got themselves on a list for rehabilitation. There are big queues of prisoners waiting to go on anger management courses, for example.
Have your studies and visits given you any views on alternatives to custody, or on well-structured community service obligations under careful control? I am not sure whether that comes into your sphere of activity.
That does not come under our remit as members of visiting committees, although we see young people who are in prison because they have breached their conditions outside. One of them took off their tag. They do not seem to be able to see the connection between taking off a tag and ending up in prison. They sometimes have a strange way of thinking about such things. Breaching orders is another thing that they do not understand, and they claim not to understand why doing so can mean that they end up in prison. That makes us wonder whether it has been properly explained to them in the first place.
You mentioned in passing the huge number of people who are waiting for anger management courses. If, in our considerations, we put rehabilitation into the pot in one way or another, where can we find the figures or statistics for inmates who are waiting for courses?
I do not think that those figures are centralised. We hear of the situation only when we speak to a prisoner and find out how long it will be before that person can get on a drug course, for example. People want to get on to anger management courses, and I know how difficult it is for them to get on them.
In which prisons, as a matter of interest?
I am talking about Cornton Vale, but the same is true for Polmont.
If the committee wanted to get general, wider information about rehabilitation, we would have to do that prison by prison.
Yes, and you might be surprised to know how little information there is about waiting lists for courses.
We have heard that maintaining family links is a "major problem" for offenders at Peterhead prison due to the
When we were at Peterhead prison last summer, we asked that question of prisoners and found that only a small proportion of them had visitors. Those whose families visited said that SACRO helped with travel if necessary, and that they tended to accumulate their visits and arrange to receive them back at Barlinnie, for example, possibly spending a week there.
As far as you are concerned, this was not a particular problem and no complaints were made to you.
It was not raised as a problem and not one complaint was made to us.
I understand that the Peterhead prisoners have emphasised the fact that the prison provides a safe location where they can address their offending behaviour in safety, without the threat of being attacked by other prisoners. It also enables family members to visit without fear for their safety. Has that view been communicated to your visiting committee?
As our submission says, prisoners are definitely more at ease at Peterhead. Even those prisoners who are not on the STOP 2000 programme, and who have not yet accepted that they have committed a crime, are much more willing to move about.
Could it be that the minister's fears relate to the situation 25 years ago, before the sex offenders unit was established and when complaints were made?
Until today, I had not heard that visitors were being ill-treated by other visitors.
I do not think that that is an allegation that has been made to us. In the past, there was a problem when many of the most dangerous murderers in Scotland were centralised—or congregated—in Peterhead, rather than being dispersed throughout the system.
Any change makes people cross and worried. Are you referring to Peterhead specifically?
Not exclusively.
The big changes have upset people throughout the system. Often, partners both work in the prison service and we have had complaints that they cannot go on holiday with their children because of the new rotas. There are also complaints that staff are never able to see their children because they are not home at weekends. That is usually because both partners are involved in the prison service. That would cause problems no matter what service they were in. I am not sure about that point.
Having heard the evidence, would you feel able to send us a letter outlining your key priorities in the field and what your wishes would be?
I think that that is covered in the bullet points, which will be available at our next meeting.
I presume that you have had reports from the visiting committee in Kilmarnock prison. What things has the committee highlighted?
We visited Kilmarnock not so long ago. Before coming here, I phoned all the chairmen of the visiting committees to ensure that everyone would agree with what we put in our bullet points or said to the committee. I knew that Kilmarnock prison might be the odd one out.
Why do you think that Kilmarnock prison takes a different approach from SPS establishments? The chairman of the visiting committee at Kilmarnock appears to have been taken fully on board.
Perhaps it is historical. Only the appointments to the young offenders' visiting committees, which used to be made by the secretary of state, are made by the Minister for Justice.
I am not too clear what you mean by that.
The adult visiting committees are appointed by local authorities.
Yes. However, I presume that that is also the case at Kilmarnock?
Exactly. That is why the Kilmarnock visiting committee chairman stands out. The other visiting committee chairmen are envious—
I would like to clarify the situation, or I will become even more confused.
Exactly.
Right. The chairman in Kilmarnock seems to have been taken into the system to the extent that he has been made a key part of the decision-making process. Why is that? Does that happen in SPS establishments?
That would be hard for me to assess.
You cannot—you would be speculating.
The relationship between the governor and the staff in establishments depends largely on the governor. Some are less helpful than others are—let me just put it like that.
To summarise what you said about the visit to Kilmarnock, did the chairpeople of the other visiting committees come to a different view about the prison than the chairman of the visiting committee at Kilmarnock?
Yes. They saw snags that he did not see. However, everybody came away thinking that the prison was a whole lot better than we had been led to expect.
It is curious that a difference of opinion should exist between that individual and the other chairpersons of the visiting committees. How many times did the other chairpersons visit Kilmarnock? Was that visit a one-off?
No. I think that most of them had been more than once. I have visited Kilmarnock four times. We have all been round it.
Has the chairman of the Kilmarnock visiting committee visited other prisons?
Yes.
Has he acted as a chairman of other prison visiting committees?
No. He does not have previous involvement in the prison service.
You had the opportunity to visit Kilmarnock more than once, and to look around it at length. He also had the opportunity to visit other parts of the prison service more than once and at length. Despite that, you came to different views. Is that the case?
Yes.
How long has the Kilmarnock visiting committee chairman served on visiting committees? You have told us how long you have served.
Just since Kilmarnock.
Three years.
Yes.
We need to put that on the record.
I want to pick up on something that Lord James Douglas-Hamilton asked about visits from prisoners' families. I became confused about the answers. Forgive me if I have got the answer down incorrectly, but I understand that the prisoners at Peterhead were not too bothered that their families did not visit them often. Is that the case?
Quite a high proportion of the prisoners in Peterhead do not have visits from their families.
Some of the families that visited Peterhead were taken to the prison in a SACRO bus. At other times, prisoners were taken to Barlinnie and their families visited them there. We have heard that one of the reasons that the Peterhead situation and set-up is important is that prisoners' families do not get any aggravation from other visitors at non-sex-offender prisons. When prisoners are taken to Barlinnie, is any intimidation directed towards the families who come to meet them there?
We had not heard of that. The first that I heard of it was from the evidence that was given by the Prison Officers Association Scotland.
Does that mean that no prisoner has said that, because their relatives would be intimidated, they did not want to be taken to Barlinnie?
Not as far as we know.
Prisoners who apply for accumulated visits can be taken to Barlinnie or Shotts to see their families. As far as we know, a bar has never been put on that, nor have complaints been made.
Not as far as I know.
Unless other members have questions, I will ask the witnesses if there is anything else that they wish to draw to our attention with respect to the prison estates review. We are quite capable of having omitted something.
We support the suggestions for Barlinnie and Low Moss.
Are those included in your bullet points?
Yes.
If you read them out, they will be put into the Official Report.
That is all right. We have covered everything else.
In any event, your document will be made public, as it forms part of our evidence.
Thank you.
We now move into private session.
Meeting continued in private until 16:45.
Previous
Subordinate Legislation