Justice 1 Committee, 30 Oct 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 30, 2001

Official Report 224KB pdf

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Prisons

We are still considering the issue of prisons and item 2 is on Kilmarnock prison. We have two witnesses: Ron Tasker, who is a director of Premium Prison Services Ltd, and Elaine Bailey, who is the managing director of the organisation. We also have with us Alex Neil MSP, who has an interest in this agenda item and is here to exercise his right to ask questions. The witnesses have given us a written submission, but I understand that they would like to say something before we come to questions.

I want to make a short opening statement.

That is fine. I do not mean to sound the slightest bit rude by asking you to make a fairly brief statement, because we want to get on to questions. However, please say whatever you think is appropriate.

Thank you. We are grateful for the invitation to meet the committee.

As you know, I am managing director of Premier Custodial Group Ltd. With me is Ron Tasker, who is one of my operational directors; he is also standing in for the director of HM Prison Kilmarnock, who is on secondment in South Africa.

We have both worked in the public sector prison service. For many years, Ron Tasker was a prison governor; before joining the company, he was governor of Full Sutton top security prison near York. I was a member of the prisons board, as director of security reporting to the director-general of HM Prison Service in England and Wales.

Your invitation has caused me to reflect on the information that has been made available to MSPs to date. It was clear from the reports of earlier meetings that some have felt frustrated at not getting information about Kilmarnock and the company. This meeting gives me the opportunity to provide you with that information. It was helpful that the Justice 2 Committee visited Kilmarnock on 14 September for a briefing from Ron Tasker and a tour of the facility. I am also aware of the information that Tony Cameron gave to the committee last week.

Premier Custodial Group Ltd is registered in the UK. It is a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation of America and the British company, Serco. The two shareholdings are equal, but in terms of market capitalisation the British company is more than six times larger than the American company.

Kilmarnock prison opened in 1999 and we are proud of what we have achieved since then. The prison is within the Scottish prison estate and it is managed by Premier for the Scottish Prison Service. It is one of five prisons operated by Premier in Britain, all of which are managed by directors who were previously governors in the public sector. In addition, the company is responsible for two court escort contracts in England and for three electronic monitoring contracts, including the current trial in the Aberdeen area. We also operate a secure training centre for 12 to 15-year-olds in County Durham and have recently opened an immigration centre in Lanarkshire.

In making judgments about Kilmarnock, people should appreciate that we operate within a robust contractual framework. The SPS has been able to draw on its vast experience to specify clearly what it wants and to demand contract compliance. Where we have won contracts, we have done so on the basis of our ability to provide the level of service set out in the contract at a price that represents value to our customer—in this case, the SPS. The contract is designed to encourage flexibility in delivering the specified outcomes, now and in the future.

We understand that transparency and accountability are matters of prime concern to the committee. Everything that happens in the prison is monitored by an SPS controller supported by an assistant. They are permanently on site and have access to all records and every part of the prison. Their primary role is to monitor our performance against the contract. There are penalties, including financial ones, for shortcomings in performance, and there is an especially severe penalty for failing to notify the controller of any reportable incident.

The company's approach is to do our best to make a difference to people's lives. Our objectives at Kilmarnock continue to be adhering completely to the terms of the contract, continuing to run the prison for the betterment of the prisoners—and, ultimately, the communities from which they come—and supporting the excellent performance of the staff who work there. We regret ill-informed media comment that undermines the morale of a hard-working staff. I was therefore especially pleased to note Tony Cameron's comment when he gave evidence to the committee last week that, in his view, it was clear that Kilmarnock "is doing very well".

Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee. Ron Tasker and I will be pleased to respond to your questions.

I ask members to keep their questions reasonably under control. I shall show courtesy to our visitor by allowing Alex Neil to have first shot.

The last time I attended a meeting of this committee—it was on 11 September—Clive Fairweather, the chief inspector of prisons, was giving evidence about Kilmarnock. He said that the likelihood of a prisoner being seriously assaulted in Kilmarnock could be as much as four times higher than in other prisons such as Barlinnie. He said that after he suggested—I paraphrase him—that he could not confirm that Premier was not fiddling the figures on the classification of assaults. Why is the level of assaults in Kilmarnock four times higher than the level in other prisons? Are you trying to fiddle the figures? Why have you had to have the figures altered and reclassified after inspection?

We do not fiddle the figures. As I said, we have a monitor on site, who is there primarily to monitor the contract. We have six performance measures relating to assaults. They are classified according to the type of assault. The SPS classifies the assaults, not us; the SPS decides whether they are key performance indicator assaults.

On Mr Fairweather's comment that prisoner assaults are four times more likely in Kilmarnock prison than in Barlinnie, I would say that the figures are not there to support that view. When Tony Cameron spoke to the committee last week he said that we would be placed in the mid-range of SPS establishments—we are neither the best nor the worst on assaults. In the year to date, we have had five prisoner-on-prisoner KPI assaults. Our comparators—we generally use Edinburgh and Perth—have had eight and two such assaults. I say strongly that we do not fiddle the figures.

Are you saying that the chief inspector has got it wrong? The chief inspector's colleague said that

"the likelihood of a prisoner being seriously assaulted in Kilmarnock could be as much as four times higher than in other prisons, such as Barlinnie."

To back up that comment he said that

"there had been 26 reported assaults on Kilmarnock prisoners, in comparison with 31 reported assaults on Barlinnie prisoners."

He also said that four of the assaults in Kilmarnock were serious in comparison with only two in Barlinnie. The chief inspector said that he felt that

"at least another couple of assaults should have been classified as serious."—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 11 September 2001; c 2633-34.]

The chief inspector carried out that survey at a time when Barlinnie had 1,085 prisoners and Kilmarnock prison had 548. In that time, nine assaults were made against staff in Kilmarnock prison and 12 in Barlinnie. Are you saying that the chief inspector is talking nonsense?

I have the figures that were provided by the SPS, which show that Kilmarnock prison had 32 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, of which five were KPI assaults. The level of assaults at Barlinnie—in absolute numbers—is higher than 32, according to the SPS figures.

Are you saying that there is a conflict between the figures from the chief inspector and those from the SPS?

I am saying that we know what assaults we have had and that I have to take the comparator information from the SPS—of which we are a part.

Have you read the chief inspector's figures?

Yes, I have.

What is your comment on them? Where are they wrong?

I do not think that they are wrong; they relate to different time periods. It can be confusing when we talk about years—calendar years or financial years.

Are you not disturbed that the chief inspector has such grave concerns?

As Tony Cameron said, we come somewhere in the mid-range in terms of assaults. That does not mean that we are complacent. We are always working to reduce the number of assaults and to make the prison a better place to be. It is interesting to note that the prisoner survey carried out by the SPS found that prisoners' perception of their safety was comparable to that within other SPS prisons. The prisoners in Kilmarnock prison did not feel more unsafe.

What impact does the 32 per cent staff turnover have on your performance?

In the first couple of years of operation, turnover was relatively high. However, it is coming down significantly this year. When we first opened the prison, although most of our staff had not worked in prisons before—I am sure that you would point that out—the managers and supervisors had. One of their primary roles is to mentor and coach new staff. We also created a support team when we first opened—that is something that we do in all our prisons. In this case, the support team was stipulated in the contract. The team is made up of experienced staff from prison custody officer—PCO—level upwards who are there to help the staff in their early days.

What is the current rate of staff turnover?

At the end of September, it was 13 per cent. We expect the annualised figure to be 17.9 per cent but, at the rate at which turnover is slowing, it is likely to be less than that.

Is that still significantly above the average for the public prison service?

It is, but it is consistent with what we expect when we open a new prison. In a new prison, everyone starts together. The job is not right for some people—it does not work for them or for us. From other prisons that we have opened, a graph could be drawn of the early days. For some reasons, people drift away fairly quickly, but then the position stabilises. There is clear evidence of stabilisation at Kilmarnock, which, in some ways, is better than we would have expected.

Are not the staff turnover problems to do with the fact that, as Clive Fairweather said, Kilmarnock has the best-paid prisoners and the lowest-paid prison officers in Scotland? Derek Turner of the Scottish Prison Officers Association said that the SPOA was worried about

"working conditions for staff in Kilmarnock".

He felt that

"there are insufficient staff to do the job in a safe environment".—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 23 October 2001; c 2671.]

It is correct that we have fewer staff than might have been the case in a similar public sector prison. There are several reasons for that. One of them is the modern design of Kilmarnock prison—there are good sightlines and an efficient layout, that minimises distances between buildings. We make much use of information technology, have sophisticated camera coverage and all our staff have personal alarms. The staffing levels were agreed with the SPS during the contract negotiations; I am sure that the SPS would not have awarded us a contract had it not felt that the proposed staffing levels were workable within that prison setting.

I need to let other members in, but I noticed that you did not mention pay.

I am happy to mention pay. We aim to be a good employer in the local community. We pay a competitive package for that local community. Our pay rates for the PCOs are broadly in line with the public sector, although I emphasise that our comparator is not the public sector, but the local private market.

Our custody officers start—on completion of seven weeks' training—at the same rate as their public sector counterparts. Over the two years that we have run pay rounds, our custody officers have benefited from significantly higher increases—5.6 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively. What is most important is that we work with the joint negotiating committees of our staff's union—all our staff are members of a union, or have the opportunity to be members of a union. Pay and conditions are central to the thinking of those committees and to our thinking. Our commitment is to pay our staff as well as we can afford to pay them for doing a good job. We are conscious that we have some good staff who deserve to be well rewarded for what they do.

I do not intend to pursue that in detail. I have two quick final questions. We have mentioned what the staff get. What is your rate of profit for running the prison? Members of the Scottish Parliament repeatedly ask questions of the Scottish Prison Service. When it comes to Kilmarnock, nine times out of 10—on the social work costs per prisoner, the number of nursing posts and so on—we are told that we cannot get the information. Is not it right that, as you are funded through the public purse, we should have access to the same amount of information about Kilmarnock as we do about every other prison in Scotland? Will you undertake to provide all that information?

Yes. When we are asked for information, we give it. I am sure that you understand that we hope that some information—to do with our ability to win more contracts—will always be in confidence for commercial reasons. However, we are happy to share with people the greater part of what we do at Kilmarnock. If you ask the questions, we can give you the answers. We collate a lot of information.

You were going to give me the profit figure.

Yes. Last year, our profit after tax was £300,000, which is about what we expect to make this year.

First, in paragraph 5 of his letter, Tony Cameron, the director of the Scottish Prison Service, wrote:

"Kilmarnock represents a major challenge to a number of expensive and outdated practices".

Can Ron Tasker give examples of those areas where Kilmarnock has improved the situation?

Secondly, what training is being offered at the prison and what is the associated cost? Thirdly, how do you feel about Kilmarnock prison not being included in the distribution of additional funding to address drug misuse? What action do you intend to take if, for instance, other prisons are able to implement new programmes?

I will take the first question and ask Ron Tasker to deal with training and drugs.

We are able to provide good value to the SPS at Kilmarnock through our billed costs. We have a partnership with a contractor and we use the same one every time. The contractor is now quite experienced in building prisons. We design the prison around its operation; we decide what we want to do in the prison first, then we put the buildings around it. It is a modern design. As I said to Mr Neil, we make a lot of use of information technology, for example in camera coverage, where we use technology to identify visitors as they come in and out. We have good sightlines.

We are more flexible in our deployment of staff and can react quickly to changes. When he spoke to you last week, Tony Cameron mentioned the number of times we change our attendance patterns. We know from the contract what work we have to do and we deploy the staff to undertake that work. If we find that things are not working well or if the staff find it difficult, we reconsider the situation. We are able quite quickly to make changes to our processes and procedures. When we take on staff who are new to the prison environment we find that some of them are not suited, but the other side of that is that they come without any preconceived ideas and are open to learning how to do things the Premier way.

It is helpful to us to have the contract. It provides clarity and describes comprehensively what is required so that it is clear to us exactly what work we are required to do. All those elements together help us to provide good value for money.

On the differences, we employ all our own people, except in social work, which we contract out. The nurses and teachers work for us. In the main, the teachers are not contracted in from one college or another for the core curriculum. I have a public service background and when I moved to the private sector I found it possible to realise a lot of ambition quickly, even at 55 years old, as I was then. It is easy to have a vision and quite straightforward to put it in place. There is no baggage—sometimes that is not always to the good, because experience is worth a lot. On the other hand, when you start with a clean sheet and when you have senior members of staff and an enabling environment, the world is your oyster. You can pick your vision and go for it. That is the essential difference that I have found.

The staff are trained almost identically to those in the public service. They do a six-week course, followed by one week of shadowing when they get back to the prison. Most training is done in-house and all of it is verified. All members of staff must be certificated by the Scottish Prison Service. Experience is the only difference between staff at Kilmarnock prison and those at any of the other public service prisons.

Our training—including development training—is good: we have staff who are developing Scottish vocational qualifications and management skills and who are following graduate and postgraduate courses. We have a training budget and a clear programme of how we want to train our staff. That is how we do it.

I turn now to the question about additional money. Tony Cameron has advised me that that money will be available to Kilmarnock prison. I cannot say on what terms. We are presently dealing with our submission, setting out what we could make good use of. I am grateful for Tony Cameron's assurance that some of the money will be made available.

I ask Mr Tasker to clarify what he said in his last two or three sentences. Are you confirming that additional funding will be made available to Kilmarnock prison?

Yes.

Yes.

Has the Administration had a sudden change of heart?

I do not think so. We were never formally notified that we would not receive any money, but we have now been formally notified that we will. As Ron Tasker said, it is now simply a question of working out what we would like to have.

So that is a satisfactory outcome.

Absolutely.

At the moment, are there any particular matters on which you wish to seek the help of the Administration?

On drugs in particular or in general?

In general.

I do not think so, although over the past couple of years, we have found it difficult to deal with a lot of the anecdotal stuff about Kilmarnock. Every time something appears in the newspapers, it upsets our staff and their families. On a number of occasions, we have had to call the staff together for a special staff meeting to put their minds at rest.

We are more than happy to have people come and visit the prison and see for themselves what we do at Kilmarnock. I suggest that the Justice 1 Committee invites as many people as possible to come and see what we do.

Thank you.

First, I welcome your intimation to committee members that you are prepared to be open and answer questions. Members of the Parliament have taken the view that there has been a considerable amount of secrecy around the operation of Kilmarnock prison, particularly in relation to the contract.

I have been trying to get information on an issue for some time. It may be in the public domain, but I have not been able to get my hands on it. What is the annual income produced by the contract to run Kilmarnock?

Concern has been expressed about the staff-to-prisoner ratio. What is that ratio at Kilmarnock? How does that compare with the ratio at an SPS prison? I notice in your submission that prison officers appear to start on a similar rate of pay to SPS staff. After 10 years' service at Kilmarnock, would you expect the rates to be the same? In your submission, you make reference to what I would interpret as staff at Kilmarnock being principally turnkeys—responsible for nothing more than locking up prisoners. You state:

"Work with prisoners in respect of dealing with their offending behaviour and reducing the likelihood of further offences is the role of professional specialists".

The SPS also does that work, but prison officers play an important role in providing the services. Can you explain why there is such a difference between the role that your staff undertake and the role that SPS staff undertake in that regard? Who provides the specialists to provide the support that you say prisoners require?

I will take the first three issues that Mr Matheson raised. Ron Tasker will reply to the last question.

Our income is about £12 million. That was the figure last year and we are on target for that this year. I can tell you about our staff ratios, but I cannot tell you how they compare with SPS prisons. We have 292 staff at Kilmarnock, which is more than we are contracted to provide. We provide the additional staff at our own expense. I do not know the staff ratios in other prisons, but they are not directly comparable, because of Kilmarnock prison's different layout, different function and the different types of prisoner. I will give a couple of examples. In our industrial workshops, we have 17 staff for a maximum of 275 prisoners. In a house block, we have a unit manager, two rovers and two PCOs while the prisoners are there.

I cannot say whether our PCO rates are the same as those in the public sector after several years, because I do not know the pay spines or rates in the SPS. All that I can go on is our experience at Kilmarnock. As Ron Tasker said, we start staff on £12,500, but after two years' service, some PCOs are on just over £13,700. Our longest contract is at Doncaster. Staff there receive a pay rise each year. Many of our staff are promoted—our company is growing and recruits from within. At Kilmarnock, staff who were PCOs have been promoted to Dovegate near Burton upon Trent and to Dungavel. Ron Tasker will talk about PCOs as turnkeys.

There are alternative models. Some prisons—including some in which I worked—train prison staff to deliver programmes. That is good, because it enriches the job of prison staff. Our staff at Kilmarnock are well trained, but two and a half years into the prison's life, they are not experienced enough to do such work. That remains an ambition and I am sure that such work will start soon.

Other considerations must be taken into account when a prison is opened. It must settle, find its culture and find its feet. We have had to deal with some of the issues that the committee asked about, such as drugs, assault and people's relationships with each other. It is early days at Kilmarnock. We have successfully employed a senior psychologist, two other psychologists, a senior social worker and three other social workers. They are employed directly—they work for us; they are not contracted in, except for the social workers. Interestingly, we started with two social workers. Clive Fairweather, among other people, commented and made a case that led to discussion and we upped the figure by 50 per cent. The company pays for that, because we want to train prisoners.

We are not concerned with how much money is taken out; we are interested in the best match for resources and what needs to be done. Additionally, we have five counsellors. A couple of them started as prison custody officers and then obtained professional qualifications in counselling to deliver programmes to prisoners, such as anger management and drugs awareness. We have a full-time worker from the Rowan Alba Association, who is involved in homelessness and resettlement and helps people to find places. We will soon have a debt counsellor. She will advise prisoners on consolidating and smoothing out debt and making life simpler.

Mr Matheson is right to talk about prison officers playing an important role in providing services. That is not something that we have taken on in the custody function, but it remains an aspiration of mine, because I am confident that prison officers who diversify and deliver programmes, on the whole, do it well.

Is such work part of your contract?

It is part of the contract to deliver the programmes. Provided that the Scottish Prison Service is satisfied with the outputs—the number of programmes and their quality—how we arrange the business is for us.

So it is not specified in the contract. It is left to you to decide how you do that.

Yes. Our contract is based almost exclusively on outputs. For example, the controller measures us on 70 performance measures each day and they are virtually all output-related. How we achieve those outputs is left to us.

Are those indicators in the public domain? It would be interesting to see the indicators and to find out how you perform against them.

I think that Tony Cameron spoke last week about a CD-ROM that he had provided to the committee, perhaps in its earlier form. I know that the CD-ROM contained all the performance measures.

I understand that one of the private prisons that you run in England was recently refinanced. Do you intend to do that at Kilmarnock? If you do not intend to do that in the near future, do you expect to have to do it at a later date?

We have refinanced all our private finance initiative prisons. That was done some time ago.

Including Kilmarnock?

Yes. The first thing to say is that we did not make a killing out of it. We have brought together all our debt into a portfolio. That spreads the risk and means that the banks from which we borrow money for future contracts will at least consider more favourable interest rates than we pay at the moment. In turn, that will enable us to provide a better price for customers.

When we refinanced Kilmarnock and other prisons, we kept in close touch with the SPS all the way along the line and it approved everything that we did. The SPS's position now is no different from its position before the refinancing.

I understand that refinancing is in effect a form of remortgaging the establishment at a more favourable interest rate than the rate at which you borrowed when you built it. Is that correct?

To build Kilmarnock and our other prisons, we borrowed some money from the banks and some money from our shareholders. We still owe as much money as we did before, but the proportion that we owe to our shareholders and to the banks is different. The overall lump of money that we owe is still the same.

So part of the refinancing was to pay back to your shareholders some of the money that you had on loan. Is that what happened to the money you raised from the refinancing?

All that happened was that the shareholders sold some of their debt to the banks as part of the refinancing. So we owe our shareholders less money but we owe our banks more money. The net result is that we owe the same amount of money as we did before.

How much money did you make from refinancing?

We did not make any money.

There was no profit at all?

No.

Have the termination liabilities of the contract changed as a result of the refinancing?

No. The SPS was clear that its position was not to alter one jot as a result of the refinancing and we were able to assure it that it had not. Our lawyers and the SPS's lawyers worked closely together to ensure that nothing changed.

Do you anticipate that having to be done again in the future?

No. We have done the refinancing that we need to do. We now have a portfolio with each of our PFI prisons in it. That is the structure from which we can progress if there are opportunities for further prisons.

You mentioned training and the programmes that you run for prisoners. Will you give some more specific details about training and programmes?

Do you mean the programmes that we run for prisoners?

Yes. You mentioned anger management and workshops. Would you give us details about those?

I am sure that the committee is aware that we provide a full day for prisoners. We are contracted to provide eight hours' structured regime every day—an hour of exercise and then seven hours of a combination of offending behaviour programmes, education and work around the prison or in the industrial workshops.

On education, there is a focus on numeracy and literacy and there is vocational training. There is an anger management programme, which was accredited this summer, and the Maguire problem-solving skills course, which I think is the course that is used in the rest of the system. There are also basic and advanced drugs awareness programmes and programmes on anxiety management, living skills and parenting. There have been more than 325 completions to date.

Most programmes are most suited to long-termers. We are conscious that there are a significant number of remands in the prison—I think that there were around 60 this morning. Traditionally, there have been specific programmes for them, but we are putting together some sessions for them under the title of construct group through which we will offer sessions on offending behaviour, drug addiction and anger management. Ron Tasker has more details on the length and content of the programmes and the number of prisoners involved, if the committee would like them.

There are also workshops in which we employ prisoners on commercial contracts that we have won in the community. The contracts involve a range of skills to suit different types of prisoners. Packaging work is at one end of the spectrum and is fairly low skilled. At the other end of the spectrum there are fairly sophisticated metalwork contracts. For example, Kilmarnock College ran a welding course for prisoners so that they can make the big skips that are seen on building sites.

That is an overview. Does the committee need more specific details?

I am interested in what you said about Kilmarnock College. I thought you said that you do not take people in on such contracts.

That is right. Part of our flexibility is that we employ our own teachers, vocational training instructors and instructors in the workshops. However, if we need to buy in specialised skills that we do not have, particularly for short periods, we will buy them in.

How many teachers do you employ?

I have the statistics.

I think that we employ about 11 teachers.

Do you plan to pay them the McCrone rates?

Sorry, we employ 12 teachers.

Are the salaries comparable to local authority salaries? Will you implement the McCrone rates?

Yes. I said earlier that we pay the local market rate. The vast majority of teachers work in public sector settings and the market rate is around the level that they are paid.

I would be happy to leave details of the drugs and anger management programmes if that would be helpful and if the committee is interested.

I would like statistics about the ratio of instructors and teachers to prisoners. Are the figures comparable to those in SPS prisons?

We cannot answer that as we do not have comparative information about what goes on in the rest of the SPS. The focus of our contract is on outputs. We are contracted to provide a certain number of hours of education and a certain number of hours of offending behaviour programmes. It is for us to decide how we can best do that.

Are the number of hours on education and on offending behaviour programmes specified?

Yes. That is one of the performance measures.

I apologise for being delayed—there was a crisis. Please tell me if my questions have been asked.

I am interested in what your report says about indiscipline. It does not quite say that a high number of indiscipline reports is a good sign, but it comes near to saying that. Will you elaborate on why you have more indiscipline reports than the other prisons?

The simple reason is that we have a contract to which we must work. As I said, we provide eight hours' structured regime every day and convicted prisoners must take part in that. Prisoners must work. Work instils a work ethic into prisoners, a number of whom have not held down a regular job for some time, if ever. We find that many such prisoners would rather not work. However, they must work and, if they do not, they are put on an indiscipline report. Some reports therefore arise from our compliance with the contract and our desire to have prisoners carry out a full day of activity rather than simply sit in their cells. Ron Tasker might want to add to that.

I do not particularly want to add to that, except to say that there are significant differences in running the prison. For example, one performance measure involves no prisoner being allowed to enter another prisoner's cell. If a prisoner does so, he commits an automatic disciplinary offence and must be reported.

There are reports on work refusals and one or two make-weight reports that I do not want to overemphasise. A number of indiscipline reports have been generated by prisoners refusing to transfer, particularly to prisons that are a long way from their homes. Some reports have been generated by fairly minor matters, but they all contribute to the total. Prisoners are allowed to display material in their cells only within a finite area. Under the contract and our directors' rules, anything that is displayed outside that area generates a discipline report. The number is high primarily for those reasons and for the reason outlined by Elaine Bailey.

At this stage of the prison's evolution, staff know what they doing, are well trained and are developing their experience, but there is a little lack of sureness of touch here and there. Sometimes that leads to conflict and reports. I am working carefully with the controller on site and my staff. I want matters to be reasoned out and not to lead to indiscipline reports. When matters get to that stage, everybody fails—the prisoner fails because he gets punished and we fail because we do not get people to work. There are better ways of doing things, but at this stage of the prison's life, I am satisfied that we have at least analysed the matter well. We are on the right road and know where we are going.

I also want to ask about training. When Mr Cameron spoke to us last week, he said that one of the problems with the Prison Service was that, compared with the police, for example, there was not a good career structure or visible promotion prospects. Your report says that you have a somewhat different model of average prison worker from the SPS. Do you think that you provide a good career structure?

We think that we do. As I mentioned, we are a growing company and there are opportunities for people to move around in the system. One member of staff started as a court escort, worked up at the prison in Kilmarnock and is currently at our new prison in Dovegate. A number of staff from Kilmarnock have been promoted, and have moved on to the immigration centre at Dungavel and the new prison in Dovegate.

That movement of staff creates a backfill situation in the prison, so we have had quite a number of internal promotions. The culture that we have in the prison is one of openness between the staff and the managers. We go out of our way to ensure that the staff feel that the job that they are doing is valuable and that they are valued as individuals. We emphasise that the staff are doing good work.

Any member of this Parliament would feel sympathy with another group of people who feel that they get harsh and unfair treatment from the press. Kilmarnock has come in for a good deal of criticism. What percentage of that criticism do you think is justified?

Very little of it. The vast majority of what appears in the press is just conjecture, anecdote and unsubstantiated allegation. A lot of it is from people who have never been in the prison. Some of it twists and manipulates the words of people who have been in the prison. The best way for anybody to find out the truth about the prison is to come and see it for themselves—I invite committee members to do so—and to form their own opinion based on the facts.

I will let Michael Matheson ask another question, so long as he promises to be quick.

We are just about to move on to discuss the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Bill. Would you have any problems with Kilmarnock prison being classified as a public authority under section 5(1) of that bill? You may not be able to answer that question, because you may not have read the bill, but I would welcome your comments.

Would you have any problem with publishing the contract and placing it in the public domain with the commercially confidential sections removed? Would you be happy for members of the committee to view the contract in private with the commercially confidential information still included?

I shall take the last two questions first, because I understand those. I thought that the contract had been published, or was at least in the throes of being published. I know that we had discussions with the SPS about precisely which parts of the contract would be treated as commercial and confidential; both the SPS and Premier wanted to reduce that to a bare minimum. As far as I know, if the contract has not already been published, it is very close to publication. I would have no problem with the committee seeing the commercially confidential information privately.

On the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Bill, you are right to say that I do not know about the section to which you referred. However, we do not have a problem with information. We collect an awful lot of information. We have to do so as part of our contract. It is all available to the SPS, so I do not see a problem with that.

Would you be happy for the prison to be classed as a public authority? That is what it would be classified as under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Bill.

I am afraid that I cannot answer that question, because I do not know the import of it.

Could you consider the question and respond to me?

Yes, of course. That would be no problem at all.

I would be grateful.

We are constantly being told that it is much cheaper per prisoner year to pay a private sector company than it is to pay a prison in the public sector. The difference in the figures that we are given is not trivial. When I try to discover the reasons for that difference—of course, it depends on who I ask—some people simply run down your establishment, saying that it is understaffed, that prisoners run about doing what they like and that conditions are bad. I do not expect you to agree with that, and clearly you do not.

However, two reasons for the difference emerge from your evidence and the evidence of other witnesses. One is staffing attendance patterns and the other is the physical layout of the prison. The layout is modern. The prison is not the old, galleried Victorian type that most of us have come to know and hate. Is it possible for you to divide up those reasons? Are staff patterns the main problem, or is it simply the case that old prisons cannot be run cheaply and that therefore we have got rolling stock, as it were—estates is the word, I think—that makes it impossible ever to do that on a decent value-for-money basis in the public sector? Am I perhaps missing a third factor?

There is no overriding factor that allows us to provide that value for money. Several factors together are responsible. First is the physical layout of the prison—the way that the residential area is connected to the workshops or to the education areas. At Kilmarnock, the house blocks have clear sightlines that make it easy to see what is going on and we have made use of such things as information technology in the building. No matter how much an existing older prison is refurbished, the same degree of efficiency will never be achieved there as in a prison that has been designed around its operation.

By efficiency, do you mean that the layout—sightlines and all that—simply allows you safely to employ far fewer people?

Partly. I was trying to use efficiency in a rather more global sense. Efficiency is more than just staffing—

I am sorry to keep interrupting you. Apart from staff costs, in what way does the layout make a prison cheaper?

The layout does not necessarily make a prison cheaper. Personally, I would prefer to talk about value for money. In a modern prison, the surroundings are more conducive to prisoners. The cell is more modern—it has its own toilet and washbasin and is warm, dry and pleasant. Prisoners feel better about themselves and we must not forget about that in the equation.

I do not want to forget value for money. In a sense, what I have said is still relevant. I want to establish why a prison with a modern layout is cheaper. It might offer better value for money or worse value for money; it might or might not be nicer. Value for money is almost a separate issue, although it is not unimportant.

I want to identify—in pure pounds, shillings and pence—how such a prison is cheaper to run. You have told me about the shape of the building, which means employing fewer staff. How does the shape of the building make it cheaper other than by requiring fewer staff?

That is probably the main element. The shape of the building also allows us to deploy staff in different ways. Staff move with prisoners—we have staff where the prisoners are. For example, when we unlock in the morning, most of our staff are on the landings. When the prisoners go off to work and education, the staff on those landings do not stay there, but move with the prisoners. Therefore, an officer will not work in one location all day long, but will move around the prison.

Forgive my ignorance, but is that to do with what are called attendance patterns and work patterns?

That is right. We create our attendance patterns from the work patterns, which are dictated by the service requirement that is stipulated in the contract. We examine the contract and pull out of it all the things that we must do. Some of those things will be time dependent—for example, unlocking the prisoners, serving them meals and organising their attendance at work or education. Some of those things are not time dependent and can be done at some point during the day. We call that flexible work.

Knowing what work we must do and the number of custody officers that we will need to do it, we start to put together our attendance pattern. Generally, we can be more flexible in the attendance pattern.

Am I right in getting the impression that those things are connected, and that one cannot simply criticise members of the Scottish Prison Service for bad attendance patterns? Is the ability to have such attendance patterns directly connected to the physical layout of a modern building?

It is directly related to the physical layout of the building and to the work that we have to do. I would say that we have an advantage over other prisons in the Scottish prison estate in having a contract that clearly sets out what we are required to do. That makes life easier for us, because we know what we are supposed to do at any point in time. That is important, as is the flexible deployment of staff. Staff move around with the prisoners. We do not have staff working in a fixed area. Staff can do a number of tasks during the day.

The best prisons, even in the old estate in Scotland or anywhere else, will never work efficiently because everything is stacked against them. That is part of what you are saying and I have no doubt that it is true. All prisons can make the best of what they have got, of course, and some prisons in the public service run efficiently and well and have committed staff who work very hard. Some prisons do not work like that, but that is the nature of a big enterprise.

In the private sector, we have the opportunity to start with a clear sheet, to build up from nowhere with an exacting contract, to be imaginative and visionary and to get the best of all that we know and have seen over the years. We do not have a monopoly on expertise. I am now in discussions with the Scottish Prison Service because I know that the SPS and I would both like there to be an exchange of staff between public and private prisons so that we can benefit from each other's experience and expertise. It is an evolving thing, but we are in a privileged and lucky position as a new contractor with a clear sheet.

The witnesses from the Scottish Prison Service said that one of their problems was escort duty. They said that prison staff are constantly taken off other duties because the courts demand that prisoners be delivered. By definition, one cannot take prison officers off security duties, so they are taken off education duties and programmes are therefore affected. Do you have that problem?

Not particularly. We have a number of people who are available to do escorting duties. That means that we can do those duties without shutting down the regime. The regime carries on. However, we have difficulties because the escort requirement is not constant, but comes in peaks and troughs. That is where we make use of the flexible work that we do under the contract—work that can be done at any time, either on that day or during that week. When we have a high requirement for escorts, we cross-deploy some of those officers from the work that they were doing to escorting. Similarly, when we have a low requirement for escorts, we can cross-deploy those custody officers who are there on that day to do escorting to other duties. That is how we cope.

Thank you. We have spent longer than we meant to on asking you questions, but I do not apologise for that because it has been very worth while.

We would be delighted to come again if you would like us to.