UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 520-ix

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

THE NORTHERN IRELAND PRISON SERVICE

Wednesday 24 October 2007

MR ROBIN MASEFIELD, MR MAX MURRAY and MR MARK McGUCKIN

Evidence heard in Public Questions 622 - 677

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 24 October 2007

Members present

Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair

Mr David Anderson

Mr Gregory Campbell

Rosie Cooper

Lady Hermon

Dr Alasdair McDonnell

Stephen Pound

Sammy Wilson

________________

Memorandum submitted by Northern Ireland Prison Service

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Robin Masefield, Director General, Mr Max Murray, Deputy Director, Head of Operations, and Mr Mark McGuckin, Deputy Director, Finance and Personnel, Northern Ireland Prison Service, gave evidence.

Q622 Chairman: Good afternoon, Mr Masefield. Could I welcome you and your colleagues. We have met you all before and we are delighted to see you again, and thank you very much for the assistance which you and your department have given to the Committee in this inquiry into the Prison Service in Northern Ireland. Thank you, too, for seeing the Committee informally last week when we were in Belfast briefly. It was very helpful to have that conversation with you. Mr Murray and Mr McGuckin, you are both very, very welcome. Is there anything you would like to say by way of introduction before I begin questioning?

Mr Masefield: I am conscious, Sir Patrick, that there may be a number of divisions and so we will try to keep our answers very short. If I could just say three things very briefly. We are very grateful to the Committee and all the Members for the time and the commitment they have given to his important study. I think we have an excellent top team across the service at the moment and I will try to bring my colleagues in as is certainly appropriate. Thirdly, I was very struck by the fact that since the Committee started its work in March I think quite a lot has happened in terms of the service, a number of developments in terms of the women moving back in, for example. I have the new accommodation in Magilligan available for usage. We have implemented the pay and efficiency package. We have put out a number of policies for consultation in terms of child protection and the family strategy is coming shortly. There is the healthcare transfer in train, and of course it is not just in the Northern Ireland Prison Service context that it is continually evolving. I was struck too only today that, as you are no doubt aware, Anne Owers has published a very important report on mental health, which is clearly something we will need to have regard to as well in moving forward.

Q623 Chairman: Of course. Thank you very much indeed. We greatly appreciate the opportunity of looking at the prisons under your care and we hope to be in a position to report certainly well before the end of the year, but it will be a little later than we indicated last week because our final session with the Minister has, for reasons completely beyond his and our control, had to be postponed until 21 November because of his commitments in Northern Ireland. So we will be having our final session with him on 21 November and I hope we will then be reporting to the House well before Christmas, but it will probably be just into December. Obviously, you will be kept fully informed. What progress has been made on the options appraisal and when do you expect to present this and your recommendations to the Minister?

Mr Masefield: Very steady progress, Sir Patrick. There is a lot of work involved. There are two main planks in particular. One was work which was done both with the Strategic Investment Board and an external American consultant from Carter Goble Lee, which was a very helpful benchmarking of our approach to design but also to the usage of prisons and the regimes, both benchmarking in other jurisdictions in the British Isles and indeed more widely. Secondly, we have done a lot of work ourselves to winnow down a wide range of options, including of course continuing with the rebuild at Magilligan and also potentially bringing in the possibility of a third site for adult male prisoners. That work has yet to be finalised. It is making steady progress and with the slight deferral, for reasons, as you say, outside your control, of the Minister's evidence to 21 November, I would very much hope that he will have received a fair amount of documentation before then on this very subject.

Q624 Chairman: Will he have received your absolute recommendations by then, or not?

Mr Masefield: I am very hopeful that he will have done, yes.

Q625 Chairman: Fine. As you know, we were conscious of the fact that if we were to say something about the Magilligan issue, we ought to say it sooner rather than later, and we did send a letter unanimously endorsed by the Committee to the Minister in August. With his full agreement and permission, that correspondence was published and you, of course, have seen it. We were concerned that Magilligan was being ruled out by the adoption of what appeared to be rather rigid criteria. Could you set our minds at rest on that and can you assure us that Magilligan remains an option under consideration?

Mr Masefield: Yes, I can, Sir Patrick. First of all, the Minister's response was brief in terms of putting something into the public domain at the time you published your letter. You did make clear that in reaching the final decision he would very much want to take account of the Committee's recommendations, and he is firmly on the record in that regard. In terms of the criteria which we presented to you earlier in July, we had indeed identified a range of criteria at that stage in the draft document. From the operational perspective, the requirement was that it should be within a 30 mile radius of Belfast. That is very simply for a number of reasons. Clearly, if it is to serve the courts we need to be able to unlock the prisoners, feed them and get them out at a time to avoid keeping the judiciary waiting, and that places a premium on a location which is fairly convenient to Belfast. There are also other issues to do with the proximity of family contacts working out. However, I would make clear that that criterion does not apply in the same way if it is not a remand facility, and of course Magilligan has never been a remand facility in that regard so it does not directly bite to that extent on the future of Magilligan as a custodial prison for sentence prisoners.

Q626 Chairman: You will, of course, have seen the Committee's comments that to develop that site could be cost-effective and also phased over a period, and you would presumably concede that those are valid observations?

Mr Masefield: Certainly on the question of costs, that is something we are looking at at this stage, which is in effect a strategic business case. There is a number of phases that one would need to go through in line with ODC procedures. The next one thereafter would be an outline business case when we get a better handle on the precise costs and weighing up those options, but certainly that is likely to be a factor, absolutely.

Q627 Chairman: And the phasing, of course, is very valid.

Mr Masefield: It has attraction as well in terms of trying to meet, as best we can, the prisoner population, which we anticipate will continue increasing, albeit inevitably at a slightly hard to predict rate.

Chairman: Of course. Perhaps I can pass over to my colleague, Gregory Campbell, who has a certain interest to declare in this matter!

Q628 Mr Campbell: Thank you, Chairman. Just on the phasing, Mr Masefield, if costing was a huge factor, which one would assume it would be, and phasing was an option, does that not virtually of the essence take it to Magilligan only?

Mr Masefield: It would certainly be a very relevant factor, if I can put it in those terms. In terms of the context of the costing, clearly the acquisition of a site would be an important other element if we were to look for another location, and that would be likely to be, but not inevitably, a significant additional expense. You are absolutely right. The other factor is, however, trying to get a handle on the phasing and the population demand as it will increase. I am very conscious that even if one looks with improved approaches to procurement, improved methods of construction, and certainly anticipating an element of private sector involvement in the construction phase, most of that work is likely to come outside the current Comprehensive Spending Review period, in other words the principal funding would be needed more than three years from now. So that is a factor which will need to play into the costing in the longer term.

Q629 Mr Campbell: The Life Sentence Review Commissioners are concerned about life sentence prisoners and the regime as it affects them. How do you see the impinging upon any recommendation you would make to the Minister in the next few weeks?

Mr Masefield: It certainly could have a relevance. We conducted a very thorough internal review of life sentence prisoners under Max Murray's leadership about two years ago. It was, I think, published and one of the things we identified clearly there, I think best practice in line with approaches in England and Wales, is that there are really three stages in the life sentence prisoner's life, as it were. The first period, which perhaps is around the first five years, is when they are coming to terms with the sentence. There is then the latter period in the run-up to the tariff, maybe three years or so, up to the final period when one is looking to assist really to have the individual returned to the community, working out schemes and other programmes, and making sure those are completed. Then there is a period in the middle of the sentence and what we are doing at the moment is seeking to make greater usage of two houses in the Maghaberry site, which I think the Committee saw in Mourne House, both Wilson and Martin. We now have 32 life sentence prisoners in there and that is working, I think, very effectively. One of the things we have been doing very carefully - and I touched on this briefly, I think, in formal evidence earlier this month - is whether there is a sufficient critical mass of life sentence prisoners we could identify at perhaps that second stage of the sentence journey who would be appropriate for going to Magilligan, and that will play a part in the consideration of the wider options to which you have referred. I do not know whether Max would like to add anything to that.

Mr Murray: No. The work is ongoing as we speak. We have 173 lifers presently in the Northern Ireland system, which is quite a significant increase. When you take out the ones who are already in accommodation in Wilson House and Martin House, those who are held by mental health orders, those who are down at the Prisoner Assessment Unit in Belfast, those on phase 3 release in the community, it actually reduces the pool who would be available to go to a low risk supervision unit at Magilligan. It leaves a very small pool, but we are looking at that at the moment and certainly there is no reason why lifers could not go and be facilitated in Magilligan. We feel it needs to be a unit as opposed to individuals mixing in the general population in the prison.

Q630 Mr Campbell: Just one final question, on the risk assessment of prisoners. It appears you have had a reclassification, which looks as if it has had a very dramatic effect, particularly on the numbers who are categorised as medium or low risk. Can you explain how that can work?

Mr Masefield: Yes, surely, and I think it is a two part answer. It is yes and no, as it were.

Q631 Mr Campbell: I thought it might be!

Mr Masefield: It was something it was very clear we needed to do on arrival because it was an area that we had not probably paid as much attention to for a number of years as we might and we had a disproportionate bulge in the middle with 90% or so of the prisoners categorised as medium risk, a very small number in this low risk, around 20 or so, and then 150 or so classified as high risk. We have given a lot of thought to that and we worked out our criteria for assessing them and the conclusion we came to comparatively recently, having toyed with the idea of categorising them as high, medium, low, and then we got into low one and low two, was that actually the best thing to do was to broadly fall in line with the England and Wales classification. That has many read-across advantages. So we are introducing the system in the very near future, early in November, based on categories A, B, C and D. The very interesting thing is that that tallies with our own work we have been doing in the lead-up period identifying just over 50% of our prisoners, as it were low on the categorisation we were thinking about, but we will not now introduce those split across the category C/D in the English population. Both of us have about 50% in categories C and D and about 10% in category D, which is basically that you can hold them in open conditions, without a wall, without a fence, because at that stage they are likely to go back into the community and there is no incentive to escape. The category Cs are the biggest single components in England and Wales, over 40%, and they are held in a prison with a fence, or in some cases certainly a wall outside it, but they do not have the concerted intention of escaping and a determination to do that. That would very much tie in with the approach we have. Magilligan is currently a bit on the cusp, it is a category B/C equivalent, and one of the things we will work through in the near future is really identifying the prison population, just the numbers which fall into A, B, C and D, and that will give a better platform for us from which to plan for the future.

Q632 Mr Campbell: You said the C/D was roughly 60%, between C and D?

Mr Masefield: Yes. The aim would be about 10%, which again would roughly correlate with the English experience, and the Bs would be 30 or so therefore.

Mr Campbell: Thank you.

Q633 Lady Hermon: So presumably you would seek the reclassification of the prisoners before you make the decision as to where the new prison should be located? It does impinge, one on the other?

Mr Masefield: No, Lady Hermon. I cannot guarantee that it would be actually completed because what we need to do for every single prisoner in the system, of whom there are 1505 today, is to work through precisely where they are, but we have already done the work to give ourselves a very clear field for the overall proportions as we go forward.

Q634 Chairman: Can you give the Committee any indication as to whether you are thinking of a third site?

Mr Masefield: We have, I think, made five assessments on different bases of the potential projected prisoner population in about 15 years' time, around the 2020/2022 mark, and in all of those we now think that the total population will be of the order of 2,500 or maybe one or two hundred above that, of whom perhaps about 100 or 150 by that stage might have come through from the public protection sentences which we are anticipating will be introduced through the sentencing framework review in the Criminal Justice Order. Again, the majority of those will be adult male prisoners and given both the long lead time for planning, getting planning permission and working through actually having the prison, as it were, completed, especially if it were to be a new site, which is probably a minimum of seven to eight years from decision, it feels to us that there is probably a case at this stage for at least trying to get some clarity on whether it is likely that we will require a third adult male prison around that time. But potentially we do not need to make a final decision on that for perhaps two or three years.

Sammy Wilson: What are those figures based on that jump from 1800 at present, or 1700 at present -

Q635 Chairman: 1500 at present, surely?

Mr Masefield: 1505 at the moment, yes.

Q636 Sammy Wilson: So a 400% increase?

Mr Masefield: It is a variety of factors. Quite largely, of course, it is based on the analysis of the numbers that we imprison in Northern Ireland compared with England, Wales and Scotland. Our current proportion is 82 out of 100,000 of the population. In Wales it is over 148 and in Scotland it is 140 or so. Both of them are projecting significant increases, I think the English going up to 161, which is the figure in about five years. They are anticipating they will need another 10,000 places in England. Where does it come from? It is a variety of features. It is clearly the changes in the legislation, it is the sentencing patterns of the judiciary, it is a reflection of society and it is aspects such as drugs becoming more prevalent. I think there is a wide range of factors which are potentially pointers towards that outcome. It is not something necessarily we would wish, to broaden our client base, as it were, and clearly it carries major financial and economic consequences, but equally we have to plan ahead and make sure that accommodation is available when it is required.

Q637 Chairman: At a time when people are thinking more and more of alternatives to prison, it is a fairly alarming prediction and I think the Committee will want to reflect very carefully on what you have said. Could I move you on to the question of women, because there are various subjects which have come up repeatedly in our inquiry, in our visits and in both our formal and informal evidence sessions. One of them has been the issue of Magilligan, of course, and the prison estate, and we have touched on that and perhaps we will return to it later. The other has been women. Last week, after we had seen you, the Committee went to the Republic and we went to Dublin first and we went to the Dochas Centre. Are you familiar with that?

Mr Masefield: Yes, Max and myself have been there.

Q638 Chairman: We were very, very impressed by the regime, the facilities, really everything about it. Would you agree with us that we were right to be impressed?

Mr Masefield: I would, Sir Patrick. We, too, were impressed on our visit and I am glad to report that further arrangements are being taken forward in two regards. One is to set up - and I think it is an informal team - a twinning arrangement, as it were, between Hydebank Wood, the women's prison facility there, and the Dochas Centre, which I think is excellent. We have had the Governor up from Dochas and we spent a day in Hydebank Wood, and already there are opportunities for staff secondment. Isobel Miller, the Governor in Hydebank Wood, has been down to the Dochas Centre since then. We are looking, for example, at chairing gender-specific training, which will play directly into the regime, and there are one or two developments we have in hand which similarly they might find it valuable to look at, so we are certainly looking to build on that.

Q639 Chairman: We were impressed by Ash House as a place and the actual physical facilities within it, but there has been repeated concern expressed to this Committee on its sharing a site with the young offenders. We would like your views on whether or not you feel that women can be adequately housed with the quality of housing at Ash House but physically separated by a wall or some other means, or whether to give them that quality they need to be moved to another site. What are your thoughts on that?

Mr Masefield: A number, if I may. First of all, I do not think any of us would regard Ash House as the ideal long-term location for the women prisoners and we are on the record, certainly as the top management team in the Prison Service, as saying that. On the other hand, there are issues here and we had a very interesting visit from Mike Hewitt, who is my opposite number in the Scottish Prison Service, again earlier this months, I think. He has, if you like, the opposite problem, he was confiding in us. He has one big prison, Cornton Vale, with 600 women inmates. It has developed much in recent years, and again we would have some links with them and we will be making further visits to look at that in addition, but he has the issue that that is too far for many of his clients and visitors and he is now wondering whether perhaps an approach which allows for a degree of smaller women's centres spread more widely across different parts of Scotland might be an approach. It is too early to see whether that will lead him down the road towards co-location, but it is an interesting approach towards a challenge of a slightly different sort. In terms of the short-term, we are doing what we can with Governor Tracy and his colleagues. There is a number of steps there to give the women a greater degree of separation than you saw certainly on your earlier visit. But back in Ash House, as you say, physically they are towards one side of the site. On Monday of last week - it is a small point but a significant one - we changed the horticulture facilities around the gardens so that the women now can move unescorted immediately to the garden facility, which is an important opportunity for work and development, immediately adjacent to Ash House. We are now looking at erecting a fence - and this is not a five metre high barbed wire erection, it is something appropriate - that would give them, again, a greater degree of separation, distinctness, and would allow again for a greater freedom of movement from within that area. That potentially would be in place before Christmas. The tender is out and bids have been received to erect their own dedicated reception facility, which would include their own video links and their own drug testing facility, and work has already started - again I have met the contractors on site last week - to create a degree of separation within the healthcare facilities so that the women will have their own side of that. In other words, we are continuing to take a number of practical steps to try to emphasise the differentiation within the prison. Finally, if I may, in the longer term Paul Goggins has also announced that he has commissioned us to take forward a holistic strategy for women by early in the New Year. The target I have set myself is the end of February and Mark Lemon, who is with us today as head of our Operational Policy Branch, is currently charged with leading the development of the strategy. But that, too, will also include an element of an options appraisal in the long-term for the estate because we wish to try to identify at this stage, without getting too far into the detailed costings, what a future development might look like for the women's prison.

Q640 Chairman: Just a final question on the women, if I may. You will have known that we have taken evidence from Baroness Corston and you have doubtless read her report, even though it did not include an appraisal of Northern Ireland, but it did make a number of very relevant observations applicable right across the board. One of her central themes was, of course, that there are too many women in prison and that many could be punished, if they needed to be punished, in a different way from being sent to prison. What is your reaction to that? We have been and seen Hydebank and we have met a number who were there, some of whom were there for offences which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be construed as being a danger to the public. Would you give us your thoughts on that?

Mr Masefield: I will, Sir Patrick. There is a wide range of women inmates at the moment and there is a small but significant number of those who are convicted of murder and who are serving life sentences through to others. I was in Hydebank Wood yesterday and I went to the women's landing. I obviously studiously avoid in my evidence referring to individuals who could be identified, but six women were committed yesterday. The numbers were 46 at lunchtime and 52 in the evening. Three of those were in because of failure to pay part or all of their television licences, one a lady who was just totally distraught, as I know from talking to the reception staff.

Q641 Chairman: This cannot be right.

Mr Masefield: I am afraid I agree with you 100%. That is my personal view. Professionally, I think it is also inappropriate.

Q642 Chairman: What possible service to the community is being served by putting that woman in prison, and what is the cost of putting her in prison? Let us have that on the record.

Mr Masefield: They are both very apposite questions and hard to answer. The first one is, clearly society needs some sanctions for fine defaulters, and because we have tended to adopt the approach in Northern Ireland of the default being a period of custody. We do actually have a significantly higher rate of fines being paid than England and Wales and they have taken steps, I think, to increase the rigour of the process in England and Wales for tackling fine defaults. As to whether there are other means, I know this is something which Paul Goggins is giving personal thought to as a priority and there is a report which we have been contributing to, Max and I, along with the Court Service and others, to look at potential options for really reducing the scope of custody very much as a last measure. But of course all of that would require legislation and it is potentially something which might be more appropriate for the devolved situation, perhaps, when justice and policing are devolved, but that is something that ministers want to take a judgment on and consult with colleagues.

Q643 Chairman: May I just ask what sentence this woman was given yesterday, the television licence defaulter? What was the sentence?

Mr Masefield: I do not know precisely, but that I can say is that of the three individuals who came in yesterday there were all either on seven days or 14 days, and of course with the seven days, with the 50% remission, you will recall that if you come in on the right day of the week you will be out before the weekend. As to what we can do with them, very little other than, we hope, explain the circumstances and assist them. A significant number of their fines are paid during that period, so you might argue that that assists, and then of course the individual is free to go if the fine is paid up. We have tried to put a cost to it in the past and it is quite difficult because in many ways these are staff who you have to have there anyhow to deal with the reception, the residential staff, the feeding and the rest. So financially it is a comparatively small item, but it is hugely striking in the Northern Ireland context that one-third of all our remissions, whether female or male, are fine defaulters.

Chairman: Thank you for putting that on the record. Now can we move to Mr Pound?

Q644 Stephen Pound: Before we move on, some people said to us that you do not have a comparable system of earnings attachments or benefit deductions. For the record, can you just confirm that situation? I appreciate we are moving outside your brief slightly.

Mr Masefield: That is my understanding, and it would require both changes to the legislation, for which the Northern Ireland Office is responsible, but also - I was going to say the DCA, but the Ministry of Justice because of clearly their interest with the Court Service there as well. So it is not something one can tackle very easily, although I know Paul Goggins has been looking at it and is keen that we should move forward.

Q645 Stephen Pound: A logical route would be attachment of earnings or deductions in benefit, surely?

Mr Masefield: It would.

Q646 Stephen Pound: In your introduction you talked about the implementation of the 2006 pay and efficiency deal. In fact, I think you actually said it had been implemented. Can you just flesh it out a little bit more? Has implementation taken place? What are the consequences? What is the current state of play with that, bearing in mind that we had a number of comments when we were talking to various people on the estate about the implications of the pay and efficiency deal?

Mr Masefield: I will invite my colleague Mark to respond first on that, if I may.

Mr McGuckin: It is fair to say that certainly the first stage of the pay and efficiency package has been implemented. If I could just set that out very, very briefly for you, it is a three year package which involves a 3.5% increase on prison grade salaries in each of the three years, a proportion of which is conditional upon the achievement of the efficiency regime, first of all, and then the maintenance of it. It is also linked into regime developments as well. A critical portion of the package was the up-front delivery of 10% efficiencies in the system, in the number of staff we use and employed on a daily basis. That was the equivalent of taking 150 staff out of our system. That happened and was implemented in April this year and that paved the way for the pay award which then took place. The second and third parts of the efficiencies are really around the introduction of new types of staff, primarily the operational support grade, and we have reached agreement with the POA on the terms and conditions for that new grade for the rules and responsibilities they will carry out. We are shortly going to recruit them and they will replace prison officers in appropriate areas as they move on over the next two years. We are extremely aware of some of the concerns which have been expressed as part of the implementation of the review. If I can put that into context for you as well, taking 150 people out of an existing system and maintaining the same level of work but also introducing some regime enhancements, for example moving meal times to a more appropriate time in Maghaberry, where the majority of males are housed, and extending the periods of unlock during the day would put additional pressures on the existing staff. Taking the efficiencies out of that as well obviously increases the amount of pressure. So there is a need, in order to develop more efficiency, to have more efficient levels of attendance, more appropriate ways of actually delivering things on landings, in workshops and within the prison generally and these create pressures on individuals. So there is a new way of working and there is a new approach actually required in order to deliver against those. In addition to that, we have to have the shift patterns as efficient as we possibly can. Through custom and practice for a period of ten years or so, prison officers have enjoyed basically a four day week in the Northern Ireland system, so we work a 38.5 hour week but spread over four days. There are inherent inefficiencies built into that and if we are going to maximise the efficiency of the service we need to get towards what we call best practice shift patterns and they are primarily around a five day week. We recognised, of course, at the outset that this was a big step for many staff to take and we accepted a position where we would this time round go for a four and a half day week. What that actually means is that instead of each officer getting three rest days every week, on average they get two and a half every week. There were difficulties with that. There were difficulties in terms of some staff accepting it. There were some difficulties for individual members of staff who may well have had some child care arrangements which have had to be made and there was not an awful lot of time, by the time shift patterns were agreed, for everyone to make those new arrangements and to feed the pattern in. All of that fed into a degree of dissatisfaction in two of the establishments. We have worked extremely closely, Max and myself in particular, with the local management teams and with the local POA committees in both those establishments and we have got to a situation where there are agreed shift patterns in place which have been agreed with the local POA. Some members of staff still do not particularly like them and still want to go back to having a four day week where they are in control more of time off. Unfortunately, when we are providing a public service we need to move towards being as efficient as we possibly can.

Q647 Stephen Pound: A lot of what you have said would, I think, come under the heading of best practice and I am aware of the work you have been doing there. In terms of the structural changes, are you saying phase one is implemented, phase two is being implemented and phase three is to be implemented?

Mr McGuckin: Yes.

Q648 Stephen Pound: Have you got a timetable for phase two?

Mr McGuckin: It is over the three year period. The pay and efficiency package is over a three year period with pay awards in each of the three years. The actual implementation of phase two, of bringing in the operational support grades, will be as we require them. We will not be making prison officers redundant in order to replace them with operational support grades. There will be natural wastage, there will people who will reach retirement age, who will be medically retired, and so on, and we will replace those. In addition, because of the population pressures - and Robin has already mentioned our building programme - we are putting in place more accommodation currently in order to meet the increased population. Additional staffing resources have been identified for that accommodation as it comes on-stream. So the operational support grade will be used to release officers from the backroom jobs, if you like, and move them up to the front line in that new accommodation.

Q649 Stephen Pound: In connection with the OSGs, we had evidence at one stage that there was an amount of rigidity within the classifications within the OSGs. I think there were three categories. How has implementation of that aspect been?

Mr McGuckin: We have grades at Operational Support grade. The first to be introduced actually was the Night Custody Officer. The second was the Prison Custody Officer. Night Custody Officers undertake all the duties in the evening after lock-up and they perform a valid function but a very specific function in the evening in terms that they have very little interaction, obviously, with prisoners except where you have got extreme cases where unlocks are required, prisoners at risk, and so on, and they operate during the hours of lock-up at night. The Prison Custody Officers operate outside the prison. They perform primarily the court escorting function.

Q650 Stephen Pound: I am sorry to interrupt, but is that the same as the Court Custody Service?

Mr McGuckin: Yes.

Q651 Stephen Pound: We use the words "Prison Escorting and Court Custody Service". Are we talking about the same thing?

Mr McGuckin: Yes, we are. So they operate outside the prison, they operate largely on a Monday to Friday basis. They operate largely during the day. They have a very specific function in terms of escorting prisoners, providing them to the court, making sure that they are properly bailed and that those who are received in are properly received in. The third group of staff is our Operational Support grade and that is the new one that we are introducing. It will work during the day time largely, day time and evening, performing security roles and so on within the prison establishment itself, so that is quite a specific function. The reason why we have got the three different groups is actually in the efficiency and effectiveness and the different roles and responsibilities which they each have. Going back 10, 12 years, when we had main grade officers performing all these functions, we used to have a system where they were entirely interchangeable, so any officer could be required to do any of those duties. It was inefficient and in effective and people were not necessarily fully skilled to do all the work. In particular, when you had Night Custody Officers, officers doing night guard, they used to do a period of, say, seven nights. That took them off the landings for 14 days, by the time you did your nights and got your rest days added into that. So you were actually away from the landings, you were away from interacting with the prisoners you were supposed to be with for that period of time, so it became more efficient and more effective to actually have a separate group of prison officers doing that. Similarly, with escorting it became more efficient and more effective to run that as a separate group of staff. Out of those different roles and responsibilities and the effectiveness of deployment, we have actually identified the need for three groups of staff. If we had graded them all exactly the same, you would still have identified three groups of staff with three separate sets of responsibilities that they would undertake.

Q652 Stephen Pound: So were night guards on enhanced rate and with lieu days?

Mr McGuckin: No, there are three salary rates and night guards actually fall in the middle probably in relation to that. Their compensation is based on the artificial hours that they work. They work one weekend on, one weekend off, they work Bank Holidays.

Q653 Stephen Pound: But it is an enhanced hourly rate?

Mr McGuckin: It is, yes. It is 50 pence an hour, something like that.

Mr Masefield: We could write to the Committee with further details.

Chairman: Yes. I think we are in danger of going into too much detail.

Stephen Pound: I was going to ask you what steps you are taking to reduce the cost per prisoner, but I rather suspect you have answered that. Thank you, Chairman.

Q654 Sammy Wilson: You indicated earlier that you were going to reclassify prisoners and as a result of that - you did not give us the exact figures but about 50% at least would then become prisoners who are classified as low risk. Does that have implications for staffing and is that an additional source of efficiencies, or if there are efficiencies there has that been built into efficiency savings you have already mentioned to us so far?

Mr Masefield: It is a good question. If I could just try to clarify one point. We almost felt, I think, that we were falling into a trap ourselves of having around 50% low risk, because we then had to invent a higher type of low risk, if you are with me, which is why, when we actually looked at it again, we said, "Let's go with the English because we know what that is." It is not my preferred approach, let me hasten to add. Just because they do it this side of the water does not mean that it runs in Northern Ireland, so actually I was doing quite a lot to avoid that, but it did seem to be the conclusion which Max and his security advisers came to. I think the category C individual is not quite a low risk, it is really a sort of mixed category, somebody who needs to be behind a fence they cannot get out of and you would have security cameras and you would have a range of other measures which would go along with that. The next question which flows from that is, what are the implications? That is a very good question because that is precisely partly why we are trying to do this. We have had this sort of lump and mass hitherto where it is nearly 90% immediate risk, and that is not good because we want to get through to our staff that actually there are all these individuals, 50%, and they are not high risk, they are not even really medium. These are the understandings about how we deal with them which may have implications, for example, for escorting. Again, a tribute to management in Hydebank Wood Prison. I was discussing with the Governor and his deputy yesterday that about trying to take steps - that is a category C prison principally - to reduce the level of escorting within the prison environment in Hydebank Wood. In the longer term that is exactly right because you can identify a block, perhaps, notwithstanding the complexity of our prison estate, especially as the numbers build up and you say, "That is a category C block," and there is a staffing level that goes with that, "That might be category B," and that might require, say, two extra staff. There might be extra grilles, there might be the need for extra camera coverage, there might be a need for a dog to be on hand when the prisoners are going to workshops if they are category B type. So that is exactly one of the things we are working through as a way of trying to reduce costs.

Q655 Sammy Wilson: Exactly, but that is not built into the efficiencies you have identified so far. Will that be additional to the efficiencies you have identified so far?

Mr Masefield: Yes and no, if I may, because the current accommodation - the Alpha compound which is now available in Magilligan and which we will certainly be filling before Christmas, and then the RTU with these two new excellent state-of-the-art cell blocks which will be available, one in Mourne House and one in Magilligan, before Christmas next year - are certainly designed to have lower staffing levels and be more efficient and that is something about which we have been in long discussion with the Prison Officers Association and local management to make sure there is a wide degree of consensus. So already we are trying to get the impact of some staffing efficiencies and that will be built in. Can I just add a point which Mark was making, which I think it is valuable to report? The Pay Review Body is also doing an annual inspection and review and it will be coming in to check that we are delivering those efficiencies year on year, so that is something it will be looking at as well.

Chairman: Thank you. Before we move on to healthcare, I think Lady Hermon had a quick question.

Q656 Lady Hermon: Yes, a quick question. Can I just ask you about staff morale? You were actually talking about Hydebank Wood and I know and I know the Committee will know that there has been a very critical recent report by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission on women's prisons. What effect does that have on staff morale and what effect have the efficiencies had on staff morale, prison officers' morale? There are two issues there.

Mr Masefield: I will respond first, if I may, and then perhaps Max. I do not know. At one level we welcome external scrutiny. The Prison Service has traditionally been, I think, largely turned in on itself because of all the pressures that we have been familiar with in recent years. It is one of the things we have tried to do and with my other colleague, who is Brian McEvoy, we work closely with the media to try to achieve greater transparency. I think we are having some success in opening that up. But also concomitant with that is an ever-increasing number of bodies - and I hasten to add the Select Committee would never be in that grouping - who have the role, the right in some cases, or who give themselves that function of coming in and telling us, frankly, how we might do our own jobs better. That is, on the one hand, good for us. On the other hand, yes, it can get a little bit dispiriting because the huge majority of our staff are very impressive and they do their level best. They work very hard and I think you will have got a flavour of that from your tour of Hydebank Wood and Ash House, predominantly with their female staff. I take my hat off to them, from the governor down. I think they work very strongly and they have really created a very improved ethos over, if you look back, a number of years now. When you get the knocking, as they might perceive it, it is critical. On the other hand, it is a balance to be struck. I was skimming through Anne Owers's report on mental health and for all the efforts which have been put in the English Prison Service over the last five years since they have transferred, she is making clear that there is a long way to go still, both in women's prisons and elsewhere in the prison estate. So we are always conscious that we do need to keep doing better.

Mr Murray: I was around in the service when we moved the females from Mourne House to Hydebank and that was a difficult decision and a decision which was criticised by a number of scrutiny bodies at the time, but a decision was taken in the best interests of the females to move away from the high risk scheme. There is no comparison now between the regime that is available to females and that which was previously available in Mourne House. It is of concern that we do get reports such as that to which you have referred, which is highly critical of staff, because they have put a tremendous effort into moving the regime forward at Hydebank Wood with the management staff and a significant investment in time, a significant investment in the Prison Service, a significant investment in training, forming links with outside bodies, bringing external people in to work with us where we did not necessarily possess the skills ourselves, employing a governor for over a year from England who had particular expertise in working with females. We have done all that, and yet this year again we do not seem to get credit for the significant progress which has been made.

Chairman: I hope if we make any criticisms they will be very constructive. I want to move on to healthcare and bring in Rosie Cooper.

Lady Hermon: I would like to add a postscript to that. Having been with the Committee to visit Hydebank Wood, I was taken aback by the level of criticism by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. I did not think it was at all fair. That is just a personal postscript.

Q657 Chairman: That is an observation rather than a question, but it is on the record. Before I bring in Rosie Cooper, who sadly could not be with us last week, when we were with you last week the burning topic of conversation in healthcare was when the responsibility was going to be transferred from the Prison Service to the Health Service. We had a meeting with Iris Robinson and her committee and we had quite by chance a brief encounter with the Health Minister, Mr McGimpsey, who did assure us that he welcomed the idea of transfer but there were certain financial considerations, and so on. Has it moved on in the last week since we were there? Where do we stand at the moment and what, very briefly, is your position, for the record?

Mr Masefield: To answer, if I may, Sir Patrick, the last point first, I and my colleagues remain - and I now speak for Philip McClements, our excellent director of healthcare - 100% committed to the transfer. We are absolutely clear that is the right thing to improve healthcare for the prisoners in our care and the partnership arrangement. I regret that I am still not yet in a position to give you the clarity that I would have wished, only to say that it is finalised. However, we did have a number of meetings with a lot of work put into this. Last week in particular we had two meetings with the chief executive of the leading health and social care trust, who is also very fully committed, and I am grateful to him for his input and for his senior staff making efforts, and we identified a way of closing what was perceived to be the financial gap. His position - and I respect it and I know his report today reinforces it - is that there is a need for development in mental health in particular in all categories, adult males, juveniles, young offenders and women too. We now have a number of specific items identified and indeed Anne Owers's report says that there is a need for a fundamental needs assessment of mental health. That is the first step that I am saying I will assist the trust to do this year. Let us crack on with it. So we are very optimistic. I have been in touch also with the Permanent Secretary in the Department of Health and he is very positive, and I am very hopeful that the Minister will be able to find his way to a decision in the very near future.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

Q658 Rosie Cooper: Having heard what you have just said, the transfer is due to take place in April (our document says it is October), and I have heard what you have said about the financial situation, but have you moved on? Are the partnerships you have described starting to be implemented? Where are you now, and what issues have you got? How will you know when you start to really move towards transferring that power?

Mr Masefield: Two or three tangible things have happened already. First and foremost, the budget is transferred, £5.47 million on 1 April, so Mark and I are now a good deal slimmer and hopefully our cost per prisoner place is looking a bit rosier than it was six months ago, but certainly in agreement with the trust and other players we have appointed three healthcare managers. I am delighted to say we had a number of excellent candidates for the three places from within our service. Three were successful. They are in the process of being moved now. I think it is probably right in a small service like ours, where the general approach is on promotion, that individuals should move from their station to one of the other establishments. That is happening at the moment. I am also very pleased to say, although again it would be inappropriate to mention individuals, that the trust has appointed a very well qualified assistant director for prisoner healthcare under their director of adult services. That individual has yet to take up the post. So those elements are firmly in train. We have identified through a number of these meetings, as I was saying, areas where we can take it forward. We have reached agreement on a strategy towards a needs assessment, particularly on the mental health side. We have identified a number of other higher priorities, for example the Reach Unit, which you probably saw in Maghaberry on the July visit, which is a new unit. We had to take the initiative in setting it up ourselves, because at that stage the partnership was not in place, for 20 cells, a number of safer cells for individuals suffering severe personality disorder. We have discussed ways in which that could be supplemented very, very quickly from the resources available to the trust. So I, in working with them, am very clear that there should be a fairly immediate impact from the moment that document is finally signed.

Q659 Rosie Cooper: What more can you do with things like I have just heard you describe, an environment with a purpose for working, things that can make a difference now while all this is going on and you have still got your prisoners and their care to look after, and then mental health? Besides the medical side of that there is that environmental bit that can make their day to day lives and yours so much easier.

Mr Masefield: Absolutely, and I was very struck by a line that Professor Roy McClelland uses, and of course he did a very influential review on us, which says that prison is a toxic environment. I think that is absolutely right.

Q660 Chairman: We did, of course, have his evidence last week and it was very helpful.

Mr Masefield: Good, and I think one thinks particularly of Maghaberry in that context where over 50% of the prisoners (it is 38% across the board in Northern Ireland) are on remand. We cannot, of course, oblige a remand prisoner to go to work or attend education classes, but Maghaberry in particular was built for 450 and there are 845 on the strength of Maghaberry. 345 at the last count were doubled in cells which are amongst the smallest in the estate. We have made steps. We have improved the workshops there and I am delighted, and it is a tribute to the Governor and colleagues in Maghaberry, that we have a more normal working day, but that sadly can only be for a minority number because specifically the workshops are not large enough to cater for others. There is a number of imaginative schemes being taken forward. The Reach Unit has its own garden and that is developing. There is a very good charity workshop element being set up. The education unit is looking to deliver additional classes. We are just taking on board, I am delighted to say, a secondment, a professional further education adviser who will help us to gear up across the estate our education provision. Again, we are in close consultation with DEL and I am meeting the Permanent Secretary in three weeks' time to discuss further how they can assist us to gear up our workshop provision in all three establishments, but it does remain a challenge, particularly as the prison numbers increase.

Chairman: I am just slightly conscious of timing and we will have a division, I think, quite soon. I want us to move on a little bit and David Anderson had a point here and then I want to bring in Lady Harmon on grants.

Q661 Mr Anderson: Sir Robin, there was a question raised last week that while these discussions about the budget are going on there may well be operational problems. For example, we were told that some nurses may be unsupervised because of movement within the organisations. Are there any other issues like that which could create an operational problem until these discussions are concluded, and can you confirm that proportionately the figure per head which is being allocated for the health transfer in Northern Ireland is still a lot higher than that which is available in England and Wales?

Mr Masefield: I can. We are aware of the latest increase and the figures available on the healthcare for prisoners in England and Wales, which of course is partly a function of the increasing numbers, but more significantly that has been boosted in this financial year. We are still something of the order of 40% additionally funded already in Northern Ireland on a year on year straight comparison, so far as one can achieve that. I am concerned about what one might call this interregnum position at the moment. That does carry a degree of risk for myself, and of course the Department of Health and our ministers as well. It is not very satisfactory that it should continue at some uncertainty for any length of time. There is a particular point about the nursing, as you rightly referred to, in that we had an excellent chief nursing adviser who is a professional with forensic qualifications working for us full-time in the Prison Service and we let her go in August with the imminence of the transfer on 1 October. That will be remedied from the Trust from the formal point of implementation, and indeed already we have had informal discussions with the chief executive to ensure that the professional nursing side within the Trust are aware of this.

Q662 Sammy Wilson: Could I just ask, given the fact that prison costs in Northern Ireland are three times more expensive than prison costs in other parts of the United Kingdom, does that 40% really represent an increase over and above what will be paid in England and Wales, or do the prison costs not translate in the healthcare costs in the same way?

Mr Masefield: Yes, is the answer, it is a genuine increase. I shall get into trouble if I seem to take issue with anything you say, but I hope you will allow me to come back on the three times as expensive. We think roughly we are twice as expensive. It is quite interesting that Kit Chivers, the Criminal Justice Inspector, says broadly that from the Treasury's own figures that applies across the criminal justice sector in Northern Ireland. Our cost per prisoner place is roughly of the order of £80,000 a year. The English, when last counted, was about £40,000, but of course that excludes a significant range of costs running into many millions, including healthcare, including education and including certain other services, and you just cannot compare like with like. The English have stopped now publishing a top line figure and it is really impossible to benchmark. I do accept that we have additional costs, certainly, but actually what we are talking about is when we have even done the work and measured how many qualified nurses we would have, say (and many of ours would be registered mental health nurses, which is an excellent strength for us and something we are bringing to the transfer) we would have more nurses than an equivalent establishment in England and Wales. That was carried out several years ago by the Chief Nursing Officer of the Eastern Board, so that again is tested. So we are bringing genuinely a pretty healthy dowry to the transfer.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Q663 Lady Hermon: Just one little point which has always struck me as a curious anomaly. Am I right in my understanding of the situation that while the vast majority of the health budget did in fact move to the Eastern Health Social Services Board on 1 April, there was the anomalous position of the drugs rehabilitation of prisoners which remains with the Prison Service? Why?

Mr Masefield: That, if I may say so, is a judgment call, and it is partly my judgment call. At the moment I think it is right, for two reasons. One is because the Drugs and Addiction Service is probably the area where you get the closest possible interworking, interleaving, between the security and what you might call the rehabilitative element. We are having a project at the moment, which Paul Goggins announced in July, to look at ways of reducing the demand for drugs and the supply of drugs coming into our establishments, and that is always the custodial element. In terms of how we move it forward, we have a full-time and a very well qualified addiction services manager now working for us, who comes to us from a health background. So, if you like, I am getting the best of both worlds and we are reviewing the current provision of services in terms of treatment and looking at the potential for a residential therapeutic community possibly in Magilligan, although we have yet to work through the detail on that. What I am quite keen to do, because we are pretty clear on the direction in which we wish to go, is to take it a stage further forward in close consultation with the Trust and the relevant professionals and then, perhaps in a year or so, review the position and see if we think it would be relevant. I think there is a slight worry, and there is some evidence in England and Wales - not that it would ever happen in Northern Ireland, I hasten to add - that you might have got one or two gung-ho PCT chief executives in English prisons coming in thinking they knew how to run these things and actually finding that there were some challenges. So I am quite keen in areas as important as drugs and addiction services that it is a joint learning process and we will work through it together, because there is also finally the role of the non-statutory sector and they have done extremely well in each of the three prisons and I am keen to ensure that it is managed as effectively as we can with those three participants - that is ourselves, the HPSS and the non-statutory sector.

Lady Hermon: Thank you very much indeed. That is the first time I have had a complete explanation for it.

Chairman: Thank you. I must apologise to Dr McDonnell. I should have called him a little earlier. Would you like to come in now?

Q664 Dr McDonnell: I am sulking, Chairman! I just want to touch on the whole paramilitary separation set up at Maghaberry. Do you think it is operating effectively?

Mr Masefield: Yes. In terms of the numbers and the regime and the role and the professionalism of our staff, I believe it is.

Q665 Dr McDonnell: Has the separation had an impact on the culture of Maghaberry, and how is it impacting on mainstream prisoners?

Mr Masefield: It has inevitably had an impact on the culture, probably particularly on some of our staff. Separation was introduced, of course, following the report by John Steele and colleagues. It came in in March 2004 and interestingly the numbers have been broadly consistent ever since then. There are currently, I think, 35 in Roe House and 30 or so in Bush House. We have tried to operate a policy from the beginning of rotating staff around within Maghaberry so that individuals would have two years, or possibly three years if it suited them, maximum in either Bush or Roe before they moved on to other residential accommodation or alternative place. That inevitably does, because one of the arrangements, the basic approaches towards the management of those particular landings in the Bush and Roe houses, is that there is less prisoner engagement. It operates without the same degree of interaction with the individual prisoners and that, of course, is the antithesis of the direction in which we are trying to take that staff, as Mark was so eloquently saying earlier, which is all about active engagement with prisoners. It does create something of a challenge for us to do that and to meet the statutory obligations on us, for example in relation to the LSRC and the small number of life sentence prisoners we would have there. I do not know whether Max would like to add anything?

Mr Murray: The difficulty with prisoners in Bush and Roe House is that you are not dealing with individuals, you are dealing with groups who owe allegiance to a particular grouping and who act in unison, so where you do have issues, for example in the community, as we did have with the split between the mainstream UDA and South East Antrim, which overflowed into the prison and we had a fracas at the end of August which we had to control. We do not have spare accommodation to take us down the road of the Maze with some factionalisation. That is just not an option. We have accommodation but they are designated as largely Republican and they will have to remain within that accommodation. We have similar concerns within the Republicans, because we have dissident Republicans, both Continuity and the Real IRA, and we have problems there. Only recently we have had staff visited at home by the police to issue threat warnings because they were being targeted by Republicans. That is a throw-back to what would have been happening in the eighties and nineties, and to a degree in 2004, and we thought we had left that behind. That is working against the change agenda that we have set ourselves.

Q666 Dr McDonnell: There is some suggestion that some aspects - and I got a sense of this myself - of the separated regime are over-restrictive and perhaps overmanned and over-security orientated. I could see this as being a throw-back to 25, 30 years ago. Nevertheless, there must be some room to move on there. Another question I wanted to add is, does that in turn create an unnecessary heavy security culture through the prison as a whole?

Mr Masefield: I think on the latter point to an extent, but there are other complexities as well in Maghaberry that tend to point towards that overlay of security. To come back to my favourite example, it is crazy that we have to put fine defaulters, similarly, in our best accommodation in Roe House with the overheads that go with that and all the staffing of that side, because that is where the committal and induction landing is. If I could come in first, and then Max may want to follow. We have made a lot of progress, I think, in the past two years. We have had a review in 2005. We have had a number of meetings with prisoners' representative groups on the outside. We have had a public consultation exercise and a range of developments have taken place in the regime, both relating to them in particular and others, recognising that there is scope for development since 2004. So, for example, there is an educational programme that is tailored to meet the individual needs. It is down to the individuals as to whether they choose to take up that uptake. Frankly, it is not as much as we would like, but there is, head for head, a better educational provision than there would be for many of the other prisoners. We have provided physically second classrooms in both houses so that there are opportunities for hobbies, for art craft in the evenings. They have, of course, their own Astroturf pitches which the other prisoners do not have access to. They have enlarged exercise yards and a dedicated gym. So within the constraints that inevitably apply we think we have got the balance about right.

Mr Murray: When separation was introduced one of the requirements placed on the Prison Service by government was that we would have no return to Maze-type conditions and we all know that in Maze conditions the prisoners virtually ran their own wings and their own territory and had significant control staff who were unable to intervene or to take steps in relation to prisoner management. We know the implication of that in terms of the tone of the Maze with all the implications. Sadly, the Billy Wright inquiry is one that is ongoing. That was a charge placed on the Prison Service. One of the mainstays of the separated regime which is unpopular with prisoners is the need for control of movement and that is to give our staff the confidence by which they can manage and control those wings. So it does mean that there are only three prisoners on the landing at any one time moving to and from activities and recreation areas and within that we have done our utmost to try and free up the regime as much as possible so that we could provide extra association and recreation rooms in the second classroom, in the computer suite, on the Astroturf pitches at the separated gymnasium. We feel that we have made significant progress, particularly following the review of last year, to free the regime up as much as possible, but one of the mainstays remain the control of movement and that, I think, Dr McDonnell, is what you are getting at.

Q667 Dr McDonnell: I got the impression that there was a heavy security culture -

Mr Murray: There is.

Dr McDonnell: -- a heavy control culture, and quite honestly I got the impression that perhaps some people were still fighting the war and that perhaps we could have moved on. I felt that, while I could see the need for some aspects of control, it was overmanned and I felt that we could perhaps take small risks. When you are there on a 24 hour basis you are able to calculate the risk from day to day, and certainly the risk perhaps with dissident Republicans would not have been all that high. The same thing if you have got a high risk with South East Antrim, UDA or a dissident UDA, or whatever. The other thing which was reflected was that as a result of some of those pressures, in turn prisoners down the line felt they were being denied exercise, denied recreation, denied access to some of the training, which was cancelled, and some of that was feeding back and that was all. I just wanted to probe that.

Q668 Chairman: Would you like to comment on that briefly?

Mr Masefield: Yes. I think the last point is a fair one. What you may have been picking up was the time that my colleague was referring to during the summer when there was a number of constraints on us. The time of your visit to Maghaberry was, I think, during the double league season, when we did have some staff shortages on top of the slight difficulties we had in introducing the pay and efficiencies, and there probably were some cuts in the regime, which they are no longer experiencing, and of course in the summer we do give the teachers a break, although we regularly have discussions on whether we can try to keep some educational provision going for the separated prisoners over that period. The other thing I would say is that we do regularly look at it. So, for example, if you go back two or three years an individual might have been subject to three rub-down searches as they move from their cells to association. Now we have said only one, and not more than one, unless there is a good reason. I can give you another example, if I may, just briefly, going back to the women, which again is a development I think the Committee might like to be aware of. Again, we are looking around and we try to take cognisance of good practice elsewhere, and all credit again to my colleague who was over visiting the English Prison Service a couple of weeks ago, and we are now working at the same time as the English, we believe, to look at piloting and arrangement for - I was going to say a less intrusive, but that is not quite the right word, search of the women. This only applies to the women prisoners at Hydebank Wood, but we are very conscious from reports of Anne Owers, and many others, of the degree of physical intrusion which can be perceived by a woman, especially one coming first into prison. So we are piloting an arrangement, planning to in the near future, that would not require the total removal of all underwear. It is a small point, but again it is a demonstration that we are trying in many ways across the small service to reach a balance and move forward where we can.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Q669 Sammy Wilson: Hopefully not, but should the South Antrim mainstream UDA issue take off and a lot of people are put into prison as a result of that, although that has not happened so far because most of them got bail, oddly enough, what are the implications for the service, especially if you get a situation where there is a huge imbalance between, say, one faction or the other? What are the implications for what will happen in separated wings then?

Mr Masefield: This is something we keep under close review. To answer it a number of ways, clearly risk assessment is an important part of managing any prison, in particular the separated side of it, and it is something about which Max chairs a regular meeting with the Governor, which I attend and our senior managers, to make sure that we understand and that we are in touch with the Police and other sources of professional advice on that at one level. The second level is that we have certain reactions we can take. Of course, sadly, following the fracas at the end of August that Max referred to, there was a restriction placed on the regime and we reverted to the normal regime on a phased basis over a number of weeks, and I am happy to report that now things are back to the pre-29 August state that they were. In terms of answering your specific question, I think I would go not much further than to say that clearly Maghaberry suffers from a degree of complexity, as you know. Clearly, one of the attractions of moving to a further new site, whether it be Magilligan or elsewhere, with an appropriate classification is to give us the option of being able to disperse prisoners (the term used in the English context) at the high security unit. I am not pre-judging the separated prisoners in that element, but at the moment, as you well know, Maghaberry is the only place where we can hold people in terms of category B or A that we were discussing earlier and that is an additional challenge for us as managers. I do not know whether Max would like to add anything?

Mr Murray: No, that sums it up. It is going to be very difficult for us, and that is one of the messages that we have been putting out through prisoner representatives, who we are in touch with, to say that there are limitations on what the Prison Service can do. We do not have additional accommodation for sub-factionalised groups, never mind for different factions, so it is a problem. If there is a major unrest in Bush House, the operational response will be broadly similar to the end of August, where we had to have a lock-down, further control of movement, the exact opposite of what we want to be doing, but unfortunately that is what we would probably have to do.

Q670 Lady Hermon: Following on from Sammy Wilson's point, were there any repercussions within the Prison Service, particularly in terms of the grouping of the UDA following the very wise decision by the Minister for the Department of Social Development in the Assembly last Tuesday, whereby she decided to stop the funding, the order by the previous Secretary of State, the £1.2 million? Were there repercussions within the prisons or not?

Mr Masefield: In terms of the arrangements strictly within the prison at Maghaberry and the regime being run, no, there were not and thus far we have been able to restore the regime two days ago to the full level. So, for example, certain services are now being opened up to both landings on the Sunday, which I think is a positive development and something we would want to get back to, but we will keep very close monitoring of it.

Q671 Lady Hermon: Were you pleasantly surprised by that reaction in the prisons?

Mr Murray: Much of it depends on when you are actually outside. What happens is that it tends to rebound on the inside and I think there was a reasonably calm response to it on the outside and that was reflected on the inside.

Lady Hermon: Thank you. That is very interesting.

Q672 Chairman: Can we move on to the final section? Kit Chivers, when he gave evidence, expressed the hope that separation would come to an end as soon as political circumstances allowed. Do I infer from your answers that you are at one with him on that, or do you believe that it will be necessary for rather longer?

Mr Masefield: In terms of our stated position, we are of the view that integration is to be preferred in terms of managing a prison establishment, in terms of providing that dynamic security, that active interaction between prisoners and individual officers. We have stated that firmly on the record in the document which we published in relation to individuals before they go into separated accommodation. So we see it as an appropriate response to the particular conditions. In terms of the longer term, I think really it is for us as professionals managing the service to say we stand ready to maintain the separated regime as long as it is required more widely by government.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Could I bring into the final section David Anderson.

Q673 Mr Anderson: The report for the CJI has criticised the quality and quantity of education and educational work within the Northern Ireland prisons. We have seen examples in Northern Ireland and across the border in the Republic last week of some really inventive and innovative work which we thought was excellent. What is your response to those criticisms?

Mr Masefield: I think you have obviously, in a way, answered the question. I think it is like a curate's egg. I pay tribute to the education staff and the workshop staff. I think it is true to say that we have traditionally followed a certain model of largely having the staff internally from within the organisation and one of the discussions I have with Paul Goggins from time to time is whether we should not be looking to move towards a different model based more on the England and Wales one. It is a term which some trade unionists have difficulty with, I know, but in a different context, of outsourcing and one of the good examples of good practice is in Magilligan with the use of the (formerly Mevaden Abbey) North West College providing us with essential literacy and numeracy skills, and we have had over 500 certificates.

Q674 Chairman: We thought that was very good.

Mr Masefield: Yes. Thank you. There is opportunity, undoubtedly, to move further and one of the areas I want to look at is in the context of Hydebank Wood and I am delighted that we are going to be getting a professional educational individual on secondment with experience of further education sector, both to bridge the gap between what we are doing in the establishment and then that transition through to further education and opportunities on the outside. I think there is undoubtedly scope to do more work, for example, with juveniles probably in Hydebank Wood, bringing that up as a factor in education specifically. In terms of wider workshops, a tribute to my colleagues on resettlement, they have driven that agenda forward. Again, we are in discussions with DEL on the scope for that. We have had a number of initiatives. We have set out our stall with business and the community and they have been very helpfully working with us. One of my non-executive directors has set up a group there to help us try to find specific jobs and get commitment from up to 100 external employers to say that they will be willing to take on individual prisoners on release, and that is already an initiative that is bearing fruit. One is stuck to an extent with the infrastructure and I do think, very interestingly - and you saw for yourselves in Magilligan - much good work is done but it is a collection of outdated Nissen huts. As Anne Owers put it, very articulately - and I am afraid I cannot find precisely the right wording for the context but basically she said the built environment is the key to unlocking the potential of the prison and the staff. It is replacing, renewing that built environment which I think will of itself go quite a long way towards reinvigorating -

Chairman: The quality of what we saw at Magilligan in terms of tuition, instruction, notwithstanding the appalling buildings, was very high and what was very noticeable was that morale among the staff and among the prisoners was commensurately high. I think that is something we all felt and although you talk about it being a curate's egg, and of course it is, your counterparts in the Republic made it quite plain that we were seeing the best of what they had to offer - quite rightly, we wanted to see the best - and that they also had a curate's egg. He did not put it, being a good Roman Catholic, in quite those terms, of course! We are very conscious of the fact that you need to do something with Magilligan, but what you must not do is lose the quality you have got already.

Q675 Mr Anderson: Is there an issue about how you square the circle of improving the provision within the built environment, what you have to pay for and the desire to reduce cost, because in some ways from a purely amateur point of view it would cost you a whole lot less to bang somebody up for 23 hours a day than let them out?

Mr Masefield: I agree with that entirely, I cannot resist, and I have discussions off the record with my colleague Phil Wheatley from time to time about when you are facing significant constraints on financial terms one of the issues you have to address is the scope of the budget and the regime, therefore, and what you can manage to provide. Resettlement was until fairly recently, I think, a bit of a Cinderella in the Northern Ireland Prison Service and we have identified, with some success up to now, ways of finding additional funding for it. We are just working that through in Hydebank Wood now. By "resettlement" I would tend to incorporate all those purposeful activities that we are discussing. But it is vitally important, I think, that we manage to keep the focus on it and make sure that we do move that forward. That is again partly about the active engagement we have talked about, that whole approach from officers. It is sometimes quite frustrating when you get a small crowd who are very enthusiastic, wholly committed and very keen to work - and the family office is a very good example of that - and many do extremely well in the residential context but do not always seem terribly interested in coming forward and bridging that divide and helping to get involved, perhaps, in the programme-type work, say, addressing offending behaviour or addiction services and some of those other things which can critically play into resettlement and help supplement the more specific programmes of the teaching and workshop type that we have discussed.

Chairman: May I just follow up on Mr Anderson's excellent question, because when we went to Hydebank and saw the young offenders we also met with some of the physical education instructors and here you have got young men, full of energy which needs to be properly channelled and directed, and we had there some very enthusiastic instructors, one of whom seemed to have as his mission in life the creation of a swimming pool! I do not regard that as providing luxury for layabouts, I regard it as providing something constructive for young people whom we wish to rehabilitate. Is that your view, and do we have any hopes that you will get it?

Q676 Stephen Pound: With a sledge hammer, I would have thought!

Mr Masefield: I assume we would probably have to say in the context of the immediate future of Hydebank Wood and the other pressures on funding, many of which we have discussed this morning, it is probably comparatively low down on the list of corporate priority. But it is clearly a serious point and both the old juvenile justice centre and now the Woodlands facility have swimming pools for a smaller clientele than Hydebank Wood. There is a role for that. I would not deny that.

Mr Murray: Can I just say that I agree with you, Sir Patrick. One of the big issues for us as the Prison Service is this issue about providing for public protection and changing the mentality. That is purely about addressing issues around the security of prisoners. This is about getting behind prisoners' offending behaviour and looking to see what the causes of that offending are and doing something about it. I understand where the CJMA criticism comes from and we can and will do better than we do presently in terms of volume throughput, but certainly as compared with locking prisoners behind the door and depriving them of the regime, taking away their dignity, not letting them achieve while they are in custody, not dealing with their issues around addictions, family issues, children issues, literacy, numeracy, et cetera, that is not an option for us as a Prison Service. We cannot meet our public protection obligations -

Chairman: That is very reassuring.

Q677 Lady Hermon: There is a topic which we have not actually touched on today and that is attacks on prison staff. My question was prompted by a headline in the Daily Mail this week, where I understand the Prison Officers' Association (in England and Wales, I have to say) have asked for permission to consider using batons in prison on people as young as 15. Would you like to confirm to the Committee that in fact the Prison Service in Northern Ireland have no plan at all to introduce batons? Leading on from that, would you also give the Committee some indication of the extent of attacks on prison staff? Is it increasing, is it steady and is it the main worry for our prison staff?

Mr Masefield: In general terms, yes, we can give you that assurance that we do not intend to go down that road. It was something we had a discussion on only a few days ago following the English announcement. We do not have anything like, certainly anecdotally, the degree of pressure. I am an avid reader, Lady Hermon, you may find this hard to believe, of Gatelodge, which is the PRA magazine. I always get it given to me when I go through the tiny lodge at Magilligan and actually is quite striking that since I have returned to this job area three years ago there has been a disproportionate number of articles in Gatelodge about concerns of attacks on staff and young offenders and elsewhere in the English estate. We do not have that issue. Both services share it as one of our targets, our KPRs (key performance measures), that we keep an eye on and we are well below the target year on year. You rightly referred to the potential volatility and the energy of young men and currently I should also say we had nearly 100, again male young offenders, doubled up. The cells were a little bit better, but that is a temporary measure because we are refurbishing the final house and then by Christmas they will be back and we should have ended doubling, unless there is an unforeseen increase amongst the young offender population. So it is something we monitor, but I do not think we are as concerned and we do not have as significant an issue as our colleagues in England and Wales.

Mr McGuckin: It is also about training and it is also about how the individual officer interacts with a potentially volatile prisoner or inmate. Part of the training programme that we all go through is about de-escalation techniques, calming techniques, before you actually get into a situation where violence actually occurs. So it is about being able to put in place those sorts of responses to the particular situations that arise.

Lady Hermon: That is very encouraging.

Chairman: We believe that the size of the prison estate in Northern Ireland is such that you could make it the best system in the UK and we very much hope that you will. We appreciate what you have done and what you are seeking to do. I think your philosophy is very much in accord with the Committee's and it was very well put when we were in the Republic last week, that sending to prison is punishment and prisons are not for punishment. I think this emphasis on rehabilitation must be at the very top of your agenda and what you have said this afternoon gives us to hope that it is. We may well want to come back to you with one or two detailed and specific questions of a statistical nature as we are compiling the report. If there are any things which you feel you would like us to take on board which you feel perhaps have not been explored this afternoon, please let our clerk know within the course of the next two weeks and we will then obviously consider those points. I am delighted that our colleagues in the Chamber have been, whether by design or accident, cooperative and we were able to finish this session at four o'clock without interruption. Thank you very, very much indeed, all of you, for coming and we wish you continued success in your endeavours and we wish you a safe journey back.