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

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

THE NORTHERN IRELAND PRISON SERVICE

Wednesday 4 July 2007

MRS JOAN DOHERTY, MR JAMES JOSEPH McALLISTER

and MR CHRISTOPHER "JIMMY" McCLEAN

PROFESSOR MONICA McWILLIAMS, MR EAMONN O'NEILL and DR LINDA MOORE

Evidence heard in Public Questions 382 - 524

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 4 July 2007

Members present

Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair

Mr David Anderson

John Battle

Mr Gregory Campbell

Mr Christopher Fraser

Mr Stephen Hepburn

Mr Denis Murphy

Stephen Pound

Sammy Wilson

________________

Witnesses: Mrs Joan Doherty, Chairman, Mr James Joseph McAllister, Chairman, and Mr Christopher "Jimmy" McClean, Chairman, Independent Monitoring Boards, gave evidence.

Q382 Chairman: Good afternoon. You are very welcome and thank you for coming. Would you like to just introduce yourselves and just tell us a little bit about your respective responsibilities? Are you leading the team, Mr McAllister?

Mr McAllister: I have prepared a brief covering all three Independent Monitoring Boards generally.

Mrs Doherty: My name is Joan Doherty. I am Chair of Magilligan. Magilligan is in the north of Northern Ireland.

Q383 Chairman: Indeed. We have been there, yes.

Mr McAllister: I am James McAllister. I am Chairman of Maghaberry Prison.

Q384 Chairman: Yes. We are coming there next week.

Mr McClean: I am Jimmy McClean, Chairman of Hydebank Wood Prison.

Q385 Chairman: We have been there, yes.

Mr McClean: It is a female prison and a male young offenders' centre.

Q386 Chairman: Yes. We have been to the female prison and we have passed through it but we have not really visited the young offenders. You are most welcome. Over to you, Mr McAllister.

Mr McAllister: If I could begin with our admissions statement, the admissions statement for the Independent Monitoring Board. It is to monitor the quality of prison life by working to ensure fairness and accountability in prison. The members of the Independent Monitoring Boards are appointed by the Secretary of State under the Prison Act (Northern Ireland) 1953. We are volunteers and we are required to visit the prisons regularly, to report on the conditions of imprisonment and the treatment of prisoners, to consider requests and complaints made by prisoners to the Board and report on matters of concern to the governor, or in serious cases to the Secretary of State. On our relationship with the Northern Ireland Prison Service, the Prison Service takes the role of the Independent Monitoring Boards seriously and this is demonstrated not only in the various lines of communication established between the governors and senior management staff within the three establishments but also with the staff of headquarters, the Director-General and the various heads of departments at Dundonald House. In monitoring the prisons each board is required to produce an annual report to the Secretary of State stating their findings and making recommendations in areas of concern. The Director-General, Mr Robin Masefield, soon after the publication of our reports will be invited to our board meetings to respond to those recommendations. I would hope that all Members of this Committee are recipients of the annual reports when they are published. If not, we will ensure that is put right after this meeting. Representatives of the three establishments meet every six to eight weeks to discuss matters of concern common to all three prisons and they also receive an overview from the Prison Service, from the Director of Operations. Our relationship then with the Prisoner Ombudsman is that there is no statutory or formal arrangement setting out the structure or framework for a relationship between the IMBs and the Prisoner Ombudsman. Nevertheless, the two offices share much in common in terms of prisoners' rights, the conditions and regimes to which prisoners and detainees are subjected, and indeed the conditions and practices which have a bearing on those visiting those held in prison. They both do this in part by responding directly to prisoners' complaints. There is at present work ongoing in setting up a protocol on working arrangements between both parties. The Independent Monitoring Boards are supportive in their work by the secretariat housed on the 22nd Floor of Windsor House in Belfast. This service was previously provided by the Northern Ireland Office based at Dundonald House. To coincide with the name change from the Board of Visitors to the Independent Monitoring Board the secretariat service was moved to the office of the Prisoner Ombudsman in order to underline its independence from the Prison Service. Initially, the move worked well. However, over the past year difficulties have arisen in relation to service provision and the independence. There is a perception among prisoners and prison staff alike that the IMB is a branch of the Ombudsman's office. Although there are some similarities in the work of both offices and there is a necessity to work together in areas of mutual concern, it is crucial to the Independent Monitoring Boards that we are not only independent but that we are seen to be independent.

Q387 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Can I just follow up one or two things? First of all, the size of your boards?

Mr McAllister: Maghaberry, being the biggest establishment in the prison estate in Northern Ireland, has an establishment of 20 board members.

Mrs Doherty: I have 18 members.

Mr McClean: Our complement is 15. I have had one deceased member and four new members from January this year.

Q388 Chairman: Thank you. Your members are appointed normally for a three year period?

Mrs Doherty: Yes.

Mr McAllister: Initially for three years, but to serve not more than 12 years.

Q389 Chairman: And attendance is good at the boards, is it?

Mrs Doherty: Yes.

Mr McAllister: Attendance is excellent.

Mr McClean: I am finding difficulty with some younger members who have got a day job to attend. They find it difficult to make the time to attend our monthly meetings.

Q390 Chairman: Is that a serious problem?

Mr McClean: It is early days. It could become a serious problem.

Q391 Chairman: Is that because your board is particularly youthful?

Mr McClean: In the past it tended to be the more senior members of the community, but in the last recruitment we managed to get three younger members in their twenties and thirties. But as I say, they are in the early stages of their careers and they find it difficult to actually get the time off.

Q392 Chairman: Do you have any problems of that sort, either of you?

Mrs Doherty: No. My age range is from 23 upwards to probably 70 and I do not have any problems with attendance.

Mr McAllister: I do believe I am the youngest member of our board, but I have to say the board of Maghaberry attends meetings very regularly.

Q393 Chairman: What is the age range on your board?

Mr McAllister: The age range would be from a young 46 and I think our oldest member is close on 80.

Q394 Chairman: Very good, and do you have a reasonable balance between male and female members of your boards?

Mr McAllister: It is almost 50:50, yes.

Q395 Chairman: Excellent. You have talked about this problem of being perceived to be part of the Ombudsman's outfit because of the shared premises. First of all, are the secretarial facilities that you receive adequate for your needs?

Mr McAllister: We feel at the moment that they are not. We feel that there has been a lessening of the service provision since we moved. Initially, as I said, to coincide with the movement of the name change from the Board of Visitors to the Independent Monitoring Board the initial set-up was excellent, but unfortunately with a change of staff in the Ombudsman's office the service declined. There are constant efforts to try and establish the service level agreement between the two, but I think there is a difficulty there in that initially the Prisoner Ombudsman's workload was high because it was a new office and therefore the secretariat to the Independent Monitoring Boards suffered because staff would have been pulled to work for the Ombudsman.

Q396 Chairman: Do you think this problem is a temporary transitional problem, or do you think that the only sensible solution is for you to have separate premises?

Mr McAllister: Ideally, and for the sake of total independence, we would like complete independence. We would like a separation. However, it is possible that it can be worked out. I say it is possible: we are not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at this moment in time. There is a lot of difficult meetings happening and there is a lot of difficult issues to be solved.

Q397 Chairman: Are they difficulties of administration and personal relationships, or are they just administrative?

Mr McAllister: There is a little of both. Obviously, I would like to be careful in what I say on that, but what we are finding is that the secretariat is not proactive. If I can give you an example, I received an email yesterday afternoon about preparing a briefing for today's meeting. Now, I know that the secretariat received that information on Monday and we are getting it on Tuesday afternoon. Bearing in mind that we are volunteers and bearing in mind that we have other lives - we have our work, our families and other commitments - we need the information up front. We need our secretariat to be proactive.

Q398 Chairman: Of course you do, yes. I rather infer from what you are saying that you feel you are being treated a little bit as the poor relation here?

Mrs Doherty: Yes.

Mr McAllister: Very much so.

Q399 Chairman: It is very good to have that on the record because it is something we would want to take into account. Before I move the questioning on to my colleagues, could you just tell me one other thing? You are volunteers, we know that. You do not receive any payment for what you are doing and therefore you are performing a very valuable public service, for which we are extremely grateful. How much of your time does this take? I know you cannot be exact, but as the three chairmen do you give the equivalent of a day a week to this, or would it be more like two days a month? What are we talking of?

Mr McAllister: I would say in my own case - and I will let the others speak - taking on the role of chair I would be giving maybe two days per week.

Q400 Chairman: Two days a week, and what is your gainful employment?

Mr McAllister: I am a station commander with the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service.

Q401 Chairman: I see, yes. What about you?

Mrs Doherty: I would probably give a day, a day and a half a week. I do have contact with the governor every week, sometimes in the establishment; if not, I phone him. We do have a regular contact because it is important.

Q402 Chairman: Of course it is, yes.

Mrs Doherty: So it would be, since I became Chair, certainly a day, a day and a half a week.

Q403 Chairman: And I think you are a teacher, is that right?

Mrs Doherty: That is right, but I am retired.

Q404 Chairman: You are retired, yes. What about you?

Mr McClean: I would spend, Chairman, between two and three days a week on average. I am retired from my day job, but I am a lay magistrate and I sit on various tribunals.

Q405 Chairman: I see. What was your day job?

Mr McClean: I worked for the Post Office corporation.

Q406 Chairman: Did you? You got out in time, did you not?

Mr McClean: It is a long time ago!

Chairman: We are all very grateful that people as public spirited as you should give this amount of time to what is a very, very important job.

Q407 Sammy Wilson: Before we move on, could I ask one question about your role? When we had the Prisoner Ombudsman along I think he indicated that about 56% of the complaints which were made to his office were upheld. There is the prison complaints procedure. You also have a role to play in complaints. It struck me as rather surprising that 56% of complaints, even after filtering through the other mechanisms, were still upheld. Have you any explanation or thoughts as to why, even at that stage, complaints have not been dealt with properly?

Mrs Doherty: If I look at the complaints from Magilligan, which is the one I can speak for, certainly when I monitor the applications which go to the Ombudsman - and they have already been through the prison system and they have gone through my system - it is the same people who are complaining. We have not solved it, and we have tried. It is just one of those things that are difficult to deal with, but we do our best and sometimes we have to refer them on to the Ombudsman. So as regards my board, it is the same people and it is probably about five to ten inmates who are sending the complaints that will be upheld.

Mr McClean: I have certainly seen no reduction in the number of complaints that the Independent Monitoring Boards would handle. I think perhaps it is because of the nature of the prisoner population. Most of our prisoners would be young males and on the whole they are pretty inarticulate and they would prefer, I think, to come to us verbally and raise issues. Maybe they do not feel confident enough to raise them through the formal system and we can deal with them and have them sorted verbally, if you like.

Mr McAllister: I think in the case of Maghaberry initially when the Ombudsman's office was set up complaints dropped, because it was assumed by the prisoner and by the staff, unfortunately, that we were there to monitor and not to answer complaints any more. We availed of the rest period, if you like, and concentrated on areas of responsibility shared out among the board. We would go onto the landings and we would glean as much information as possible on those areas. In doing that, yes, we would run into prisoners on the landings and yes, the complaints soon came back again, but I think the realisation is there now again that we are part of the internal complaints process. There is the IMB and there is the Ombudsman's office.

Q408 Sammy Wilson: As part of your monitoring role, the fact that such a high percentage were upheld and went to the Ombudsman's office, is that an indication that either the complaints were not dealt with adequately within the prison system or the monitoring system, or that the Ombudsman's office is maybe a bit more generous in how they interpret some of these complaints?

Mr McAllister: Obviously, I cannot speak to and would not want to cast judgment on the figures presented by the Ombudsman. However, the Independent Monitoring Board members do not take statistics of the complaints that we deal with, those that we uphold and those we are not successful with. We simply listen to the prisoner and we go to whoever we can. We may go back to the staff, the landing staff or the principal officer, we may go to the governor of the house, and so on, and very often it can be sorted in the morning, it can be something simple, whereas I think with the Ombudsman there is probably a lot more paperwork and actual paper trails, et cetera.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Q409 John Battle: Could I ask each of you to say a little bit about rehabilitation and resettlement activities, training and education, preparation for employment, perhaps specialist provision within each of the prisons, and particularly whether the proposed change in sentences will affect the provision? What is the position that you each see?

Mrs Doherty: At the moment in Magilligan there is a wide range of courses being offered, both in education and workshops, and the idea is to prepare the inmates for future employment. "FE" means business, because my background being in education obviously I am very keen to see that they will all come out with qualifications. At the moment we are targeting 78% of the inmates for education workshops or some provision of training. That provision may be attending treatment programmes for whatever their problem, sex offenders' treatment programmes, alcohol addiction and other programmes like that. I have the figures which I can give you for that if you wish to have them. We also look at accreditation courses and courses which will be useful to the inmates when they go out. You do realise that, of course, we have a very high incidence of poor literacy and poor numeracy and we are addressing that, or the establishment is addressing that on the essential skills programme. Magilligan is also looking at the workshop programmes, so we are not restricting them to those who have literacy and numeracy difficulties, but we are trying to get them to understand that they must have a certain level before they can avail themselves of that training in the various workshops. We are also giving them a chance of employment in the establishment to put into practice the qualifications they are getting, be it gardening, industrial cleaning or catering, and we are preparing them for skills which they might use outside. We also link with Limavady College of Further Education and Ballymena College and this past year we have won an award for innovation with Ballymena College. We are now looking and we have already had meetings with the new north-west regional college, which is the merger of North-West Institute and Limavady College. We are planning ahead for the course provision for 1 August when that merger takes place. We are also with the prison looking at their accreditation courses, at other courses which could be provided where maybe inmates could go out to use the college provision during the summer months when the students are not there. We do not want double-funding, we want to talk to DEL about the funding because we have got to look at value for money. So we have got to look at that and the governor and I are looking at that at the moment.

Q410 John Battle: I think there was a question of the physical quality of the workshops?

Mrs Doherty: Yes. The workshops are in Nissen huts. It is not ideal.

Q411 Chairman: We have seen them. We were impressed by the quality of the work done there. I think anybody going to Magilligan comes away with two impressions: the quality of the work is good and morale is good, but the physical conditions in which it is done, frankly, are not.

Mrs Doherty: No. You are quite right, they are not good, but when you can keep morale up and get work turned out like the inmates are turning out, and they are now taking pride in the grounds and we have had two new lawnmowers recently and they are taking care of the grounds as well as doing the planting.

Q412 Chairman: We saw that too, yes.

Mrs Doherty: Yes, you would have. They are now doing furniture. We have got a new Alpha compound, which will be open in August. I think when you were there we were hoping to have it open in June, but it will be open now in mid-August and the inmates are making all the furniture for that, which is a saving of the public purse. That money, hopefully, will be put into the estate.

Q413 Chairman: Good. Would Mr McAllister and Mr McClean like to deal with Mr Battle's question?

Mr McClean: The vocational training on offer at Hydebank Wood was originally based on the perceived needs of male young offenders. The arrival of women prisoners did not change that. Currently the only vocational training open to women at Hydebank Wood is horticulture. The IMB has suggested other training subjects such as professional hairdressing, business skills, and so on, but the small number of potential trainees is always put forward as the reason for saying that such courses are not viable. A lack of interest has also been mentioned, but I think that is a bit of a red herring. The IMB would recommend that the vocational training needs of women prisoners should be properly assessed, bearing in mind that the overall numbers will always be relatively small and recognising that one-to-one tutoring might be necessary. I think that some work needs to be done in exploring the female labour market as well. The vocational training instructors at Hydebank Wood are direct employees of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, as I understand it, and in practice if an instructor goes off sick or is absent for any reason the workshops remain closed and no training takes place at all. As I see it, the solution would be to outsource the work to maybe a local college of further education, as seems to happen in Magilligan, and they presumably would be able to provide substitute teachers as necessary.

John Battle: Are they broadening the curriculum for women as well, because it seems a bit restricted in this day and age, horticulture and hairdressing? Lots of young women will look to other things.

Q414 Chairman: You do not have hairdressing at the moment, do you?

Mr McClean: Hairdressing, no.

Q415 Chairman: It is just horticulture?

Mr McClean: Yes. Horticulture was practised when the women prisoners were housed at Maghaberry Prison.

Q416 Chairman: We saw them doing it, yes. They all looked like Charlie Dymock!

Mr McClean: Yes. It is excellent, but there ought to be a bit more. The young men, for instance, they have seven different subjects to choose from.

Q417 Sammy Wilson: How much of the restricted choice is due to the small numbers of prisoners, because sometimes it is impossible to run a course unless you have got some basic numbers?

Mr McClean: I think that is the main reason, the small numbers, but as I say the small number is always going to be a feature so far as women prisoners are concerned and it is going to have to be addressed.

Q418 John Battle: Are efforts going to be made to extend the range of options for young women?

Mr McClean: Yes, even if it means one-to-one or small groups of maybe one, two or three.

Q419 Mr Murphy: Has anyone asked the women themselves what sort of course they would like?

Mr McClean: I am not sure. We have spoken to them informally and I think they would be interested in something other than horticulture, if they had a choice.

Mr Murphy: I am sure they would, yes.

Stephen Pound: Anything!

Q420 Chairman: A bit of culture without the "horti" might go quite well, yes.

Mr McClean: Some women prisoners are engaged in what is termed "cottage industries" and that is simply making greetings cards for sale.

Q421 John Battle: I saw some figures which showed that Northern Ireland universities produce more women engineers than any other in the rest of Britain, so I do not think we should limit the horizons of women in Northern Ireland too strictly.

Mrs Doherty: That is right.

Mr McAllister: In relation to Maghaberry, that is a prison built for 450 prisoners and on 13 June the total prisoner population was 813 - 403 of whom were on remand. The difficulty with Maghaberry is that any education, any workshops, any resettlement is really geared towards the sentence prisoner because they have a term which the prison authorities can work to, whereas with the remand prisoners there is very little for them to do. Unfortunately, a remand prisoner may be there for a week, he may be there for two weeks, or for three or four years, that is the reality.

Q422 John Battle: But that is not an irredeemable problem. I represent a remand prison in Leeds with 1,280 prisoners locked up last night. Some are there for a day and some are there for 30 years because they cannot find another prison for them to go to, but they still manage. It is very difficult to adjust programmes for people who are there short-term when it takes you a week to warm them up to turn up at a classroom, but are there not comparisons being made with what is going on elsewhere of how to bridge that gap? If all your remand prisoners and 80% of the people in the prison cannot read or write, then you might make some start even if you have only four days really?

Mr McAllister: Absolutely. I think society is missing a wonderful opportunity. The courts have decided that the offence merits remand as opposed to bail and I think, therefore, there is an opportunity missed.

Q423 John Battle: A captive audience!

Mr McAllister: Yes, a captive audience. Yes, outside there are many courses being offered in various schemes throughout, but they are not captive audiences, as you have rightly said, and I think there is an opportunity missed. The difficulty again with Maghaberry is the high security issue. High security is the umbrella security across the whole prison, therefore right down to the area of fine defaulters. They are held in high security. That would not be the case in any other. To go back to the original question of education, there are various levels from initial literacy and numeracy skills right through to two-by-two sessions where other prisoners are working as peers along with illiterate and innumerate prisoners. They are excellent schemes. There are the workshops, but I have to say from my own monitoring and having compared like for like, for example, with Franklin Prison, which is built very similar to Maghaberry, when I went there and looked at the workshops and the production it was a very busy factory and when I go to the workshops in Maghaberry there is not a great deal happening. If I go over lunch, there is nothing happening. There are moves to reflect a better working day, but I also feel that prisoners in Maghaberry have become lazy because of the lack of activity there. For a long time in my initial couple of years as a board member workshops were closed down due to security again and due to all efforts being put into the separated regime and the effective working of that under the Steele report. I used to go and visit an empty workshop, I remember, on my initial visit to the prison before becoming a member, so why is this allowed to happen? We assume something is going on. But the resettlement department is housed now within the workshops and there is becoming joined up thinking, if you like, which I think is a step in the right direction.

John Battle: Yes, very good.

Q424 Chairman: Do I take it from what you have been saying to Mr Battle that you make a practice of dropping in unannounced from time to time?

Mr McAllister: Yes.

Q425 Chairman: Good. Do you have any jurisdiction over the place we visited, the Prisoner Assessment Unit? Does that come under your jurisdiction, the one in the Crumlin Road, or do they have a separate board?

Mr McAllister: Yes, that comes under Maghaberry, and I would pop in there very often and talk to the guys in the working out unit.

Chairman: I think our reaction to that was a bit similar to our reaction to Magilligan. We were quite impressed by the quality of what was being done, but the facilities and the surroundings were a bit depressing, were they not?

John Battle: They were bleak, yes.

Q426 Chairman: Would you agree with that?

Mr McAllister: I would, but like yourself on an evening I would pop in - there is not much point in popping in during the day because although there are orderlies there, there are those who cannot work for security reasons - and it is a good opportunity to speak to them, too. But some of the cookery classes were going on, some of the outwork classes were going on and prisoners were actually taking a pride and being well prepared. I think it is a good step in the right direction for life sentence prisoners, as are other changes in Maghaberry like Wilson House and Mourne House that are now in use in the old female prison.

Chairman: It is good to have your view on that. Could we move over to Mr Campbell and the adequacy of the prison estate, in which he has a certain interest.

Q427 Mr Campbell: If I could start maybe with Mrs Doherty on the Magilligan side. Your report of last year referred to the special relationship which existed at Magilligan between the local community and some of the local initiatives that took place, and we saw some of them on a visit to Magilligan. I would like you to elaborate on that, if you could. You mentioned as well in that report that necessary refurbishment and new build could be undertaken within the large secure area of the existing prison without the "not in my backyard" syndrome, which might occur in other locations. I wonder if you could elaborate a little?

Mrs Doherty: Part of our prison is Foyleview, which I think you saw on your visit.

Q428 Chairman: We did, and we were very pleased with that.

Mrs Doherty: Those inmates do an awful lot of work in the community and that is very much appreciated by the wider community and the local community. They do a lot of fundraising as well and they do other work for carpentry. There were photograph frames made for the Queen in her Jubilee, I think it was. There is quite a lot of work done like that and that is good for the inmates and it is good for their c.v., because I would encourage them and the prison encourages them to keep adding to their c.v. for future employment. There is also a number of inmates who do gardening and they are promised full-time jobs when they leave Magilligan. Someone has left Magilligan, I think it was in May, and he has been working out in a garden centre and he has got a permanent job there now. He is there permanently, in the Colraine area. There are other prisoners who are working towards that. Some of them are out in Benburg. So there are other prisoners working out in different places who will leave the prison in the morning, go out and do their work and come back in the evening. That establishment and that relationship has taken a long number of years to build up, as you can appreciate. The buildings themselves are poor. They are well-maintained within what they have got. We do not have in-cell sanitation, but one has to think of Government money and while I am not a governor in this organisation, I do serve as a governor in other organisations and I always look for value for money and if I was going to put in in-cell sanitation to me that would be throwing good money away and I think we would have to look at a new build. But inside the land that Magilligan owns, between what is inside the walled area that you saw plus the land outside, there is adequate room for a new prison there. The local population would appreciate it if the prison was kept there. My board members would want the prison kept there. The argument of distance from Belfast is not really an argument. There is a Belfast culture and, dare I say it, sitting beside two people from that part of the world, once you go over Glenshane the atmosphere is different, as I am sure you have found it! So the relationships in Magilligan, the people in the area and wider area would want to maintain that and certainly my board members would want to retain that.

Q429 Chairman: Is that a unanimous view?

Mrs Doherty: Yes.

Stephen Pound: No.

Q430 Sammy Wilson: No, it is not for people on the other side of Glenshane! It would not be unanimous.

Mrs Doherty: No, not on the west side of Glenshane, but on the north-west side it is. The other thing is, if you look at the two sites that are currently the options (because the governor and I have been working on this for some time and I have been discussing it with him, and we have had our arguments!) the site that they are currently looking at is in Ballymena and the cost of that site is £60 million. If we had to buy any more land at Magilligan, which I do not believe we have, we might have to buy a little strip which might cost five. We may not even have to buy that, and you could decamp. You could build one building, then decamp into it and keep moving. That, to me, is value for money. It is keeping the local people happy and it will keep the POA happy as well, because they are quite interested in keeping it where it is.

Chairman: That is a very clear, graphic statement and very helpful. Before handing back to Mr Campbell, because he does have a interest to declare here, could I ask the other two chairmen, do you dissent from Mrs Doherty's view on this?

Q431 Mr Campbell: Forgetting about Glenshane!

Mr McClean: Magilligan is too far away geographically for me to comment.

Q432 Chairman: But seriously, we have had evidence from a number of people and I will just tell you we are going to make an early report on our recommendations on the siting of Magilligan before we complete our full report. We have already decided that this afternoon, so it would be very helpful. We have had witnesses who have taken the line that you have, we have had witnesses who have taken a different line and feel it should be moved, and we have had other witnesses who have said, "Really, we don't mind at all," but the only absolute common ground is that it does need rebuilding somewhere. That is the absolute common ground. Do you have a view which is strongly different from Mrs Doherty?

Mr McClean: My personal view, Chairman, would be that the location of Magilligan is very peripheral to the population of Northern Ireland. Most of the population would lie in the greater Belfast area, the eastern seaboard, if you like, and Magilligan is right out on the very extreme.

Chairman: It is near Northern Ireland's second city.

Mr Campbell: And that eastern seaboard does have two units already.

Q433 Chairman: You have heard of Londonderry.

Mr McClean: I would still think that the major population would be east of the province and that it should be somewhere maybe closer to Belfast.

Q434 Chairman: Regardless of the cost?

Mr McClean: Well, it is going to have to be rebuilt anyway, is it not?

Mr McAllister: I have to say every time I go over the Glenshane Pass I really feel I am on my holidays and I go into holiday mood, and that is only if I am going on a training session to Magilligan Prison! The location does not bother me as far as being chairman of the Maghaberry board is concerned. Obviously, it is the necessity for other people to worry about the finances, and so on. What I will say is that there is a need for another establishment. There is a growing prison population and, as I said earlier, Maghaberry is bursting at the seams. There are issues of doubling up, et cetera. So regarding the location, whether it is in Ballymena, whether it is in Magilligan or whether it is in Colraine, or whatever, that is not an issue, I do not think, for the Maghaberry chair.

Q435 Sammy Wilson: Could I ask one question? In the opportunities you have to talk to prisoners - because this is one of the other points that was made to us - do the prisoners make any complaints about the location of the prison affecting, for example, family visits or friends coming to see them, or whatever?

Mrs Doherty: When they were first transferred from Maghaberry to us a lot of the time they were facing an awful distance, especially if they have a young family, but when they see the arrangements that are made they are quite happy and on occasions, quite a number of occasions, when we have offered to transfer them back to Maghaberry because of maybe family being seriously ill they have not wanted to go. So that to me is testimony for what is going on in Magilligan.

Chairman: Can we go back to Mr Campbell and move on to the other prisoners?

Q436 Mr Campbell: I just want to move on to Maghaberry first of all. You have mentioned the under-capacity of the kitchen and the early replacement there. Is that still the position or has the position got worse since that report was written?

Mr McAllister: The situation has got worse. However, the Independent Monitoring Board has been brought in and we have been issued with the plans for the new kitchen. There is a couple of members on our board who have a particular interest in food and that is the area they are concentrating on, the inadequacy of the kitchen provision. We are satisfied that things are moving. We are not satisfied with the speed they have moved and we were awaiting disaster. One of the questions we often ask is, "Is there a plan B when this kitchen shuts down, when it can't function any more?" and I think the answer we were given is that, "Yes, there will be tents, marquees, that type of thing ready to use." It is our understanding now that the plans are afoot and that they are moving in the right direction.

Q437 Mr Campbell: But you have not got a time for that?

Mr McAllister: We have been given October, but I think it is very unrealistic. We would assume that the date we were given was October 07.

Q438 Chairman: But you do reckon this is a serious problem?

Mr McAllister: It is very serious. As I say, it was a kitchen built for 450 prisoners and it is feeding 800 prisoners, and it is not fully functional. There are parts of it that are not working, where the equipment is out of service, and I have to say it is a credit to all those working in the kitchen, the staff and the prisoners working there, that they are continuing to produce reasonable food.

Q439 Chairman: In reasonable conditions?

Mr McAllister: In unreasonable conditions.

Q440 Chairman: Yes, but in hygienic conditions?

Mr McAllister: Well, I think the prison is open to monitoring and other agencies in that.

Q441 Mr Campbell: I just have a further question for Mr McClean on Hydebank. Again, the issue of the women's prison. You had alluded to the necessity for a stand-alone women's prison. Is that still the position, or has anything changed in the last twelve months to alter your opinion on that?

Mr McClean: A stand-alone women's prison for Northern Ireland remains a priority for the IMB, in my opinion.

Q442 Mr Campbell: Would you prefer that to be at Hydebank, or would you like it moved 40 miles away?

Mr McClean: No. Hydebank Wood is a very big estate. It is big enough to accommodate a women's prison as far away from the male prison as possible, but the estate is big enough to provide a separate women's prison with its own entrance and all the rest. As I say, currently the women prisoners have to share a campus with the young male prisoners and that imposes its own limitations. For example, women prisoners should be able to move about unescorted but a shared prison rules this out. There is also an urgent need for a separate prison which could focus on the separate needs of women. The amount of money which has been spent on Ash House, preparing it for women, would have gone a long way towards providing a purpose-built prison. No matter how many enhancements are made to Ash House - and there have been many - it will always remain an integral part of the young male offenders' centre, as originally planned. It should also be stressed that a shared campus also disadvantages the majority of male young offenders equally in that they cannot move about as freely as they should.

Q443 Chairman: Can I just press you on one point? You said that you thought both could be accommodated within the Hydebank Estate?

Mr McClean: Yes. That is a personal view, Chairman.

Q444 Chairman: It is very valuable. We have had conflicting evidence on this. Some people have taken that view and others have taken the view that they should be separate. Clearly, if the estate is there and it is owned, it would appear that the most cost-effective way would be to do as you are suggesting. Is that your personal view and that of your board, or just your view?

Mr McClean: That is my personal view.

Q445 Chairman: What does your board think?

Mr McClean: I have not actually explored that one with my board.

Q446 Chairman: Would you think, from conversations you have had with members of your board, that that would be a reasonably well-shared view?

Mr McClean: I think so, as long as it is separate. I visualise a number of ordinary houses, getting away from the normal prison format, if you like, where women would live and cater for themselves.

Q447 Chairman: With a wall around that would separate them?

Mr McClean: I am not so certain about walls. We have too many walls in Northern Ireland. If it was inside the perimeter, surely that is enough? It is a valuable estate. It is in South Belfast, a very expensive property area, and I do not think it should be wasted.

Chairman: No.

Q448 Mr Murphy: How many women prisoners are there actually, and is the female prison population rising in line with the male?

Mr McClean: It is probably rising very gradually, but you are talking about between 40 and 50 people. It is not a huge number and even if there is substantial growth you are talking about maybe up to 60, 70 at the very outside. On that subject, at the moment the women's prison at Hydebank Wood houses all female prisoners, that is right from people who are serving life right down to people who are there for debt, but it also includes young people under the age of 18 and I would have a concern about that. There was a case last year, an allegation of assault, female on female, a sexual assault, and I think that underlines the need to get young women out of there as quickly as possible.

Chairman: That is all very helpful. Can we move on to healthcare with Mr Anderson, in the absence of our resident doctor?

Q449 Mr Anderson: Can I ask for your comments on the proposed transfer to the Department of Health of healthcare responsibilities?

Mrs Doherty: I personally have been disappointed in the time lapse between the transfer of health from the Prison Service to the local health authority. I thought under RPA it would be transferred straight away on 1 April. That has not happened and I believe it is not going to happen until the beginning of October. There is a number of issues which concern us regarding this. First of all, clinical governance. What is going to happen, and if the prisoners have complaints regarding health who will they go to? Will they go to the healthcare people or will they go to the prison? That is still being discussed. So that has to be sorted out, but it is obviously in limbo at the moment. The other provision I am concerned about is mental health provision in prison because a lot of inmates are sent to prison and they have mental disorders and personality problems. Prison is not the place for them, but there does not seem to be anywhere in healthcare that is the place for them either, so that needs to be addressed urgently, I would suggest. The other thing which concerns my board particularly is medication. When inmates are transferred from Maghaberry to Magilligan their medication is either reduced, withdrawn completely or changed, and we would have a number of complaints about that. We have been discussing it with the governor and we have been monitoring it. If you change, reduce or withdraw somebody's medication and they have been on it for a long period of time that can lead to major problems and I think we might have seen the outcome of a number of those in the past year. We are still awaiting those reports, but we have made a recommendation in this year's report that all records are transferred with the inmates when they come to Magilligan and that they are put on a computer with limited access so that that the medical records also come, because sometimes they do not come down with the inmates. I think the prison is looking at a prescribing protocol that all doctors will adhere to, because obviously the doctors we have at Magilligan do not adhere to the same prescribing protocol as they do in Maghaberry and they are always wanting to wean them off medication or reduce it, and that has caused us a number of problems. There are two inmates I deal with on a frequent basis where my members are monitoring their medication and monitoring the effect it is having and the governor has dealt with it for the last three months, and the next thing is the prescription is due for renewal and we have the same problem, and we are back into the same cycle.

Q450 Stephen Pound: Why is there not a standard protocol?

Mrs Doherty: I do not know. It is GPs who come into the prison to offer the prescriptions and the GP visits the prison every day, Monday to Friday, and he will decide if inmate A is going to continue on that medication or not. He may not necessarily, I believe, look at all the medical notes.

Q451 Chairman: And sometimes, from what you have said, does not have access to the records?

Mrs Doherty: Yes. We have discovered on a couple of occasions the medical notes did not come down with the inmate, and that is one of the recommendations we have made in this year's report.

Q452 Stephen Pound: Surely the consequences for the prisoner would actually be very poor?

Mrs Doherty: Exactly.

Q453 Stephen Pound: That is clearly something we need to pick up on.

Mrs Doherty: Yes, it is being addressed.

Q454 Chairman: We are very grateful to you for flagging that one up. It is a very important point. Do the others wish to add anything?

Mr McClean: The withdrawal or drastic reduction of medication we are finding a big problem with women prisoners. Apparently, for the rate of prescribing Northern Ireland is top of the league. This was in the outside prison situation. When these ladies come into prison their medication is either withdrawn or drastically reduced, and these are vulnerable people who are having the crutch of medication withdrawn and they are finding it extremely difficult to get by.

Q455 Chairman: Have you made representations on that point?

Mr McClean: I have mad representations to the associate director of healthcare in the Prison Service in Northern Ireland, yes.

Q456 Chairman: Did you get a satisfactory response?

Mr McClean: He said he would follow it up with the doctors concerned.

Q457 Chairman: When did you ask him?

Mr McClean: That would have been raised probably six months ago.

Q458 Chairman: Have you raised it with him since?

Mr McClean: I have not, no.

Chairman: It might be a good idea.

Q459 Mr Anderson: Do you know where the budget for medication comes from? Is it individual GPs or just from within the estates?

Mr McClean: I do not know who funds it.

Q460 Mr Anderson: Do you think the transfer fully into healthcare will alleviate that problem?

Mrs Doherty: We do not know. I do not know.

Q461 Chairman: Although it has legally happened, it has not physically happened, has it? This is the problem.

Mrs Doherty: Exactly, yes.

Q462 Sammy Wilson: Mrs Doherty, whether the medication and healthcare is under each individual prison regime or whether it is under the Health Service, a simple thing like transferring records can happen under both regimes, can it not?

Mrs Doherty: Exactly, it can.

Q463 Chairman: It can and certainly should. Did you want to add for Maghaberry?

Mr McAllister: The point I would make for Maghaberry is that we were expecting this change on 1 April and it has not happened. Maybe it has happened in financial terms, but in practice we are not expecting to take it over until October. We were led to believe around the hospital and around the healthcare areas, talking to staff and so on, that we will not see any change in provision. The staff are going to remain the same, but what will change is whatever is happening in the background. It is one of those difficult areas, we found, to monitor. It is one of those difficult areas because prisoners obviously who are not getting their medication are sitting in the cell all day, they are feeling pains or feeling withdrawal symptoms, whatever they are feeling, and that is major in their life and they want the doctor and they want the doctor now. The doctor decides to wean them off. Has the doctor read their notes? All these questions are coming from the prisoner. The doctor will very often - it is not a particular doctor, it may be a locum doctor - say to us it's really not our concern, it's really not our judgment, it's not for us to question what a doctor is doing in a prison with a patient's medication, and so on, but with a little probing and assistance from other healthcare staff we do make progress in those areas. But it is a difficult area. We, as an IMB, are still, I suppose, wondering will our role change from 1 October in relation to clinical governance.

Q464 Chairman: But you still do not know?

Mrs Doherty: No.

Mr McAllister: We do not know at the moment. It is a grey area.

Q465 Chairman: You have not been given any notes for guidance?

Mrs Doherty: No.

Mr McAllister: Not at the moment, no.

Q466 Chairman: You have not had any visits to your board from healthcare officials?

Mr McAllister: No.

Mr McClean: To be fair, we did have a meeting with the director of healthcare recently, representatives from each of the boards did meet with us -

Mr McAllister: My apologies.

Mr McClean: -- and he did update us on the implementation, or the transfer of healthcare.

Q467 Chairman: Because if we are going to comment on these things we need to be able to comment accurately.

Mr McClean: Chairman, could I flag up the need for a secure unit in Northern Ireland for treating young adolescent prisoners with severe personality disorders? Currently there is no such unit in Northern Ireland at all and anybody in that category would have to be sent to a unit in England.

Q468 Chairman: Yes, you can indeed flag that up, and is this something that you all share? Do you all agree with this?

Mr McAllister: Yes. They are adolescents.

Mr McClean: It would relate more to Hydebank Wood in that we would hold the young inmates.

Q469 Chairman: Of course it would, but what I am saying is that your colleagues see the force of your argument?

Mrs Doherty: Yes, we do.

Mr McAllister: Yes.

Q470 Sammy Wilson: How many are you talking about in Hydebank Wood?

Mr McClean: I just would not have a number, but in Northern Ireland personality disorder, as I understand it, is not recognised as a mental health issue. There is a difference between England and Northern Ireland in that respect.

Mr McAllister: There is a loophole that is missing those with personality disorders and the prison does seem to be the dumping ground and they are not caught under the Mental Health Act.

Chairman: We are due to visit Hydebank Young Offenders next week, so if there are any particular points you would like to make in that context could you get in touch with our clerk, because we take this very seriously and we would certainly want to look at that. I am very grateful to all three of you. You have given the Committee some very valuable insight and some very valuable evidence, and could I end by repeating what I said at the very beginning, that we are very conscious of the work that you do. It is very public-spirited and we appreciate it very much. You have a vital role to play in the service, even though you are all volunteers and your boards are volunteers, and please carry on the good work. I will very briefly adjourn the formal Committee. I want to come straight on to our next witnesses, but I want to just come and say goodbye to you and to speak privately to Professor McWilliams before we begin.

Memorandum submitted by Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Professor Monica McWilliams, Chief Commissioner, Mr Eamonn O'Neill, Commissioner, and Dr Linda Moore, Researcher, Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, gave evidence.

Q471 Chairman: My three colleagues will be back in a second or two, but could I welcome you, Professor McWilliams. It is very nice to meet you again. Would you like to introduce your two colleagues?

Professor McWilliams: Thank you very much, Chairman. It is very good to be back again. To my left is Dr Linda Moore, who is the investigative officer in the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and who is the co-author of a number of reports, but particularly relevant to this Committee are the reports on women in prison, a previous report published, The Hurt Inside, and the report to which we have lifted the embargo as soon as we start speaking today, The Prison Within, and it will be published tomorrow. To my right is Mr Eamonn O'Neill, who is a Commissioner with me on the Human Rights Commission and is a member of our detention, policing and justice group, who has made a number of visits since we both took up our office two years ago to the prisons in Northern Ireland.

Q472 Chairman: Thank you very, very much indeed. You are all very welcome. Could I say that you have assisted the Committee very considerably by lifting the embargo on your report because you kindly arranged for us to receive copies. They did come only yesterday, so some of us have not had a chance to read them in detail, but it is very helpful to be able to refer to your report and, most importantly, to enable you to speak to your report. For the benefit of colleagues who have just come in, the embargo is lifted and therefore questions on this report are entirely permissible. That is extremely helpful. Did you wish to say anything by way of introduction before we start the questions?

Professor McWilliams: Very briefly, just to say that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was set up on a statutory basis as a result of the Northern Ireland Act. We have a range of functions which are pertinent to this Committee. One is to review the effectiveness on Northern Ireland law and practice. Two, particularly in relation to the protection of human rights, we can also advise on legislation, and indeed on other policy measures in relation to human rights issues. We also have a role in promoting, understanding and raising awareness on human rights issues. We do take cases to court. We assist cases to court and as a result of our new powers in terms of the Justice and Security Bill we will be able to take cases in our own name.

Q473 Chairman: How would you categorise your relationship with the Northern Ireland Prison Service and with the Criminal Justice Inspectorate? Is it close and cordial or is it tense and difficult? How would you categorise it?

Professor McWilliams: I think it was tense with the Northern Ireland Prison Service. I will take that first and then move to the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, because they are obviously two very different sets of relationships. It was tense a number of years ago in relation to the permission of access in order to undertake investigations in the prisons, and that was indeed before my time and before Eamonn's, although I think Linda could speak about that in that she herself was an investigative officer at that time, and indeed there was an interpretation of the legislation which established the Commission which needed to be clarified at court and we did go to court and had that clarification. Consequently, access was then permitted. That no longer is an issue. The Justice and Security Bill has clarified that in the sense that when we decide to carry out formal investigations we will share, as we have always done, our terms of reference with those we are about to investigate, and indeed they also have the opportunity, if they so choose, to go to the County Court to contest any terms of reference and we, too, have the same opportunity. After that, and only after that, do we have the right of unlimited and unrestricted access to the place of detention. I think it is important to put that on the record. I think there is a misunderstanding about the role of the Human Rights Commission having access to places of detention unannounced. We do not have that power.

Q474 Chairman: No, and you do not seek it?

Professor McWilliams: Indeed, we did seek it.

Q475 Chairman: Yes, but you are not seeking it any more?

Professor McWilliams: Well, the legislation will be reviewed and it is open to review, and as a consequence we would hope that our research and investigation is being taken seriously in terms of the recommendation. That is a power that we would seek to have amended. There is another opportunity under the option protocol, the Convention Against Torture, to be nominated as one of the national preventative mechanisms. The Minister for Justice has yet to make that announcement as to who the bodies will be in Northern Ireland. As we understand it, we as yet may not be on that list. Those who gave evidence just before us, the Independent Monitoring Boards, the Mental Health Commission, the RQIEA and bodies which do inspections will be on it, but we have heard from many of these bodies, including the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, which you have asked me about, about whether it would be helpful and indeed they think it would be helpful if we were on that list. So there is another opportunity to do unannounced visits if we were to be named in that way. In relation to your second question of the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, we work very closely with the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, with all of those bodies who have inspection functions or complaints mechanisms in relation to the prisons, and it is our intention to have a memorandum of understanding. We currently have that memorandum of understanding, so we seek not to duplicate anyone else's work and to coordinate our work with any inspections because we feel, as you have already heard from evidence, that for a number of us to go simultaneously into a prison is not helpful either to the body carrying out the investigation or to the management of the Prison Service. So we have very good relationships with the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, and indeed we have much improved relationships with the Northern Ireland Prison Service.

Q476 Chairman: That is reassuring. How much of your work as a Commission is to do with prisons?

Professor McWilliams: In the past two years since both Eamonn and I have joined the Commission the investigation which was coming to a close is the piece of work which is currently in front of you. It is one of many pieces of work and the investigation function is only a third of one particular team within the Commission. It would probably be useful to put it in perspective to say that we have only two part-time investigative workers.

Q477 Chairman: Thank you. You have talked about five unannounced visits, and so on. Are there any other powers you believe the Commission should have in order to make it do its work more effectively?

Professor McWilliams: One of the issues in relation to the Justice and Security Bill which has recently gone through Parliament was also in relation to documentation and being able to speak to witnesses to any particular events that we would be investigating. We will have that power commencing after 1 August this year, but only in relation to prospective investigations, so if there was a particular incident which any prisoner wanted to make reference to, or where there was systemic abuse because really in terms of human rights concerns, that would be our main priority. It would have to be systemic. We would want to investigate that. We would not be able to compel witnesses or receive documents prior to any places of detention, not just prisons, prior to 1 August.

Q478 Chairman: When you have made recommendations, how do you monitor their implementation?

Professor McWilliams: I think I should turn at this stage to Linda Moore. I can say that probably the work which the Commission takes most seriously is undertaking an investigation in the first place and then going back a number of months later to let a period of time pass to see the extent - in this case it would have been the Northern Ireland Prison Service - to which those recommendations have been implemented. Linda, having been the author of both reports, could probably best speak to that, Chairman.

Q479 Chairman: I want to bring in my colleague, Sammy Wilson, to ask you specifically about your Hydebank report, but would you like to say a general word before we move on to that?

Dr Moore: In terms of the investigations, we do promise that we will follow up to make sure they have been implemented. In the case of the prison work, as Professor McWilliams said, we had sought to follow up earlier than we actually were able to on the recommendations. We had sought to do the research which has just come out in 2004, but we were barred from doing so, but our intention would be always to follow up within a year, it could be two years, to see to what extent our recommendations have been taken up. We basically go through the recommendations and check whether they have been followed or not.

Chairman: Can we move on? Mr Wilson.

Sammy Wilson: The first thing I want to ask about is that you have indicated that mixing women prisoners with male young offenders at Hydebank has an adverse effect on the women prisoners. Can you just outline in what ways this adverse effect is manifested?

Q480 Chairman: Can I just say that although we are very grateful for the lifting of the embargo and we are very grateful for your thoughtfulness in sending this, it did not arrive in time for us to read it, so do not feel that it is a lack of interest on Mr Wilson's or anybody else's part if we ask you questions which are answered here. Please let us have the answers on the record.

Dr Moore: I will and we realise that it is a very long report as well. If I could say at the outset in introduction, answering your question, that international human rights standards are clear that female prisoners should be separate from male prisoners, and that is our starting point in judging the issue. What we found, and what is documented in this report, was that because the young men and the women were sharing the campus it meant that there was a more restricted environment and restricted regime, which did not just affect the women, it also affected the young men. For example, it meant that even women who would have been risk assessed as not posing a threat within the site were not able to walk short distances by themselves, they would have to be accompanied by prison officers. That was because it was a shared site. So if women had their own site you would expect that once a woman had been risk assessed they would be able to walk about the campus unescorted. It also had an impact on the education centre. Again, teachers said that the movement of male and female prisoners had to be very choreographed and that that detracted from the kind of educational environment they sought to provide in the education centre. In terms of healthcare, it had particularly severe implications. We actually list the example of a self-harming suicidal woman in the report. We use her case study. She was in the healthcare centre and because there was a young boy in the healthcare centre who was risk assessed as a threat to women - he had threatened female staff - it meant that neither he nor the self-harming woman could be let out of their cells at the same time, so it meant extreme periods of lock-up for both the young boy and the self-harming woman.

Q481 Chairman: How extreme?

Dr Moore: Extreme in that you had a woman who said that she felt she was in danger of killing herself. The cognitive behavioural therapists who were dealing with her case had said that she should be given as much activity and as much association as possible, and yet in the healthcare centre because the young boy was there it meant that she could not be let out if he was let out. So you were having to balance his needs with her needs, and in fact she was locked up for most of the 24 hours she spent in the healthcare.

Q482 Stephen Pound: On that point, you do refer in the report to the two PAR1 cases and I have to say they are extremely graphic and extremely disturbing for us to read it, but you actually refer to the Separation and Support unit in Elm House. Is that what you are talking about at the moment?

Dr Moore: We are talking about where the self-harming woman was, that was the healthcare centre.

Q483 Stephen Pound: When you see the words "Separation and Support Unit", I am not saying it sounds anodyne but it sounds actually quite a good thing. But are you saying that the Separation and Support Unit does not consist of separate units, it is a unit?

Dr Moore: We were referring to the healthcare centre, as the prison staff and management call it.

Q484 Stephen Pound: So within that context you could not have individual assessment and treatment of inmates on that basis, is that correct? I am simply trying to get it clear in my mind.

Dr Moore: You can have assessment of the person's healthcare needs, but what we are arguing in the report is that it was not possible to implement those needs.

Q485 Stephen Pound: Is there a physical separation?

Dr Moore: People are physically separated. They are in an adjacent cell, so the woman is in an adjacent cell to the boy.

Q486 Stephen Pound: I would not exactly call that separate.

Dr Moore: But only one association room, so that if she is in the association room then he cannot go to it.

Stephen Pound: That is what I was looking for.

Q487 Chairman: We did presume this. We did see that first-hand.

Dr Moore: Just to take up Mr Pound's point, we also did criticise the use of what you refer to as the Special Supervision Units, the SSUs, for the use of people who were suicidal or self-harming. What we found was that when they had periods of self-harming, severe self-harming, or indeed declared their intentions in terms of suicide, that they were almost punished for that and being completely isolated at the most vulnerable moment during that time.

Q488 Stephen Pound: I think you made that point in the report, actually.

Dr Moore: So those units are not anywhere close to the young offenders. They are separate inside the women's facility, formerly in Beech House and now in Ash House, but we have made recommendations in relation to their use for those who have severe mental illness.

Q489 Sammy Wilson: What is your conclusion from all of this then, if you would just outline this for us? Are you saying it is not possible on the one site to have a male and a female prison unit?

Dr Moore: We have said that as we understand it there is a very, very big site at Hydebank Wood, many acres that are not actually used in the current prison site. So we have said that it would be possible on the larger Hydebank Wood site to build a women's prison, but that it must not be within the perimeter of the young offenders' centre. It must have its own perimeter ---

Q490 Chairman: Did you hear the previous evidence this afternoon?

Professor McWilliams: Not all of it.

Q491 Chairman: The Chairman of the Monitoring Board made the same point, that he felt they could be accommodated within the Hydebank estate but was very anxious that there should be a clear demarcation.

Dr Moore: Absolutely.

Professor McWilliams: We would agree with that, in that we have made a very strong recommendation to have a discrete separate unit, and in terms of Mr Wilson's point it is not just in relation to the healthcare facility, it is impacting hugely on the provision of education because they do not wish to have association between the male young offenders and the women. So there is an issue in term of how many prison officers can accompany them to the occupational and educational facilities, so their time is limited and restricted.

Q492 Mr Campbell: Is the type of demarcation between the two units that you would envisage important, or less important?

Dr Moore: It is important in that a young offenders' centre might have a very different ethos than a women's prison. What we try to make clear in both the reports is that women are coming to prison with particular needs and particular characteristics and that that needs to be looked at. I think in the Corston report it was clear that women's imprisonment should not simply be based on the male model, so you would be wanting a gender-specific unit for the women based on women's needs.

Q493 Mr Campbell: Yes, but it is the type of demarcation between the two units that I am getting at. Would it have to be physically marked out with quite a sizeable obstruction, or whatever?

Professor McWilliams: Absolutely. I would agree with Mr Campbell on that point. I have visited very frequently the Hydebank site, and I understand the Committee has as well, and the women are within the hearing of the young men. Unfortunately, we had to record in our report some of the rather graphic comments that were being made, but also in terms of transportation to the courts there were some very graphic examples of what was going on when they were transported in the same vans. All of this, of course, is to accommodate, quite often, staff shortages. So there are human rights issues there.

Q494 Chairman: For the benefit of those who have not read the report or may not even read it - this is being recorded - what sorts of things are you talking about?

Professor McWilliams: Again, Linda took down the details.

Dr Moore: There were very graphic sexualised comments made by the boys to the women, and we were particularly disturbed. We have just commented on the Prison Service's draft child protection policy and we are concerned that in it it says that girl children may be transported with young men. We feel it is bad enough for adult women, but girl children should never be transported with them.

Chairman: No.

Q495 Sammy Wilson: Is there not a certain contradiction, though, in what you are asking for here? Just let me take the point which Professor McWilliams has made about where you share or use joint educational facilities. Your report says that there are not the same opportunities for women prisoners as there are for male prisoners, but is it really realistic to say that you replicate all of the educational facilities on the site of a women's prison when there are, I think we were told this afternoon, about 45 women prisoners? Are you saying that you should replicate, say, computer suites, all the other kind of specialist educational facilities for that small group of women rather than use joint educational facilities, which may well enable the women to have a wider educational opportunity?

Dr Moore: I think "replicated" is maybe not the word we would use. The women need to have their own healthcare centre and educational centre and those need to offer opportunities which are appropriate to the women's needs and what they would like to study. You are right in terms of the cost and I think Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons talked about the economies of scale and the difficulties when you are talking about a small group of women, but unfortunately imprisonment is expensive and if you are going to get a women's programme which will run effectively and which will meet women's needs then it is going to cost.

Q496 Sammy Wilson: But surely it must be possible to have a good education centre for prisoners but which is, by using manpower the right way, equally accessible to women as to men, and in doing so provide wider opportunities for both rather than separate?

Dr Moore: Whether or not it is possible to share some of the more expensive resources for some of the women and some of the young men, there would still need to be an educational centre in the women's prison because what we found in our earlier report on Mourne House was that the education centre was felt by the women to be really a place of safety and a place of retreat under very difficult circumstances and the women enjoyed going to education, although sadly it often was not running because of staff shortages. But what teachers were reporting to us in the current study is that the more vulnerable women simply are not signing up for education because the young boys are on the site and because of the higher security which that necessitates.

Q497 Chairman: Let us just get this straight. Even at the moment the young boys and the women are not being educated together on any of these things?

Dr Moore: No.

Q498 Chairman: You are saying that your view is that not only should they not be educated together but it is your opinion - the Committee may come to a different one - that it is not practical or right to have a shared facility?

Dr Moore: It is not just our opinion, the International Human Rights -

Q499 Chairman: Yes, I appreciate that, but Mr Wilson was slightly edging in that direction. I just want to get it clearly on the record that you are saying that that is not your point of view and in your view not compatible with international obligations for that to happen?

Dr Moore: Our assessment is that there needs to be a separate education facility.

Q500 Sammy Wilson: Could I just come to one other point, because you also criticise the inappropriate mixing of prisoners, if you have got remand, immigration, young women, older women, long-term prisoners, et cetera. Again, given the fact that you are dealing with 47 individuals here, what kind of facilities would you expect to be provided to ensure that there is not that inappropriate mixing, as you have described it?

Dr Moore: There would need to be small units, house-style units, for different groups of women. Imprisonment is a difficult issue and it will never be possible to get a perfect mix, but what we are saying at the outset is that there are certain groups of women who should not be there at all, for example the immigration detainees, who no longer are there, the girls under 18, who certainly should not be there. So if we get rid of certain categories of women - and fine defaults again we are saying should not be in prisons and women with serious mental health problems we would like to see given services through the Health Service rather than in prison - certain groups of women should not be there and for those who are there then yes, rather than bigger landings we would want to see small house-type units.

Q501 Sammy Wilson: Again, I am not quite clear because there appears to be a contradiction here. On the one hand you are saying, yes, they are only small numbers of prisoners, and then you want to have sub-categories of those small numbers of prisoners, but you have also told us that one of the things which the prisoners have expressly said they desire is some association. But if you are going to split small numbers of prisoners up into all of these small groups, do you not lose the association? Do you not actually require some of this mixing that you condemn in order to meet the other thing you have said women prisoners appreciate, and that is the association?

Dr Moore: What we want to see is much less lock-up. At the moment women are locked in their cells for a good part of the day, so in terms of association there would be no reason why women may not be able to go to classes together, for example who were not sharing the same house. So there would be association and education, and the garden and work training, and all those scenarios. We want to see women, and the young boys, having a very busy and productive day and then less lock-up in those houses at night for those women who are risk-assessed that it should be a possibility, so that people can have association in fives or sixes, the small houses, at night. What we are saying is that people are spending too long locked up in the cell and too long on landings doing very little with very little productive activity.

Professor McWilliams: Could I come in there? Sometimes you only understand it when you see it in practice elsewhere, and already in evidence you have heard about Dochas and when we, as Commissioners, had the opportunity we visited it and there they do have them separated. Again, not a large group of women, but what you hear from the governor in that situation is that it helps with discipline, it helps with the running of the establishment, it helps with the stability of those who are in it not to be mixed up with the immigrant detainees or asylum seekers who are going to be there for a very short period of time, alongside people who are on long sentences. Again, mothers with babies, an attachment that starts when a baby is born in prison or when a young child is in prison. This makes for a much better regime if you have a needs-centred approach.

Mr O'Neill: It reduces re-offending as well.

Professor McWilliams: Yes. I have recently in the last number of weeks visited one of the new houses where the long-term sentence prisoners are who are risk-assessed. Once they have served a third they are moved in there, where there is no lock-up. I have spoken to those women and they said about the regime that they could not even begin to compare it, and they are in for life, many of them, so they are not having to constantly listen to women who are coming and going all the time, and then they begin to have a completely different stable regime. That is the case in other prisons and I am glad to see the Prison Service moving in that direction. Nonetheless, we have been concerned because they have spent so much, Mr Wilson, on refurbishing Ash House and it has led us to a concern about whether or not they are going to be able to roll that out whilst the young offenders are still on the same site. We would also say that it is not just having an impact on the young women and the women in Hydebank, it is also having an impact on the young offenders. The regime is not working for either of them.

Q502 Mr Fraser: There was a point you mentioned earlier on when we were discussing the transfer of some of these vulnerable young women, and the young men as well. If a prisoner being transferred in the way you have described is deemed as being under some degree of lack of mental capacity, as it were, do you have healthcare professionals transferring with them? Are they accompanied when transferred from place A to place B at all times with a healthcare professional or not?

Dr Moore: Generally not. I could not swear that they never are, but generally they are not, and we would certainly welcome that.

Chairman: You have produced a very important report. It has 55 recommendations. We will obviously want to study your report and take it into account when we make our recommendations, but because there are other areas we wish to explore I am going to move on now from Hydebank. Thank you for the work you have done on it. We will, as I say, take it gladly into account. Can we move on to the issue of separation at Maghaberry with Stephen Hepburn?

Q503 Mr Hepburn: The Committee is revisiting this prison next week, so I thought it would possibly be interesting for us to talk about some of the concerns you highlighted in your report last year in Maghaberry. More specifically, you raised concerns - or maybe you are reflecting the concerns of the people in the prison - on excessive security. Could you tell me what you mean by that?

Mr O'Neill: Chairman, if I may attempt to deal with this? If I could simply just set this whole issue in context? One of our major concerns at the moment is about the way in which the prisoners' compact is worded. There has been a change from that which was used in 2003, as a result of the Steele Report, which I am sure you are familiar with. That compact for separated prisoners was consulted on in December 2003 and adopted finally in 2004, January, and published thereafter. A review of that compact was carried out in March 2006 and the Commission has always argued the key criterion here in separation is that it should be done on the human rights basis, the right to life and a right to safety, not on the affiliation of particular paramilitary groups. However, in that review in 2006 that was introduced as an issue, that prisoners who wished to go for the separated regime had to declare themselves to be a member or a supporter of a paramilitary organisation. We think this is a mistake and we would respectfully ask the Committee to consider making a recommendation to have that removed, because we think it is not on a human rights basis. The reason I wanted to begin with that is to let you know that this should all be approached on a human rights basis. That is our view. Coming on to your question, when we look in detail at some of the visits we have carried out there does seem to be excessive security. For example, if I could just take the issue of controlled movement, which is still a big issue within the separated regimes, I noticed in some of the evidence which has already been given in the past comments from, I think, the Prisoners' Association representative saying that whatever happens in a separated regime, it always wins and the other sections are robbed of staff in order to make the separated regime work. Whenever prisoners have been moved they are moved three prisoners at a time and the ratio of staff to prisoners had been five and it was reduced recently to four, for three prisoners. It is interesting to compare that with the legal visits, for example, when a prisoner goes to have a legal visit. It is one member of staff to two prisoners and that is considered to be sufficient for that. So there is an excessive use of staff and a heavy presence all the time in the separated situation. There is also the whole issue of the timetable of the day. Every second day a prisoner could be out for as little as four hours and locked up for the rest of the time, because they work in three blocks of time, from about 8.00 to about 12.00, 12.00 to about 4.00, and 4.00 to about 8.00. So one day one landing gets two, the morning and the evening, and the same day the other landing gets one. So they are only out for four hours. Now, there is all of that plus the continuation of strip searching which, Chairman, still exists. Recently the last visit I paid was on 2 May and on that particular day I dealt only with the Loyalist prisoners and my colleagues went to see the Republican ones. The Loyalists were telling me their view was that these strip searches were arbitrary, there was no particular reason for them. It was, they said, that staff were required to carry out a number of these without any reason, just to do it. They say it is less about security or drug control and more about harassment and control of prisoners. So all of that package still continues right up until May and it does give you this impression, although there have been one or two minor adjustments, for example, the Loyalists did say that their regime was a little bit less strict now than when we visited previously in September, but nevertheless the basis of the position we took is still very much the same.

Q504 Mr Hepburn: The security, surely, is for the protection of the individual prisoner?

Mr O'Neill: How is that necessary if they are within their ring and they have controlled entry in and out of the ring? Does it have to be so heavily policed, if you like, by the wardens? Is it necessary to be so rigorous in making sure -

Q505 Mr Hepburn: What justification did the wardens give for this excessive security?

Mr O'Neill: The impression the prisoners have in both - and here there is unanimity between those in the Republican wing and those in the Loyalist wing and which they keep giving us information and evidence about - is that there is a determination to make this an unpopular regime and a determination to try to force members who have opted for this to move back into the main prison again.

Q506 Sammy Wilson: We all know what happened under the separated regimes in the past where prison officers no longer ran the prisons and they were run by paramilitary groups. Is there not a real need to ensure that if paramilitary groups want separation they do have the ability to use that as an excuse to gain control of the prisons again? You gave the example of the ratio of one officer to two people going on a legal visit and one for three, I think it was -

Mr O'Neill: Five to three and four to three.

Q507 Sammy Wilson: Yes, but there is a big difference between a prisoner simply going on a legal visit and a paramilitary group which has got an exclusive wing and the level of supervision you need there, is there not? Would you prefer that this is relaxed and that we go back to the situation we had in the Maze where people could tunnel and fill cells with soil and nobody knew about it?

Mr O'Neill: I think, Chairman, the choice is not the same choice as Mr Wilson is offering us. The choice is that we have the same standards of prison regime in both situations, both in the ordinary prison that we have and in the separated regime.

Q508 Chairman: Do you believe it is possible to have that without surrendering control within the prison?

Mr O'Neill: I think we would be of that view, that that is a sort of basic issue of human rights.

Q509 Chairman: What we are anxious to do here is to get your clear answers and it is for the Committee then to evaluate those answers, to compare them with other answers, to decide whether we agree with you or whether we do not, but what we need is to have as much clarity from you as possible on your opinions as to what is right and what is wrong. Then we can assess that, just as you did when you were doing your report. So absolute clarity. You are saying it is perfectly possible, in your opinion, to do this without running the risks that Mr Wilson indicated?

Mr O'Neill: Oh, yes. In fact, there are loads of issues where the prisoners in the separated regime are treated differently.

Q510 Sammy Wilson: You have not pointed out that they volunteered for this.

Mr O'Neill: That is correct, yes.

Q511 Sammy Wilson: So they can opt out?

Mr O'Neill: Yes, but they did not volunteer to lose their human rights in the process.

Q512 Sammy Wilson: But they can opt out of it?

Professor McWilliams: One of the issues, Mr Wilson, the prisoners mentioned to us was that when Steele did his report the report was basically around safety and the point was made that one would not expect them to live next door and get on, and therefore when they are in prison being in cells that are close and where they were engaging with each other was leading to obviously a lack of stability inside the prison and he recommended that they be separated for their own safety, and that was the ground. When we have visited them and spoken to them they have said that when they signed up they were being told that the regime would be similar but separate from that which they have been accustomed to in Maghaberry. They have now said that there has been a deterioration in the provision of services in terms of access to education and access to recreation, and we indeed ourselves observed that. I then paid a visit to the Director-General as a consequence of some of these issues and what is interesting is that Roe House and Bush House are completely separate; Loyalists are in one, Republicans are in the other. We made notes, that is what we were there to do, and we compared because we broke up as two delegations and we went back and made notes. What we found was that they were saying identical things, even though we never crossed each other's paths, and they are very simple things like wanting better access to education. It is very important, whether they are Loyalist, Republican or non-political prisoners of any kind, that they are re-integrated at some stage one day, one hopes, back into the community. That is the whole purpose of providing these facilities, occupational and educational facilities inside prison, and there was a distinct difference in what was being provided. But also we did find the lack of cleanliness raised enormous issues for us. I raised this with the Director-General. Your visit may well be announced, but on the second visit we made we were quite shocked at the lack of hygiene standards that we observed given that these prisoners are eating their food in their own cells, but also the places where they were eating them we observed, and I have to say that the visits we made ourselves where we were meeting them - one was announced and on the second they had not expected us - left a great deal to be desired in relation to cleanliness. When I asked the Director-General why the prisoners are not able to clean, in the same way as they are able to elsewhere in the prison, the same reason was put forward. I think, Mr Wilson, you are quite right, there is a real fear amongst prison officers that one day there may be a return back to the old days. We had to evaluate that and felt that we are in different days now and there is a very strict regime all over Maghaberry, but it does not mean that they are denied the access to the facilities that they should be.

Q513 Chairman: Do you see it as any part of your remit, or even moral obligation, now that the situation has changed so dramatically in Northern Ireland to encourage the prisoners you meet to opt for the non-separated regime? Do you think you could play a part in that and do you think it would be appropriate for you to do so?

Mr O'Neill: I would be of the view that it would not be appropriate for us to be encouraging prisoners about such a thing as a very political decision that they want to make, or a decision based on safety, as they perceive it. While it is in existence as a regime I think it is very important for us to ensure that human rights standards are maintained.

Q514 Chairman: But if the choice of separation is, in your view, leading to a reduction in the human rights which you believe it is your duty to ensure people have, would it not be appropriate for you to encourage the end of that?

Mr O'Neill: Yes, but again, Chairman, you are leading me with this question in a direction which is against the human rights. I started off by setting this in context, that it should not be on the basis of a decision about paramilitary allegiance. It should be on the basis of the right to safety and the right to life, which are human rights principles, and that we should be safeguarding those.

Q515 Mr Campbell: Mr O'Neill, the Committee has received some evidence which indicates that other prisoners are treated somewhat differently to the paramilitary-related prisoners when it comes to the provision of various services. Do you not think, as the Human Rights Commission, if we are moving (which we all hope we are) into a different era when those paramilitary groups to which they have allegiance as prisoners are hopefully going to become a very painful but historic relic of the past, that at some point someone is going to have to say, "That day is now over," particularly if other prisoners feel that they are not treated fairly in relation to some of the services that these other prisoners get? At some point someone has to say, "The era has changed, so now you're going to change along with the era." Do you not think the Human Rights Commission will be pointing that out?

Mr O'Neill: This is the kernel of the question that you were attempting to ask also, Chairman. You are coming right back to the reason for the existence of the division and the reason is, as I stated at the outset, an issue which I would respectfully ask the Committee to do something about. It is based on paramilitary allegiance and not on the human rights basis of safety and the right to life. As long as people feel that they have got this danger hanging over them, no matter which side they belong to or which particular outlook they have, then that is a human right which needs to be protected.

Q516 Mr Campbell: But would the Human Rights Commission not even express a preference in terms of what they would like to see, in terms of whether it is next year or five years from now?

Mr O'Neill: It should be fairly clear that the Human Rights Commission wants to see good standards of human rights for all prisoners, whether they are in the separated regime or not.

Professor McWilliams: We would not want to draw on the example of the prisoners who are isolated for their own protection in the special supervision unit, which comes back to the points which were raised earlier about a small prison estate in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Prison Service actually has told us there is nowhere else to put these prisoners, and so prisoners for their own protection, because of police recommendations - and you may see this when you visit - are being locked up for long, long periods of time in what the prison officers will call themselves punishment blocks, which are technically known as special supervision units, for no other reason than to protect them, to keep them safe. When you go you will visit these prisoners, who have been there not for weeks but months, and indeed the Prison Service predict they will be there for years.

Q517 Mr Campbell: I just want to try and get this point clarified. Both the Prison Officers' Association and some prisoners whom we spoke to indicated in different ways that when there was a problem in the prison preferential treatment of sorts was given to the paramilitary-related prisoners. Now, in my view that would mean that the non-paramilitary-related prisoners were treated differentially and unfavourably. I would have thought the Human Rights Commission should be saying that is unfair. If you accept that that is unfair, then I would have thought you should be saying at some point, given the era that we are in, we should be moving towards a level playing field so that there is no unfavourable treatment to any prisoner, but you do not seem to be saying that?

Dr Moore: That was not our experience. Our experience was that the regime for the separated prisoners was worse and had less services than the regime for the so-called "ordinary" prisoners, particularly, as Professor McWilliams has said, in terms of some of the Loyalist prisoners actually being locked up in what prisoners call the punishment block for months at a time. So if you have evidence of what you are saying, we have not seen that and that certainly has not been our experience in visiting the prison.

Chairman: It is helpful to have your clear views and we obviously will want to take them carefully into account. Can we move on?

Q518 Mr Hepburn: You have just alluded there to these prisoners being locked up in the punishment blocks for long periods of time and in your report you specifically mention the issue of Loyalist prisoners. Can you tell us what the incident was that brought all this about, and if indeed this sort of thing was to happen again what solution would you have?

Dr Moore: The issue of the Loyalist prisoners was not about an incident as such, if I am thinking of the right case. We were concerned about Loyalist prisoners who were locked up for their own safety because the Police had alerted the Prison Service that there was an apparent risk to the men's lives and so for their own safety, rather than any incident, they were put into the punishment block on 23 hour lock-up. Our opinion is that the punishment blocks are not designed for people to stay in for months or years, they are designed for short periods, and even then we would have concerns.

Professor McWilliams: Could I emphasise on that point, picking up Mr Campbell's point, that first of all the Steele report produced this regime and the Prison Service had to respond. Likewise, now the Prison Service has to respond to Police recommendations in terms of risk assessment, and indeed I have engaged with the Chief Constable about this very issue because I think that equally the Police need to be in a position when they do that to collaborate in that way with the Prison Service. They also have to realise the responsibility they are handing over to the Prison Service to keep that individual safe, and indeed there is one individual who now will be in a hospital bed for years, not because he is ill but because it is the only place they can find to keep him safe. So when you asked us that question, Mr Campbell, about whether we would like to see a day when then would not happen, the answer is most certainly yes. Is the prison estate having to accommodate those pressures? The answer is, yes, in response to recommendations either as a result of an inquiry or as a response to Police recommendations telling them that the right to life could be jeopardised here. That is the pressure which the prison estate is under. We then, as Human Rights Commissioners, have to come in and argue, are the human rights standards then being met as a consequence? That is the evaluation which we have to give.

Chairman: That is a very helpful clarification.

Q519 Mr Fraser: You were just talking about the whole issue of the rights of individuals. I sat on the Council of Europe for two years and this whole issue came up on a very regular basis. What is your assessment as to our ability to fulfil our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights as compared with other European countries? Are we doing it well, properly, inadequately, or what level of effectiveness is there?

Professor McWilliams: Clearly our report on the two investigations that we have undertaken would show that in relation to the imprisonment of women and in the comparisons which have been made elsewhere we are falling behind. That is the investigation that we have undertaken in relation to women in prison, and Linda obviously has visited other European countries, either at the request of the Council of Europe or at the request of the UN, and probably could speak more authoritatively on that.

Dr Moore: There is clearly a concern both in England and Wales, and also in Northern Ireland, about deaths in prison, which obviously relates to Article 2 and the concerns around Article 3 particularly in relation to conditions in the punishment blocks, and also the situation of prisoners not having adequate sanitation in the cells. We have a particular concern in relation to Magilligan, in relation to Article 2, where we are concerned about the use of a single buzzer for both access to the toilet and emergencies.

Q520 Mr Fraser: Is the evidence you have (in terms of the evidence you have just given) in terms of the difference between us and the rest of Europe or is this just hearsay, because I have heard a different point of view when I have sat on committees in the Council of Europe as to our ability to implement our obligations?

Dr Moore: There would be different concerns in different countries, and certainly Monica mentioned that I was recently on a visit to a prison in Warsaw, for example, and this may be an anecdote but it shows how different countries do things differently. We were watching visits and I asked why were the visitors not being searched coming in and the governor was saying, "Have you no respect for human rights in your country? Visitors haven't done anything. How could we possibly search a visitor?" So there are different issues in different countries. We are particularly concerned about the issue of children and there is clear evidence that Britain is locking up more children than other countries, but in terms of deaths in custody I do not have figures to hand for you on Europe.

Q521 Mr Fraser: Two questions specifically on healthcare. This report says the transfer of responsibility for prison healthcare from the Prison Service to the Health Department provides a unique opportunity to bring about positive change in prisoners' healthcare. Can you explain what those opportunities are and tell us some of the things you see happening?

Dr Moore: Some of the things that we see happening - and we were able to sit through the last few minutes of your previous visitors' evidence, the IMB, and certainly we share their concerns around prescribing. It is something which came up in the research of women coming in on one prescription and then it being reduced. So we would hope that there is continuity between the care that people are getting and the prescribing that they are getting in the community. Communication is an important issue, so we would hope that there will be more communication between prison health services and health services in the community over individual prisoners. We would also hope that in terms of clinical governance it will be an opportunity to improve those issues and that there will be greater accountability in terms of clinical governance.

Professor McWilliams: We have actually met with the Director of the Eastern Health and Social Services Board to communicate our findings and to see how we could best help to take forward the recommendations now that the Health Service is taking over the provision and we are continuing those meetings with short leave and detention, just as the policing group will be meeting the head of the trust which has responsibility for Maghaberry and for Hydebank. A number of issues were raised by the IMB. There is only one psychiatrist and you heard him speak about the issue of personality disorders, and Dr Moore picked that up earlier. It is our belief that these women - and I have no doubt the men - are entering custody rather than places of care as a consequence of being of harm to themselves or others, and personality disorders is a big issue because of the mental health legislation. The Bamford review also in Northern Ireland mental health provides an opportunity for the Northern Ireland Assembly to address this through new mental health legislation, to actually bring this issue in and not have it excluded, so that psychiatrists in future will be able to address this. You also heard them say that there is only one place outside Northern Ireland and we have had to take a number of cases in relation to that. It is called Caselles in England. It is very expensive but it is not in Northern Ireland and the issue for us there is that it is time we addressed this issue. The Prison Service has addressed it with the Director-General and I understand also the governor in Maghaberry is addressing this, what can we do about the issue of people with personality disorders, and we certainly hope that the provision of more psychiatrists and cognitive behaviour therapists inside the prison will help. It needs to happen soon, but it can be picked up in the community. Brian Coulter concluded his report yesterday which he sent me, the Prisoner Ombudsman, on the issue of the young man who died through an epileptic attack and there he raised exactly the same issue you heard earlier about the practice of reducing the medication. He actually has come to the conclusion that the medical practitioner was inexperienced in doing that, and indeed the neurologist came to the same conclusion. Given that we have such a high number of people with epilepsy inside prisons, this is an issue. Are the people trained? Are they the best placed? Is the healthcare different from what would be provided outside? Is it of a different and lower standard? It is my belief the Health Service have some very serious issues now to address.

Chairman: We will certainly be taking all these points into account. We will be taking some of them up on Monday when we are at Maghaberry. Thank you very much. Could we move on to Mr Campbell?

Q522 Mr Campbell: Just a couple of brief questions on the issue of prison conditions. It has already been alluded to in passing, I think, about the buzzer problem. In relation to Magilligan and Hydebank Wood, you have made, as I say, passing reference to the issue of a single buzzer for use in emergencies. In-cell sanitation at both locations appears to be a problem. If you could quantify that or grade that in terms of the seriousness of it, where would you put it? How serious is it?

Dr Moore: There is not a hierarchy of rights in that sense, in that if not having the toilet in the cell is potentially a breach of Article 3, depending on the person's circumstances, then that is a very grave breach. Clearly, with regard to the right to life, if a person dies that is a very grave breach. What we want to avoid is the Prison Service saying, "Look, there's only a limited amount of money. Do you want this, or do you want the toilets in the cells, or do you want the buzzers?" What we are saying is that these are fundamental human rights which need to be met and that that will cost money. If you read the report here, certainly in terms of the toilets in the cells in Hydebank Wood it is a very serious issue for the women. As we said here, we are very alarmed about the issue of the buzzers in Magilligan.

Q523 Mr Campbell: If the issue became one of trying to provide proper in-cell sanitation at Magilligan and at Hydebank Wood (particularly at Magilligan, but both) and, because of cost factors, the provision of limited rebuild, which may or may not be entirely satisfactory, would you be saying that that would be sufficient to meet the requirements or would you be saying, "In our opinion, it is bad enough to warrant a complete and total rebuild at both sites"?

Professor McWilliams: Hydebank is a separate issue. If you are asking about Hydebank, what we have called for is a discrete and separate facility for the reasons we have already explained. The concern is, as Mr Fraser has already pointed out, that in terms of the Council of Europe's standards it is a very dangerous situation to have a buzzer doing two things, one to tell you that your life is threatened and one to tell you that somebody urgently needs to be let out, particularly during the night, to go to the toilet. The Prison Service itself is saying it is having to make all kinds of decisions in that situation. We are saying that as it currently stands it has to be changed.

Dr Moore: If you are asking whether Magilligan is inadequate, then clearly yes, it is.

Chairman: But your concern is not with the expensive buildings, and so on, your remit is to see that a certain standard of human rights, as you interpret it, is provided and if that is infringed then you say so, and we of course have to take that into account, evaluate that and make our recommendations accordingly. Mr Murphy, did you have any final questions?

Q524 Mr Murphy: Yes, Chairman. You have actually covered most of the points I intended to raise. However, if you could perhaps clarify two further points? One is that strip searching by its very nature is degrading, both to the prisoner and I am sure to the staff. Mr O'Neill commented on the perhaps inappropriate and unnecessary use of strip searching. Under what circumstances would you agree that strip searching would be necessary?

Dr Moore: We have said in our report here that it should be on the basis of individual assessment and only where either the safety of the person who is being searched is threatened or someone else's safety is potentially threatened. What we are arguing is that it should not be routine or random strip searching, that it should only be where individual risk assessments deem it necessary.

Professor McWilliams: Again, in terms of Mr Fraser's response, we have attempted to look at it, and indeed it may be something the Committee wants to take on board, to make that comparison with prisons elsewhere. Again, my experience in Dochas was that I was extremely surprised because it was a women's prison, but I asked that question and when we went to visit Dungavel, which is the holding centre for detainees, there is no strip searching. So it is only when you do those comparisons that you become accustomed to what you expect to be custom and practice, until you realise that it is actually not proportionate, nor indeed has it anything to do with the standard of being of absolute necessity. So again we make this point to the Northern Ireland Prison Service: would it not be much better to have a risk assessment protocol in place than to be doing this on such a routine basis? What we have found is that individuals are coming in for very short periods of time and, as you can imagine, due to the culture of Northern Ireland, and indeed for others, to be strip naked - and although the Prison Service say it is a half and half search, a half body search, quite frequently that is not how they feel because they often feel that it is a complete strip search - it is one of the things that comes across in the report as being hugely traumatic at reception to have that for women who have never crossed a prison door and may be in for defaulting on a fine, for a t.v. licence, or whatever. Our point on that was that surely in this day and age we should be starting to risk assess those individuals? I know it is to keep drugs out of prison, but again we need to do a proper risk assessment.

Chairman: You make a powerful point and you make it very eloquently. Thank you very much indeed. You have given us clear evidence. Your views are very emphatic, as one would understand, and we appreciate the work you are seeking to do and we will obviously take most carefully into account what you have said today and what you have said in the report, specifically about the women's prisons, and if there are other points which occur to you which you feel you should have told us or we should have asked you, we will be dealing with this inquiry for some little time yet and any supplementary evidence can be sent to the clerk. Thank you very much indeed, and I wish you a very safe flight home.