UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 143

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

WELSH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

WELSH PRISONERS IN THE PRISON ESTATE

Tuesday 8 December 2009

RT HON MARIA EAGLE MP and MR JOHN ASPINALL

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 94

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 8 December 2009

Members present

Dr Hywel Francis, in the Chair

Nia Griffith

Mr David Jones

Mr Martyn Jones

Alun Michael

Albert Owen

Hywel Williams

Mark Williams

________________

Witnesses: Maria Eagle MP, Minister of State, Ministry of Justice and Mr John Aspinall, Director for Estate Capacity, National Offender Management Service, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good morning and welcome to the Welsh Affairs Committee on Welsh prisoners in the Prison Estate. Minister, could you introduce yourself and your colleague please?

Maria Eagle: Good morning, Chairman. I am Maria Eagle, the Minister of State, the minister responsible for prisons in the Ministry of Justice; and I have John Aspinall with me and I will leave him to say what it is that he does.

Mr Aspinall: I am the Director of State Capacity in the National Offender Management Service.

Chairman: Thank you very much for that. I will ask Nia Griffith to ask the first question.

Q2 Nia Griffith: Welcome to the Committee. Can I ask you first of all, do you accept the need for a prison in North Wales?

Maria Eagle: We accept that there is a shortage of spaces in North Wales for prisoners, offenders who are sent to prison from North Wales and we accept that across Wales as a whole there is a shortfall of about 1,500 places; so there are 1,500 fewer places than there are prisoners with Welsh addresses who have been sent into custody; so, yes.

Q3 Nia Griffith: Do you accept that in South Wales there may be other solutions that would be worth exploring, particularly for vulnerable women, which could be rolled out from a different source, perhaps?

Maria Eagle: Indeed we do accept that and we have had a policy over the last two years, since Jean Corston's report into vulnerable women in prison, of trying to divert those who are not serious or dangerous offenders from custody where that is appropriate. I am the champion for women in the common law justice system and my department, led by my push on this, has been providing money for new community provision that we hope will enable sentencers to have confidence that where it is not necessary to send vulnerable women to prison there are alternatives in the community to which they can send them instead. Only 3% of women prisoners are categorised as high risk of harm as opposed to 11% of men. So whilst obviously some women offenders are dangerous and do need to be sent to prison, many are not and we believe that alternative provision is appropriate. There is alternative provision which we fund in South Wales, the Women's Turnaround Project, and we are starting to fund some developing provision in North Wales as well that we hope would enable us to take forward that policy. There are only a very small number of women from North Wales who have been sent into custody at present, Chairman, of the order of about 35 or so - it varies from day to day, but a small number.

Q4 Alun Michael: Could I take up one other general issue about prisoners in Wales or prisoners from Wales before we come to some more specific issues? Parc Prison is Wales' only generic training prison and I am sure you would agree that education and training is essential to reducing the likelihood of reoffending by prisoners once they are released. What that means is that Welsh prisoners very often have to go outside Wales in order to have educational opportunities. How are you addressing that issue for the future?

Maria Eagle: The only way that we can address that completely satisfactorily is to build more provision in Wales, which is why we accept that there is a need, particularly in the north. As the Committee will know, we are extending places at Parc which will help deal with some of the shortfall in places in South Wales, but that does not really help the North Wales' situation. The only way we could do that properly would be to find a suitable site and build, as we are hoping and planning to do, in North Wales.

Q5 Alun Michael: There are also quite important issues about the way that prisons operate and the role of the prison officer, which have been raised in the Justice Select Committee's recent report. Is that something you feel likely to be able to respond to positively, particularly, for instance, the educational opportunity for prison officers?

Maria Eagle: Obviously I gave evidence to the Justice Committee and read their report with interest, and obviously we want to respond as positively as we can to the points that they made. Clearly one of the most important influences on offenders once they are in custody is the people that they deal with on a day-to-day basis - the prison officers and staff inside the prisons - and one of the keys to success in people turning their lives around is those relationships. So it is important, we accept fully, that they are as positive as possible and as informed as possible and as well trained as possible to do as good a job as possible. I do think that there have been big improvements over the last few years in this respect, particularly in terms of offender learning where we have seen a 15-fold increase in resourcing going into offender learning, where we have enabled offenders now to do proper, real qualifications instead of in the past, before the Offender Learning and Skills Service went into our prisons, quite often people would do courses that did not lead to qualifications and that were not recognised outside, and that is not as helpful in terms of reducing re-offending and giving people an opportunity to turn their lives around whilst they are in custody as providing a provision which actually is recognised outside. Some of the changes we are now proceeding to make to our offender learning provision - there are constraints with short sentences, people cannot finish courses even if they are available - will assist with that because we are moving to much more modular arrangements which will allow people who are even perhaps remanded for a short period of time to do some work towards a module, towards a qualification that actually they will be able to take away with them and it will mean something elsewhere. That, I think, is entirely positive.

Q6 Hywel Williams: Very briefly, how is offender training through the medium of Welsh provided? For example, computer training in my area requires you to be able to work through the medium of Welsh, so is that provided for? Secondly, offender training for young offenders? There was possibly an inaccurate report in the local press of a young man from my constituency who could scarcely speak English, as a young offender being held in England and his Welsh medium education therefore being interrupted. That is just one case and I would not want to argue anything from that, but perhaps you can give some evidence on this.

Maria Eagle: Of course I am happy to take up any individual instances where Members come across of that kind of thing because that is clearly a concern and a big issue for that individual. I do think that it would be fair to say, Chairman, that our capacity to deal with the medium of Welsh in the system across the whole of the country is certainly not developed; there is more that we need to do. Clearly having a prison in North Wales would enable us to focus some of the extra support that would assist in that respect in the place where it is needed. I think that would be one of the advantages of us being able to find a place in North Wales that we could use to build more capacity.

Q7 Mr Martyn Jones: Minister, could a prison built in North Wales provide a boost to the economy and how many job opportunities would it create?

Maria Eagle: Prisons do provide a boost to local economies. One of the reasons is because they provide jobs and the jobs that they provide are usually recruited locally - the vast majority are recruited locally. And because the entire system is expanding it is not as if we would be moving people from somewhere else - we are recruiting in that respect to our new prisons, and clearly it is best to recruit locally. So there would be the economic impact of good, pensionable jobs depending on the size of the prison. The number of staff that one would have is directly related to the size of the prison and so the bigger the prison - this is a crude way of putting it - the more jobs that will be created. We would be able to provide the Committee with calculations - I do not know if John has them with him - that indicate the economic impact that we would foresee from different sized prisons. Obviously we are looking to build prisons of approximately 1,500 at present. So we would be very happy to provide the Committee with that. As well as the jobs we do of course procure other services and some of those would also be likely to come from local business. John, do you want to add anything?

Mr Aspinall: Just as a rough ballpark figure for a 600 to a 900-place prison something like 400 full time equivalence and we think about £7 million in the local economy.

Q8 Mr Martyn Jones: Mark Polin, the new Chief Constable in North Wales, has expressed some concerns about the need to visit inmates for reasons of justice - to collect them for interview and so on. Also that many of the population speak Welsh, as has been mentioned already. Have you met with him to discuss the logistics of handling inmates in this way?

Maria Eagle: I have not met with him. I do not know whether or not any of my officials have had contact. I doubt it, would be my answer; but I can certainly check.

Mr Aspinall: Not that I am aware.

Q9 Mr Martyn Jones: But you are aware obviously of the problems of picking people up.

Mr Aspinall: We are conscious of prisoners in North Wales that the average distance is about 70 miles, which is a lot higher than other distances; so we are conscious of that issue as we look for the new site in North Wales.

Q10 Mark Williams: Can I turn now to the emergence of the Caernarfon site and then with its withdrawal. The Caernarfon site was selected from four possible sites, which included one in Wrexham at the Firestone factory. Why initially was Caernarfon chosen over the Wrexham option?

Maria Eagle: We have a list of criteria against which sites are measured and we compare them in that way. This decision was made before I was the minister in charge of this and so I do not have any personal knowledge of the precise nature of the comparison that was made. But that is the normal process; we have a list of criteria and we weigh up sites against it. John might like to add something in respect of this particular site search.

Mr Aspinall: The Wrexham site I think scored slightly higher than the Caernarfon site and the differences were about things to do with being in the green belt, things about how close to the urban area; but they were both good scores. Some of the factors being considered were the distances in relation to courts, some of the Welsh language issues and the issues about support or not depending on community views, because David Hanson, the former minister, ran the national public debate and got a lot of information about views about the different sites. So there was a whole lot of information to come to that decision.

Q11 Mark Williams: None the less, the announcement was made on 5 February regarding the new prison and that announcement, the release of that press release had been made before the substantive negotiations at least had happened with the owners of the site. Expectations were dramatic - I think excitement would be the word - in parts of Wales at the announcement and that was unfortunate, was it not?

Maria Eagle: I think with hindsight the fact that we announced the preferred site ahead of due diligence - although the announcement did make it clear that the choosing of the site was subject to due diligence working out satisfactorily - I do accept that announcing the preferred site in the way in which we did raised expectations that we would be building on that site, yes.

Q12 Hywel Williams: Minister, you say in your letter to our Chairman that the Dynamex site "does not lend itself to prison development". Could you explain what you mean by that?

Maria Eagle: Yes. Our due diligence process which commenced after the site was announced as our preferred site - and the decision was always subject to due diligence - threw up issues which were more serious than had been anticipated. For example, we knew that there was contamination on the site before the announcement in February but we did not have a full picture that the remediation necessary was much more extensive than had been thought; that the costs of that remediation were much higher; and some of the environmental and legal issues which the due diligence process exposed were much more serious than had been anticipated. So consequently once we looked much more closely it became apparent to us that the site in fact was not suitable for prison development in the way in which we had hoped it would be and that was why in September we made the decision we did to withdraw our interest in the site. There was also an issue with price and with the value for money issues, as well as those extra liabilities and technical issues that the due diligence process threw up.

Q13 Hywel Williams: Bluefield Caernarfon, the company, is now looking at further options, including housing and leisure.

Maria Eagle: Yes.

Q14 Hywel Williams: I do not expect you to answer on their behalf, of course, but how can they be doing that if it is not acceptable as a prison site? I might even ask you would you be happy to buy a house there?

Maria Eagle: I am going to ask John to come in and give you some technical reasons why that might be, but just to say generally that the prison development would cover most of the entire part of the site and we believe that the remediation that would be necessary for that would be more extensive than the remediation that would be necessary for careful development in other ways of things like residential and retail; but perhaps I can ask John to give you some fuller details.

Mr Aspinall: We provided copies of plans to the Committee and I do not know if that is helpful or not. What that shows is the prison layout in relation to the site.

Maria Eagle: I hope that Members have seen these maps because we sent them over specifically to assist Members in their consideration of this.

Q15 Chairman: Yes, we have them.

Maria Eagle: There are three different maps.

Mr Aspinall: We have a map showing the parcels of land, a map showing some of the constraints and then we have a plan at the bottom showing the layout that we developed before the announcement in February, to show how we could accommodate a 600 or a 900-place prison on the site. That layout intrudes into the landfill site and that is principally the difference. As soon as we have to go in there and excavate the landfill site then we have to do all the remediation, is what it amounts to. Different developments would not necessarily have to go into that part of the site or do that kind of remediation.

Q16 Hywel Williams: From the third map, clearly it does not say a huge amount but that would mean that the engineered landfill site on the left hand side of the second map would have to be excavated rather than capped - I think was one of the options.

Mr Aspinall: Atkins are advising us that as we have to put the layout above both of the landfill areas we would have to remove that contaminated material off site and that is quite a big earthworks operation to do that. That is why the remediation cost is so high.

Q17 Alun Michael: Just a quick question: surely that would affect the price of the site rather than ruling it out?

Maria Eagle: Yes, but the guide price and the price which the landowners suggested that they were looking at was between £12 million and £24 million. Our technical and legal advice was that with the remediation necessary to make the site suitable to build the prison that the land value was in fact negative, so we were a very long way away, the owners of the site and ourselves, from even being in the same ballpark in respect of the value. We did have a process whereby we were very open with the landowners; we told them the assumptions that had been made about value. They asserted the value that they believed was correct but were not as open as we might have hoped in respect of telling us the basis upon which they valued the land and the way in which they did it.

Q18 Alun Michael: It was not the condition of the land as such; it was a dead end in terms of there being anywhere to go in terms of value?

Maria Eagle: It was not only that because there was a mixture of more serious problems in respect of the land and our legal advice suggested that some of the ownership issues - you will see, for example, the map that is headed "Site Ownership Parcels" that there are a number of parcels. The landowners told us that they owned one parcel - that is the Bluefield parcel, the big parcel that is edged purple - and controlled the other parcels, the Lendline parcel and Trevor's parcel. In fact there were other legal constraints in respect of those two parcels which made it a much more complicated legal issue than had been anticipated originally. If Members can see that pink line between the Lendline parcel and part of the Bluefield parcel, which if we look at the map of our prison layout would be right in the middle of the site that is unregistered land of unknown ownership; so there is a quite complicated legal issue there. Clearly we would not want to build something across that and then have an owner arrive who told us that it was theirs. So this was a much more complicated legal, technical and environmental issue than we had hoped it would be at the beginning of the process.

Q19 Hywel Williams: Did you have any information from Bluefield as to the potential ownership of that piece of land? It seems strange to me that they might be offering a site to you without telling you clearly who owns all of it. Did you enter into negotiations with Bluefield at all?

Mr Aspinall: Before the announcement was made we knew from Bluefield that they owned one parcel, the main Bluefield parcel, and that their language was that they had "control" over the other two parcels; so they had options on the other two parcels. That is what we knew. After the announcement we appointed Pinsent Masons to look at a lot of the legal issues and then this is the information that has come out as part of that process in terms of some of the conditions that are attached to various parcels on the site.

Q20 Hywel Williams: Would you in the normal course of events when acquiring parcels of land actually enquire about what "control" means before making an announcement?

Mr Aspinall: It was one of those things that we needed to investigate and sort out. It is often true of a development that there are options on plots of land, to pull all that together. If I could quote what Pinsent Masons said to me about the level of complexity here, which was that if you had unlimited time and money it is not impossible to resolve all these issues. It would take months, if not years to resolve them. And I tested them on a level of complexity with zero as the simplest and ten as the most complex and they said that eight was the kind of number that they were thinking of in terms of complexity. So there is an awful lot of detail behind some of these parcels that can make it very difficult.

Q21 Hywel Williams: Can you therefore address the point that Bluefield claim that no negotiations took place about the price of the site?

Mr Aspinall: There was an awful lot of discussion about the value after the announcement and in our processes our valuers talked to Bluefield and talked to their valuers and it was quite a robust process of discussion. After two or three months we were not really getting very far and that was the moment when we appointed the District Valuer to come in and try and do an independent valuation. The idea would be that having come to a view about the valuation we could either make an offer or not make an offer on price - but based on that information.

Q22 Hywel Williams: At what point, therefore, did you come to the conclusion that it did not represent value for money? Can you give us a date?

Maria Eagle: We came to that conclusion just before we announced that we were not pursuing our interest in the site. Ministers would have had advice from officials about where we were with all of these issues and took a decision that we announced pretty swiftly after having made the decision in September that we now did not believe it was possible or value for money to build a prison on that particular site because of these added complications thrown up by the due diligence process.

Mr Aspinall: The valuation given to us by the District Valuer was a significantly negative sum.

Maria Eagle: The District Valuer - to give you the numbers - valued the site at minus £5.7 million to minus £7.9 million. That would have taken account of the full remediation and demolition costs as our own due diligence process suggested we required in order to build a prison. The guide price that BCL were looking for was between £12 million and £24 million and there is a significant difference.

Q23 Hywel Williams: They make the point and they say that it is no more contaminated than any other brownfield site, and I understand that prisons are usually built on brownfield sites, are they not? They also say that they offered to clear the waste and also to accept any liability into the future if you came to an agreement about price. Is that the case or not?

Maria Eagle: They did make various offers to remediate the land but we had no common understanding between us about what remediation meant. They meant remediation of a certain kind. Our technical advice and legal advice was very strongly that the remediation that was needed was much more extensive. This is a complex site in terms of its contamination. It might assist the Committee for Mr Aspinall to go through some of the contamination that there is on this site, if you wish to hear how complicated it is.

Mr Aspinall: In the Lendline parcel there is asbestos. There is an engineered cell where asbestos was placed in trenches. There are other things in there - phenols. We have had methane being monitored. There is a whole range of contaminants - we could give a list of what has been found. The sorts of remediation that our consulting engineers were proposing was excavating about 60,000 cubic metres of material and taking it offsite, and I think the nearest site that we could take it to was somewhere like Chorley in Lancashire. This was a very expensive operation. That was not the only thing we had to do. So it was the scale of the remediation that led to such a lot of cost.

Q24 Hywel Williams: The impression I had been given previously was that the cost effective and acceptable solution was just to cap it as to where it was, rather than to remove it. Was there a change in opinion within your department from the time previous to the announcement to when you came to your final decision? Did you change your minds from capping to the removal?

Mr Aspinall: No. We were told before the announcement in February that remediation would be less than £1 million. After we had started our due diligence, after the announcement is when our consulting engineers came up with the scale of what that remediation would have to be. We accept that this is the remediation needed for a prison development and there may be other developments that do not need that level of remediation; but it is clear from the plan of the prison that we need to go into that area and as soon as you need to go into that area you need to excavate the foundations and all sorts of things and we have to address then the issue of the contamination that is in there.

Q25 Hywel Williams: So who told you it would be £1 million?

Maria Eagle: The owners of the site estimated that that is what the remediation would cost, and this was before we had done our due diligence in the detail in which one would expect us to do it if we were going to spend millions of pounds building a prison on the site.

Q26 Mr David Jones: Returning to the issue of due diligence work, if we look at the timescale here I think that the Ministry first approached the owners of the land in the summer of 2008; is that not right?

Maria Eagle: That sounds about the right time.

Mr Aspinall: I think we had four meetings with them before the announcement, yes; I think beginning in the summer.

Q27 Mr David Jones: And there was a further meeting at the Marriott Hotel in Liverpool on 10 December; were you present at that meeting?

Mr Aspinall: I was not but there were NOMS' officials at that meeting.

Q28 Mr David Jones: That was I think probably the most substantive meeting in terms of agreeing that you would progress the potential acquisition of this site from the landowners; is that not right?

Mr Aspinall: There are file notes of those meetings and my understanding of that meeting that the main issue was to confirm that BCL was still willing to sell the site. That was the main issue at the meeting.

Q29 Mr David Jones: At that stage officials from the Ministry were provided with a CD which contained a copy of a site investigation that had been undertaken on behalf of the landowners.

Mr Aspinall: Some information, yes, but that was the WSP site investigation and that site investigation was just for the Bluefield parcel and not for the Lendline parcel.

Q30 Mr David Jones: So that did not relate to the most contaminated area of the site, is that right?

Mr Aspinall: No, we did not get that information until after the announcement - it was part of the due diligence process, that is my understanding of what we were provided.

Q31 Mr David Jones: The due diligence work was organised on your behalf by Atkins and we have been provided with a copy of a draft report dated May 2009.

Mr Aspinall: Yes, that is the report.

Q32 Mr David Jones: This is clearly not the final copy, given that it is called the draft report - there must have been a later report, is that right?

Mr Aspinall: I am not aware that there was a later report actually.

Q33 Mr David Jones: So you relied upon the draft report?

Mr Aspinall: We relied on that report, is my understanding.

Q34 Mr David Jones: As the final copy.

Mr Aspinall: It is quite normal to be given a copy of a report with "draft" on it.

Q35 Mr David Jones: I am not making any criticism of that. That is dated May 2009.

Mr Aspinall: Yes.

Q36 Mr David Jones: So as far as the Ministry was concerned, as far as the physical characteristics of the site were concerned this was the report upon which you relied in deciding not to proceed with the acquisition?

Mr Aspinall: That was part of the package. The other issues were from the Pinsent Masons' advice ---

Q37 Mr David Jones: Sorry, before we get on to that - Pinsent Masons are the legal issues.

Mr Aspinall: Yes but they also advised on some of the environmental liabilities attached to what was found in the Atkins' report.

Q38 Mr David Jones: I understand. So this was dated May and you did not make your announcement that you were not proceeding until September.

Maria Eagle: That is right.

Mr Aspinall: There was a whole series of gathering information together that came in at different dates, and then putting advice together.

Q39 Mr David Jones: I think that after this report was received by you there was a meeting between you, Minister, and your officials and representatives of the landowners at your office?

Maria Eagle: Indeed. I met the landowners at their request because I thought it would be impolite not to and there was a meeting in my office in London, yes, ahead of the final decision having been made.

Q40 Mr David Jones: That was in August.

Maria Eagle: It was in early August I recall; I could provide the Committee with the precise date.

Q41 Mr David Jones: During the course of that meeting you gave no indication to the landowners that you were not proceeding with the acquisition of the site.

Maria Eagle: The decision had not been made at that stage; I made it clear to them that the decision had not been made and told them that I would get back to them as soon as a decision had been made.

Q42 Mr David Jones: You had, according to your memorandum, announced on 27 April that five new 1,500-place prisons would be built by 2014.

Maria Eagle: Yes.

Q43 Mr David Jones: Were those over and above the 800 or so places that would be available at Caernarfon?

Maria Eagle: The commitment that we are proceeding to meet in various ways, including building and extending existing prisons is to get to 96,000 places by 2014; so all of our developments at present are a part of the plan to get to that level.

Q44 Mr David Jones: What I am trying to ascertain is how an 800-place prison in Caernarfon would fit in with that overall scheme that you have just mentioned. Would they be superfluous to requirements, taking into account the decision to construct five new 1,500-place prisons in April 2009?

Maria Eagle: No. They would have made a contribution, had they been able to build on that site, say, to that commitment to 96,000 places and it would have had the merit of enabling us to provide places in North Wales where there is currently an acknowledged shortfall.

Q45 Mr David Jones: So on that basis had you proceeded with the 800-place prison in Caernarfon would it have been the case that you would then have been looking for maybe another prison of similar size and four 1,500-place prisons?

Maria Eagle: Part of our commitment to the 96,000 places is to overbuild in order to take out some very poor, old prison places which we would really like to retire from use because they are not suitable in the modern world. So it would have enabled us to contribute towards taking out older places. We are building to get to 96,000 places.

Q46 Mr David Jones: So on that basis are you telling the Committee that you would have been pursuing an 800-place prison in Caernarfon and another five 1,500-place prisons?

Maria Eagle: I think it is perfectly possible that we would have been doing that, yes.

Q47 Mr David Jones: Surely you are in a position as Minister to say whether it was the case or not? It is not a question of what was possible; what was your intention?

Maria Eagle: The intention is to get to 96,000 places by 2014 in various ways and to enable us to withdraw some of our older unsuitable places across the estate in England and Wales that we would rather not keep people in at present. There are various different ways in which one might get to that level by the fixed date. My capacity building programme, led by John and his team, has various schemes underway at any one particular time, some of which happen and some of which do not.

Q48 Mr David Jones: So it is not the case, you are saying, that you had a change of policy which rendered an 800-place prison in Caernarfon redundant and surplus to requirements?

Maria Eagle: No.

Q49 Mr David Jones: Thank you.

Maria Eagle: That was not a part of our decision-making process. The reason why we decided to withdraw our interest in this particular site, as I have said, is because of the legal and technical value for money issues that our due diligence exposed about this particular site.

Q50 Mr David Jones: Were any soil tests carried out on the land?

Maria Eagle: You mean as part of the due diligence process?

Q51 Mr David Jones: Yes.

Maria Eagle: We did not carry out soil tests and I would like John to explain to the Committee why.

Mr Aspinall: We looked at the WSP work that had been done where they had carried out trial pits window sampling on the site and Atkins referred to the work that Mott MacDonald's soil mechanics had done on the landfill site. So we already had information from existing soil surveys.

Q52 Mr David Jones: When did you get the Mott MacDonald information?

Mr Aspinall: After the announcement in February as part of our due diligence process.

Q53 Mr David Jones: And who provided that to you?

Mr Aspinall: It would have been provided by BCL I presume.

Q54 Mr David Jones: By the landowners?

Mr Aspinall: Yes, presumably. Lendline are the owners of the site.

Q55 Mr David Jones: By the prospective vendors?

Mr Aspinall: I am presuming, yes.

Q56 Mr David Jones: So you had the WSP information relating to the factory site and the Lendline in December?

Mr Aspinall: No, sorry ---

Q57 Mr David Jones: Was that not part of the CD that was provided to you?

Mr Aspinall: We had the information in December about WSP; we did not have the Mott MacDonald soil mechanics' information until after the announcement.

Q58 Mr David Jones: That is right. So you had the WSP information in December?

Mr Aspinall: We did.

Q59 Mr David Jones: And subsequently after the announcement in February you had the Mott MacDonald information?

Mr Aspinall: Yes, it is Mott MacDonald's soil mechanics. There were soil surveys taken out as part of both of those ground investigations and Atkins relied on looking at those soil investigations. We had some concern about going on to the site. Clearly it would have taken some weeks; it might have delayed the decision-making. There were also issues about future liabilities of us going into that site and disturbing it as there is a minor aquifer under the site and we were concerned about potential liabilities that might have arisen if we had gone on there and done intrusive surveys. And effectively we knew a lot of information from all the ground investigation.

Q60 Mr David Jones: And a lot of information was provided to you as long ago as December.

Mr Aspinall: The WSP information but most of the contamination issues are associated with the landfill, which we did not have until after the announcement.

Q61 Mr David Jones: Some £324,000 plus VAT has been spent on exploring this site in terms of due diligence work; is that right?

Maria Eagle: That is not an accurate figure. The actual expenditure to date on due diligence is £228,261 plus VAT. The figure you quote is a figure given by the department in freedom of information, which was compiled last year and it took - to try and be as open as possible - our full budget for the due diligence work in respect of this site, and not all of that has been spent in fact.

Q62 Mr David Jones: Who was that money paid to? Clearly Atkins, but who else?

Maria Eagle: That money was paid to Pinsent Masons for the work they did in respect of the legal ownership and legal issues and environmental issues; to Lambert Smith Hampton, our land agents and valuers; to Atkins, our environmental team of people; and to the Valuation Office Agency who did the independent valuation of the value of the land.

Q63 Mr David Jones: Are you able to provide the Committee with a breakdown of that?

Maria Eagle: Yes.

Mr David Jones: Thank you.

Q64 Albert Owen: If I can move forward to potential bids for the future. You have given a previous response to a question there about where you see the prison estate in the future. Specifically with North Wales how many bids have you received so far?

Maria Eagle: I believe we have had at least four, although that may not be the entirely up-to-date position. As the Committee knows, we have asked landowners in four large areas across England and Wales to come forward with sites that they might like to offer up. I think that we have had some 30 or so potential sites suggested to us across those four areas and the last time I looked we had four in respect of North Wales. We are very happy to receive more.

Q65 Albert Owen: Just clarification on something you touched on. You are looking for bids for a capacity of 1,500?

Maria Eagle: Yes.

Q66 Albert Owen: You are no longer considering 600 to 900 as a possible site in North Wales?

Maria Eagle: We are looking at present for bids for a 1,500-place prison and those are the sites we are looking to; we are looking to have the capacity within any site that we consider for that size of prison.

Q67 Albert Owen: And it would be a single build; it would not be a phased development?

Maria Eagle: It would be a single build. Many of our prison sites have space in which further building can take place and in fact some of the extension to our capacity that we have been able to produce over the last few years has been building new house blocks within existing prison walls, for example. So it is prudent for us at present to look for sites that have the capacity to be expanded.

Q68 Albert Owen: What specific information are you asking for at this early stage? Is it expressing an interest in the overall site?

Maria Eagle: Indeed. We have a list of the sorts of criteria that we will be considering. We want sites of at least 35 acres, and there is a list of criteria which I am very happy to provide to the Committee if that would be helpful. There is nothing in it that the Committee would find unusual, I do not think, and I would be very happy to provide that full list of criteria against which we will be assessing sites that come forward.

Q69 Albert Owen: Bidders in North Wales have obviously responded to that but are there bidders close to North Wales, in the North West of England, for example, that will be considered alongside them?

Maria Eagle: We have identified four areas where the biggest gaps are in terms of having prison capacity that is relatively close to home for offenders from those areas, and that is North Wales and the North West, Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and basically London. So North Wales and the North West abut and so in that sense, depending on sites that come forward, there is clearly potential to sit on the border or to be closer to the other one. There are various connotations which one might consider, depending upon the sites that are offered up. We are not going out grabbing people's land; we are asking landowners to come forward and put sites to us and in that respect it is dependent upon what comes forward.

Q70 Albert Owen: But would you accept that there is not the need in North Wales on its own for a 1,500 prison capacity?

Maria Eagle: Yes. The shortfall in North Wales is about 800.

Q71 Albert Owen: And we hope that that does not expand too much, as North Wales MPs! But the serious point is that there are cross-border issues here that we have developed as a Committee in many different areas and obviously we looked at the prison estate in Wales in itself, and obviously the flow across which happens now we want to negate. Do you see a flow coming from the North West as well as a possibility to get that 1,500 capacity that you are looking for?

Maria Eagle: That would be possible. Whenever one has criteria and trying to build capacity of something like a prison there is never any one site that is 100% absolutely perfect that meets absolutely all of the criteria 100%. There is always a balancing act of competing demands. So we would expect in respect of any site for it to be very good on some of the criteria and perhaps not quite as perfect in respect of others. Choosing the shortlist of sites is a process of trying to maximise the benefit that one is looking for in respect of all of those criteria when weighed against each other. So clearly having North Wales and the North West abutting provides us with the kinds of opportunities that we do not necessarily have in respect of North Wales and West Yorkshire.

Q72 Albert Owen: I understand that. Just on that, you mentioned the scoring between Caernarfon and Wrexham. Is Wrexham still going to be considered? Are they one of the four bids, are you aware?

Maria Eagle: I think that the Wrexham site is one of the four that has been put forward so far; so clearly we will consider that.

Q73 Albert Owen: And you have received one from my area of Anglesey as well.

Maria Eagle: Indeed.

Q74 Albert Owen: That is one of the four that is in and obviously Denbighshire. Is it possible for you to tell us the four?

Maria Eagle: There are two in Denbighshire, and Anglesey and Wrexham so far; but we are looking for as many as people wish to offer.

Q75 Hywel Williams: Can I ask you about the figure that you quoted of a 35-acre site for a 1,500-place prison? Would that 35 acres contain open land on which you could subsequently build, as you said you might have done and you have done on other sites? Would the 1,500 be 1,500 for ever and a day, or might it be more into the future?

Maria Eagle: It is difficult to predict the future, Mr Williams.

Q76 Hywel Williams: But you will be keeping options open.

Maria Eagle: It must be said that if one has been looking over the past ten or 12 years at the future it has always been extending capacity. We do not predict beyond 2014 and we are trying to get to 96,000 places by 2014; but clearly to the extent that we have arrangements which might allow expansion that might be prudent. Certainly it would be a consideration that we would have in our minds.

Q77 Hywel Williams: How many acres do you need for 800 prisoners? Do you need 35 for that as well?

Maria Eagle: I think we probably would be looking at that; that is the size of site we are looking for at present.

Q78 Hywel Williams: I am looking at these fascinating maps and wonder whether you could have fitted an 800-place prison into part of the site. I am sorry to take you back to Caernarfon but could you fit it in another way, as it were?

Maria Eagle: If you look at this one, it is quite tight.

Q79 Hywel Williams: That is the one I am looking at.

Maria Eagle: That was the 600 to 900 site.

Mr Aspinall: We actually had a couple of other options and it was still very tight. Some of it depends on the number of storeys you can get in.

Q80 Albert Owen: On the same theme as Mr Williams, are we looking for the new sites to be clean sites, from the experience that you have had with Caernarfon, or is there flexibility for you to look at cleaning up dirtier brown sites?

Maria Eagle: We always look for brownfield sites; we are experienced with dealing with brownfield sites. It is just this one that is particularly more complicated and difficult than we had hoped.

Q81 Albert Owen: So in the early bids you would be asking for a contamination report?

Maria Eagle: One of our criteria is that we are looking for a brownfield site.

Mr Aspinall: A brownfield site is one of the criteria and as part of the due diligence we will look at those issues.

Q82 Mr David Jones: You say in your memorandum to the Committee that a shortlist of sites will be published as part of the consultation process and that due diligence will be undertaken before announcing a preferred site and a reserve site. Is it fair to say that you accept that this is what ought to have been done on this occasion, on the occasion of your interest in Caernarfon?

Maria Eagle: No. One has to weigh up against the benefits of not raising expectations by announcing a preferred site before all the due diligence has been done against the extra cost incurred of doing due diligence on four sites instead of one. So this is a balance. I have taken the view that we need to be as open and transparent as possible, given the experience that we have all had in respect of this particular site and that we should not be raising expectations that when we say, "This is our preferred site" a prison will definitely be built on there in quite the way in which we have in respect of this process. The corollary and consequence of that is that we will be announcing a shortlist of sites, doing due diligence on all of them which will cost three or four times as much for us to do the due diligence on all of them. But we hope that by doing this we will be clearly able to actually build a prison on one of them with all the benefits that that will bring for us and for the area that we finally choose.

Q83 Mr David Jones: From what you have said this was clearly an unhappy experience so far as your Ministry is concerned. I know it did not happen under your watch but would you accept that the Ministry got it wrong on this occasion?

Maria Eagle: No, I do not accept that. I think that we always made it clear that the building on this site - and I know that is not what came out of the announcement - would be subject to due diligence. The problems that we have encountered have arisen from the fact that that due diligence threw up far more complex issues than we had hoped would be the case and on the basis of that it is regrettable that that was the case, but I do not think that my officials or the department can be blamed for not knowing precisely the condition, legal, technical, environmental and other complications on that site before having conducted that process.

Q84 Mr David Jones: Would you accept that the way that the announcement was made on this occasion caused both huge disappointment to the people of North West Wales and, frankly, dealt rather unfairly with the landowners?

Maria Eagle: I do not accept that we have dealt unfairly with the landowners, no. I do accept that us having to withdraw our interest in the site after we had raised expectations that we would be building a prison there is of course a disappointment, both for the local Member of Parliament and the local people who saw it as the opportunity that it can be to boost the local area, and that I regret. But building prisons is always, in my experience, which is growing of this kind of thing, difficult because they are always controversial one way or another. So consequently I do not think that controversy itself can be taken to mean that there has been a problem that could have been avoided.

Q85 Albert Owen: Would it be possible for all the councils in North Wales to submit a bid that they are all behind? You are absolutely right, the impact is not just on the local area but it is on the whole region. Are you looking at the region of North Wales or are you looking at just individual bids and is there not a danger that they could cancel each other out? That is the fear amongst some of the leaders of the councils that I have spoken to.

Maria Eagle: We welcome local organisations who have an interest in this - landowners, public authorities - putting their heads together and coming up with the best sites, which we will consider and we welcome that. I know that the North Wales Criminal Justice Board has been trying to draw people together; the Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Office have shown a great interest in this which we appreciate. If the outcome is that we can have some sites that might better meet our criteria that we might actually be able to build on, I would be very happy with that.

Q86 Albert Owen: If you can channel it through a body like the Wales Office.

Maria Eagle: Indeed.

Q87 Alun Michael: What discussions have you had with the Secretary of State for Wales about the way of meeting the need for a prison in North Wales? Are you engaging or involving the Wales Office in the fresh search that is going on now?

Maria Eagle: My discussions with the Secretary of State were confined, because at the point at which I came into this process when the due diligence was already going on, to telling him at the time that I told others as an interested party what our decision had been, and I spoke to local MPs and to others with an interest at the time at which we made the decision. Thereafter we engaged both with the Wales Office, with the Welsh Assembly Government and with any other public authorities who have contacted us to show an interest in respect of the new site search.

Q88 Alun Michael: Would it be correct to say that you have changed the approach that the department is taking because we were told by the Secretary of State that the Wales Office had no direct input into the consultation on specific sites; nor was it formally notified of the selection of the Caernarfon site nor involved in the due diligence process. That is all obviously history rather than present. Are you telling us that the approach is a far more engaged approach on this occasion now?

Maria Eagle: Yes, I hope that it is. It is certainly my style as a minister to always try and engage with those who have an interest in respect of what can be controversial developments. Not everybody wants a prison in their area. Some people see the advantages and others do not and it is always controversial. So my view has always been that we should be as open as possible. The new process is an attempt to try and be more open and more transparent and not to raise expectations that might not be met.

Q89 Alun Michael: Especially given that the Wales Office is located in organisational terms within the Justice Department it seems sensible to make use of the capacity for coordination and the knowledge of officials in that as well as the Assembly. So we can be assured that that is now happening?

Maria Eagle: Yes.

Q90 Alun Michael: That is very helpful. One other issue, which is the question of what sort of prison we will be looking at. We have noted the very positive report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons on Altcourse, which of course takes the great proportion of the prisoners for North Wales; but also in the North Wales Criminal Justice Board's submission to the Committee, to which you referred a few moments ago, it notes that despite 95% of North Wales' male adult prisoners being sent initially to Altcourse there is only one Welsh speaking staff member, which is the chaplain. That seems a little bit odd, does it not?

Maria Eagle: Yes, I think there are issues about the capacity with which we can deal with the needs of prisoners in this respect in terms of their language needs.

Q91 Hywel Williams: I am sorry to take you back to the Caernarfon decision again. You said that you had no contact with the Secretary of State for Wales apart from telling him of your decision on that day.

Maria Eagle: That is me personally; my predecessor I am sure will have spoken to him at the appropriate times, but you have to remember that I came into the job when the due diligence was all going on and so my own contact with him was to tell him what the decision was in respect of what the outcome of the due diligence had been and what the implication of that was for our interest in the site.

Q92 Hywel Williams: The decision was announced on 22 September. Can you remind me when were you appointed?

Maria Eagle: I was appointed in June, I think; I cannot remember the precise date but I could probably dig it out for you.

Q93 Hywel Williams: So between June and 22 September you had no contact with the Secretary of State?

Maria Eagle: Not in respect of the Caernarfon site because the process was going on of making a decision and getting advice to ministers on the basis of the due diligence work that had been done.

Q94 Chairman: Thank you very much, Minister, and your colleague Mr Aspinall for the comprehensive way in which you have answered our questions. There is one set of issues. You will be aware that we had an inquiry previously before this whole issue about North Wales into the general situation of the prison estate and Welsh prisoners and we are interested in particular in looking at the case of terminally ill prisoners. Whilst I would not wish to open up a discussion on this now and ask you questions we would appreciate a note on the way in which terminally ill prisoners are treated from Wales, and there is a series of questions related to that and perhaps we could write to you and we would appreciate a response to that.

Maria Eagle: Chairman, I would be very happy to provide answers to any questions that you might have about that. I can say in general terms that when prisoners are terminally ill there is provision for compassionate release, subject to risk assessment, if their death is imminent; and that would be a decision that ministers would make with advice from officials. So we do have capacity to ensure that those who are terminally ill and not far from death do not die in custody. If the Committee wishes to ask specific questions I would be more than happy to reply to them as best I can.

Chairman: Thank you very much.