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Prisons: Health and Safety

Volume 697: debated on Wednesday 12 December 2007

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether they have any plans to remove Crown immunity from prisons in so far as health and safety legislation is concerned.

My Lords, lifting Crown immunity for health and safety offences is a long-standing government commitment. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 is a major step forward in applying a criminal offence to the Crown and providing for the prosecution of Crown bodies. The Government think it right to consider the implications of that before considering wider moves to lift Crown immunity.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply but I was surprised that my Question was to be answered by the department in which the Minister sits and not the Ministry of Justice. I am referring to the fact that there are currently 17,934 prisoners in cells designed for one but with two people in them, and 1,113 prisoners who are three to a cell in cells designed for two. Those cells are equivalent to open lavatories and, thanks to overcrowding, people are in many cases condemned to them for 24 hours a day.

Have health and safety inspectors or environmental and public health inspectors been into those cells? If not, why not? If so, where are their reports? Are they being denied access to those places through a suggestion that Crown immunity applies and that therefore they are not required to carry out their tasks?

My Lords, had the noble Lord asked a more specific question around that point, I might have been able to give a more detailed reply from the Dispatch Box. I will write to him more specifically on those points. I should make it clear that although the Prison Service has Crown immunity, the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act still apply. The criminal enforcement sanctions do not apply but an enforcement regime runs in parallel to those sanctions, although it is not strictly equivalent. I shall write to the noble Lord on his specific and detailed questions.

My Lords, I declare an outraged interest as the husband of a Gurney who is a collateral descendant of Elizabeth Fry. How have the Government allowed things in Norwich jail to descend to such a state that the environmental health officers who have visited have found that the prisoners are at risk from broken soil pipes, mould, damp and vermin? The prisoners have also brought legal charges against the department, which has been forced to close the Gurney wing.

My Lords, I am not aware of the detail in the case that the noble Lord raises. Again, I can write to him on that, but I stress that the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act apply, that the Health and Safety Executive is engaged in inspecting prisons and that, where there are failures such as those cited by the noble Lord, there are provisions for Crown censures and, along the way, Crown improvement notices. I have a list of the notices that have been issued in recent times. I do not readily see one relating to Norwich, but I am not sure whether my list is complete.

My Lords, I appreciate that the noble Lord answers on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government but, if I may echo the question of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, does he not think that it would have been more appropriate for someone from the Ministry of Justice to have answered the Question, bearing in mind that he has not been able to answer the previous two supplementary questions? Perhaps I may ask him yet another question. How many other legal actions are in prospect because of substandard living conditions and how many more prison wings face closure because of those actions?

My Lords, I acknowledge the noble Lord’s point about the scope of the questions. I answer for the DWP because I have ministerial responsibility for the Health and Safety Executive generally and for the broad issues we are discussing. I have a note of the censures that have been levied in respect of the Prison Service in recent years. There is nothing beyond 2004 on the list that I have before me, but, again, I shall get a detailed answer to the point raised by the noble Lord.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that when Pentonville prison was built each cell had its own individual lavatory? These were closed as being unhygienic. Would it not be better to reopen them rather than depend on a single lavatory which immediately, almost every day, gets closed by some unfortunate and very stupid individual, thus resulting in more unsanitary conditions?

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath gave a full Statement to the House recently about future plans for the refurbishment and the new build of the prison estate. That Statement sets out where the Government are in terms of the estate.

My Lords, I can see that the Minister has drawn the short straw, but will he accept, with the Lord President and the Chief Whip sitting on the Front Bench with him, that the whole House is dissatisfied with the way in which this Question has been allocated? It does not take a genius to read the Question and its source to realise that it should have been answered by another Minister.

My Lords, I have already acknowledged that point. But the Question as it stands might equally have developed into one about enforcement generally and the rules governing the Health and Safety Executive. Indeed, that is the basis on which my brief has been prepared. When there are split decisions on Questions it is sometimes the case that they may not fall the right way. As the noble Lord said, the short straw can sometimes be uncomfortable as well.

My Lords, when my noble friend is considering his answers, will he remember that the living conditions of prisoners are the working conditions of many of the people on whom we rely to look after prisoners?

My Lords, that is a very important point. Clear duties are imposed on the Prison Service under Sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

My Lords, with the virulent form of E.coli spreading across the country and hepatitis B spreading in prisons, would it not be a good idea to swab the cells when there is a quick turnover of prisoners?

My Lords, that is an eminently sensible suggestion. I imagine that those kinds of procedures are in hand, but I cannot guarantee that they are.