Q31 Chairman: Do you know anything about this, Sir John?
Sir John Bourn: I know of course that the Report was cleared with the department in the ordinary way.
Q32 Chairman: Can Mr Narey help us? Why is there this apparent discrepancy?
Mr Narey: May I take some advice from behind? I am advised that figure is over one year and nine months. We should have picked this up on proof reading and I am afraid we did not.1
Q33 Mr Gibb: On page 14 there is a reference to drugs in the performance indicators and in Figure 10 on page 23, the number of incidents of mandatory drug testing being positive is quite significant throughout the prison service. What proportion of prisoners in our prisons in Britain are taking drugs?
Mr Narey: Across both sectors at any one time, as measured by random testing about 5% of the population, we believe about 11%.
Q34 Mr Gibb: What is the worst case percentage in one of your prisons?
Mr Narey: I think in some of our open prisons, where of course there is very little security to stop drug taking-
Q35 Mr Gibb: No, in non-open prisons.
Mr Narey: In the non-open prisons, the worst will be close to 20%.
Q36 Mr Gibb: So somewhere between 11% and 20% of prisoners in Britain are taking drugs. That is appalling, is it not? Given that a lot of these people are in prison because of addiction to drugs which had led them to crime, why can you not be more successful in stopping drugs in our prisons?
Mr Narey: We have been relatively successful, Mr Gibb.
Q37 Mr Gibb: One in five is "successful"?
Mr Narey: The figure was about 26% three years ago; we have cut it radically.
Q38 Mr Gibb: That is also appalling. Let us talk about three years ago then, shall we?
Mr Narey: One has to look at the temptation to get drugs into prisons and the ease with which drugs can be got into prisons. I have visited prisons in other countries, in the USA for example, where there do not appear to be any drugs in prison whatsoever, but the price to pay for that in terms of trying to run a decent regime, is very severe, for example, no physical contact on visits.
Q39 Mr Gibb: Yes, why do we not do that?
Mr Narey: My ministers have chosen not to do that. My personal view is that would be extremely inhumane, it would sit very oddly with the decision-
Q40 Mr Gibb: Is it more humane to allow one in five prisoners to be taking drugs, which will not rehabilitate them when they go back into the outside world, will it. How humane is that?
Mr Narey: The vast majority of those prisoners are not taking hard drugs. Most of those positive test for cannabis. We have cut the amount of drug taking, we have increased treatment programmes in prison from four, four years ago, to about 50 now and we have a lot of evidence about the extent to which that has not only reduced drug taking on release but reduced re-offending.
The Committee suspended from 5.07 pm to 5.14 pm for a division in the House.
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1 Note by witness: The financial penalties levied on HMP Dovegate were as follows: fines for performance during the period November 2001 to July 2002 were £423,000 as per the NAO Report. Fines in the first one year and nine months of operation (July 2001 to January 2003) were £430,000, as per Mr Beeston. The apparent confusion arose over the period July 2001 to November 2001 during which time the performance penalty scheme was not operated. The Prison Service allows a three to four month period at the start of each contract for the prison to "settle down" and build up a full prisoner population before applying penalties.