Q41 Mr Gibb: You do seem very complacent about the problem of drugs and I am surprised by your answer. The anecdotal view of prisons is that this is the key problem facing prisons and we hear prisoners saying that it is easier to get drugs in prison than it is outside prison. How do you react to that charge?
Mr Narey: I do not think that is remotely the case. I am certainly not complacent. It is one of the most important challenges facing the service. Typically between 70% and 80% of prisoners coming into prison have been abusing drugs in the previous 24 hours. To reduce that so considerably, when there are so many avenues for drugs to get into prison, they can be thrown over fences for example, they can be brought in by visitors, is quite significant.
Chairman: Could you try to relate this to PFI prisons? We are talking about the operational performance of PFI prisons, so try to make a comparison between PFI and other prisons. If you want to talk about this you have to do it that way.
Q42 Mr Gibb: In terms of prisons with walls, are you saying that these drugs are thrown over the walls of the non-open prisons?
Mr Narey: Drugs are frequently thrown over walls and there are many secure prisons which do not have walls but have fences. That is one way in which drugs get into prison. They can also get in through visits, but we have reduced the amount of drugs getting into prisons considerably. We have CCTV in every prison in the public and private sector, for example.
Q43 Mr Gibb: What are the problems with privately-managed prisons which you do not face with PFI prisons?
Mr Narey: Overall the problems are few. Establishing them and introducing four different new companies into the business who have not done this before has been a little bit difficult but the market is now well established and even including Ashfield all the private sector prisons are running successfully and I am very pleased with that.
Q44 Mr Gibb: I asked for a distinction between privately-managed prisons and PFI. What is so much better with PFI prisons than with privately-managed prisons?
Mr Narey: There is nothing intrinsically better. What the private sector has brought is competition.
Q45 Mr Gibb: So that is the answer to my question. When was the last privately-managed prison put in place? When did you last contract out the management of a prison rather than handing it over to PFI?
Mr Narey: We have not contracted out the management of a prison already up and running in the public sector to the private sector. We have taken two prisons from the private sector back into the public sector.
Q46 Mr Gibb: When was the last privately-managed prison put in place? You have a table on page 8 where you have two examples, The Wolds and Doncaster, from the sample selected by the NAO, which became privately managed in 1992 and 1994. Which other privately-manage ones have you opened, aside from the sample, since 1992 and 1994?
Mr Narey: Just to be clear, those two prisons you mentioned were never run by the public sector, they were built by the public sector but immediately run by the private sector.
Q47 Mr Gibb: When did you last use that model?
Mr Narey: We have not used that model for some time now. The last four or five prisons have all been designed, constructed and financed-
Q48 Mr Gibb: Why? Why is the privately-managed system so much worse than PFI?
Mr Narey: Because we believe we get better value for money from handing to the private sector the risk in designing, building and financing the whole prison and running it for 25 years.
Q49 Mr Gibb: How advantageous was it to you, Mr Banks, to have the banks involved in the PFI project?
Mr Banks: There are two aspects to that. One is in the management of the prison: it is tremendously helpful to be able to design the prison you are actually going to manage.
Q50 Mr Gibb: Do the banks design the prison?
Mr Banks: No.