Q131 Mr Davidson: One of the points made was the question of the creation of a pool of staff who would sometimes move between public and private. To what extent are there then pressures upon controllers in particular, who might have their eye on a job in the private sector in future, to compromise their integrity?
Mr Narey: That has not been an issue. We have had no instances; I cannot think of any instances of a controller moving across to join the private sector. However, we have encouraged governors and directors to move from one sector to another and I am delighted that we now have some two-way traffic, some individuals who left the public sector to go to the private sector have now come back to the public sector.8
Q132 Mr Davidson: We have all sorts of rules set up about people from the Ministry of Defence moving to defence contractors. Have you looked at the parallels there?
Mr Narey: Yes, we have indeed and we would be very cautious about allowing the private sector to take a particular controller. That is not to say we would rule it out, but we would want to have some separation between the two events. It is not an issue which has happened. Controllers are pretty committed to their career in the public sector prison service and see their spell as controllers as a bit of variation of their experience, which will help them in due course perhaps to run their own prison.
Q133 Mr Davidson: May I ask about the scale of change here? It strikes me that the scale of change we have had in the prison service has been greater than in many other sectors of the public sector. In terms of challenging vested interest and so on, to what extent has the fact that the recipients of the service, the prisoners, do not have votes made that much easier?
Mr Narey: Do not have votes in public elections?
Q134 Mr Davidson: Absolutely.
Mr Narey: I am not sure whether it makes a significant difference. There has been some debate about this and the Prison Reform Trust have recently been running a campaign to give votes to prisoners.
Q135 Mr Davidson: There is no constituency there to oppose change, in the way there is when you are looking at hospital closures or amalgamations or drastic changes in health provision.
Mr Narey: There is a very healthy voluntary sector and a uniquely effective inspectorate which represents the interests of prisoners and ensures, if myself and Mr Wheatley were not to ensure it, that prisoners are treated decently and that prisons continue to improve. Of all the inspectors in the criminal justice system, I do not think there is any with such a public profile or quite so critical, and I welcome that, as the prisons inspectorate.
Q136 Mr Davidson: May I turn now to page 27 and Figure 17? Irrespective of the effect that the private sector has on prisoners, it would certainly seem that it has a poor effect on staff. Unless I am mistaken, this figure is telling me that salaries are lower, hours are longer, pensions are worse and holidays are less in the private sector. To what extent has that contributed. towards both a lower standard of staff you are able to recruit, but also lower costs? Are there any compensating advantages? Is the advantage of the private sector simply that you pay people less and treat them worse?
Mr Banks: We approach staff terms and conditions on an area basis, so we look at the area within which we are recruiting and we recruit all our staff locally to the prisons and we determine what we believe is an appropriate rate for that area.
Q137 Mr Davidson: Are you saying this is wrong then? If you look at Figure 17, I am taking it that the prison officer is the public sector employee and prison custody officer is the private sector person, apart from overtime, which is too complicated for me to understand as there are so many variations, for every single category, whether it is salary, pensions, annual leave days, the private sector is worse.
Mr Banks: I am not disputing the table. What I am explaining is the process that we go through in setting out terms and conditions of staffwhich reflect the employment conditions for the area.
Q138 Mr Davidson: So what are you saying to me? That it is just coincidence that it works out in this way? I find that difficult to believe.
Mr Banks: If we get it wrong, then we have problems recruiting the right level of staff, which ultimately would reflect through in the performance of the prison and the outcomes. By and large that is not the case. In fact privately managed prisons perform relatively well when compared with other prisons. If we get that wrong, then we would suffer to a certain extent; it would be a contributory factor to high staff turnover and poor performance.
Q139 Mr Davidson: The same point to Mr Beeston. It seems fairly clear here, does it not?
Mr Beeston: There is no disputing the table. The table does accurately reflect the average difference between the public sector pay and pay within private sector prisons. The point Mr Banks makes about regional variations is certainly true. If you look across the various prisons that Premier runs, they all actually have different pay grades based on the area of the country they are in. You asked a question about innovation and it is not the only area of saving money. If you look at the Report, it very clearly documents the case of Manchester prison for instance, where there was a 25% reduction in staffing within the public sector as a result of exposure to competition. The actual more flexible use of labour, shift systems and so on, are other contributing factors.
Q140 Mr Davidson: Could the National Audit Office clarify a point for me? To what extent do these different answers in these tables apply to regional variations where the prisons overwhelmingly say that the public sector are in high wage areas and the private sector in low wage areas? Does that justify it?
Mr Narey: Might I help? There is a map somewhere in the Report which shows private sector prisons and you see an absence of private sector prisons in the south-east. It is significant that the two private prisons which will open in the south-east, Peterborough and Ashford, will both pay salaries to their prison custody officers much nearer to the public sector wage levels which are determined in part by attracting people to prisons in the south-east.
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8 Note by witness: There is one example of an Assistant Controller, who left the Prison Service to join Premier. As stated at the Hearing, there have been no examples of Controllers moving over to work for contractors.