A new justice minister has pledged to go ‘back to basics’ to ensure jails are clean, safe and decent after a watchdog condemned conditions at one prison as the worst they could recall.
Rory Stewart said he ‘disagreed’ with his predecessors who had not felt it was their job to get involved in the day-to-day details of running prisons.
He spoke out after inspectors said they were appalled by ‘squalid’ living standards at HMP Liverpool, which was rife with rats, cockroaches, dirt, drugs and violence.
Prisons Minister Rory Stewart (pictured) has pledged to go ‘back to basics’ to ensure jails are clean, safe and decent
Some convicts were forced to live in damp cells that should be ‘condemned’, with exposed electrical wiring, broken windows and filthy, leaking lavatories, a damning report revealed last week.
Prisons Minister Mr Stewart spoke out while giving evidence to the Justice Select Committee inquiring into conditions at Category B HMP Liverpool, which was holding 1,115 men at the time of an inspection last September.
He said: ‘My instinct is we need to get back to basics. We need to absolutely insist that we are going to run clean, decent prisons.
‘There have been too many very abstract conversations in the past two years about grand bits of prison policy.
It came after a watchdog condemned conditions at HMP Liverpool (file photo) as the worst they could recall
Some convicts at HMP Liverpool were forced to live in damp cells that should be ‘condemned’
‘We are turning up and saying, ‘Why is this a filthy prison’ and asking, ‘Why has it not been cleaned’ and people want to talk about grand issues of sentencing policy or reoffending policy.
‘Making prisoners feel they are in a safe environment without broken windows is really important.’
Mr Stewart, who has been in the job for two weeks, visited Liverpool prison on Monday and found that on one wing almost every window in the cells was broken.
He said: ‘There is too much saying, ‘We are going to deal with this by setting up a new key performance indicator’ and, ‘We’re going to deduct some money if you don’t reach your KPI’, rather than spending time on the ground and saying, ‘This is disgusting. Sort it out’.’
Cells had exposed electrical wiring, broken windows and filthy, leaking lavatories, a damning report revealed last week
Category B HMP Liverpool, which was holding 1,115 men at the time of an inspection last year
He added: ‘If I’m not able in the next 12 months to achieve some improvements in making these prisons basically clean with more fixed broken windows and fewer drugs, I’m not doing my job.’
The committee hearing was called after last week’s prison inspection report disclosed that inmates were being held in the worst conditions ever seen in a British jail.
It was filthy with rats, cockroaches, broken windows, piles of rubbish and a backlog of 2,000 maintenance jobs waiting to be done by the private contractor Amey.
The head of the prison and probation service, Michael Spurr, admitted to MPs it was a ‘personal failing of mine’ for not recognising the extent of the deterioration at Liverpool – despite the situation being pointed out in inspection reports in 2013 and 2015.
The report laid bare the crisis engulfing jails. Ministers are braced for figures out today THURS showing self-harm, violence and assaults on guards have all climbed to record levels.