Prison governors should be more like academy principals says Gove

Speaking during an opposition day debate on the state of the prison service Mr Gove said some people believe his plans to empower governors are a "Trojan horse for privatisation or for a bigger role for the private sector".

But he insisted that his reforms are more to do with helping the people who are already running prisons to make improvements.

"Firstly, I believe that the private sector has had something to offer in prisons and that is something that unites both frontbenches," he said.

"There was a growth in the number of private prisons under Labour and there are private prisons as I have mentioned in the past like G4S's prison Parc in Bridgend that do an exemplary job and which every inspection underlines is doing an exemplary job.

"But what I want to see are governors currently in the system, people who joined the National Offender Management Service because of their idealism, given more freedom within the state sector to do what they do best.

"My model is the model of academy principals, of the chief executives and clinical directors of NHS foundation trusts, who have shown that with increased autonomy within the structure of clear accountability they can achieve significant improvements for the better."

Meanwhile, Mr Gove also suggested there is a need to look at expanding the release of prisoners on temporary licence to help prepare them for life beyond confinement.

He told MPs: "I think we need to give governors more power to ensure that offenders at a particular point in their sentence when the governor is as sure as he or she can be that that individual's risk to others is diminishing, give them the opportunity to go out during the day to work or to acquire educational qualifications to prepare them for life on the outside.

"Almost every prisoner is going to be let out at some point.

"We can't keep every criminal in jail forever and if we are going to release prisoners at some point, far, far better that they have by a process of acclimatisation and growth learnt what it is to work responsibly in an appropriate environment or work hard to acquire the educational qualifications that will give them a new start."

Shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter sought to outline the scale of the problems facing the prison and probation services, particularly around the issue of safety.

He said: "In the 12 months to September 2015 there were 267 deaths in prison custody, 95 suicides, up from 60 in the same period in 2010, 153 from natural causes, up from 123, and seven homicides.

"There have been the same number of homicides in prison in the past two years as in the preceding eight.

"In the 12 months to June 2015 there were 28,881 reported incidents of self-harm, up by 21% in just a year.

"There were 4,156 assaults on staff, a 20% rise from the year before.

"There were 578 serious assaults on staff, a rise of 42% from the year before."

He also said that the prison riot squad was called out 343 times in 2015 compared with 223 times the year before and 118 times in 2010.

The shadow minister told MPs that staff cuts are "at the root of many of the problems that I am identifying" as he called on Mr Gove to deliver on promises of reform.

Quoting the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, he said the worth of a civilised society can be judged by entering its prisons.

"It is in the self-interest of every citizen that prisoners having served their time become productive members of society and do not continue to pose a risk through reoffending," he said.

"The Lord Chancellor may not be a muesli-muncher, as he put it yesterday, but he is the minister for porridge and it's about time he served up something substantial."

Former shadow prisons minister Jenny Chapman told current Prisons Minister Andrew Selous to adopt the recommendation of the Harris review into self inflicted deaths in custody and make a telephone call to the family of every inmate who kills themself in prison.

Calling families and also the staff that discover the body will "focus attention" amongst officials to do something about it, the Labour MP said.

"I think it would be a good thing to adopt and I would ask you to adopt this today," Ms Chapman said.

"To phone the family of anyone who takes their own life, to phone the member of staff who finds somebody who has taken their own life.

"This will focus your attention, but more importantly it will focus the attention of your officials and senior staff in NOMS.

"Because facing that reality is something that no official wants to do and they certainly do not want to have to prepare their minister to have to do.

"One self inflicted death every four days - that's not good enough, you need to take responsibility for that, personal responsibility and it would be a very welcome move on your part if you could commit to the small commitment of time to contact the family of someone who dies in our prisons in our care each time that occurs."

Conservative former Justice Secretary Ken Clarke (Rushcliffe) said rehabilitation had been the agenda of the Government since first being elected, adding: "I frankly concede that I am disappointed by the progress that we have made."

He said: "No one has shrunk from the fact that we still have to confess that 45% of offenders, adults will reoffend within 12 months of being released."

He added: "The prisons system is not working as effectively as it should to protect the honest citizens outside."

Mr Clarke said there were too many prisoners in the prisons, adding: "You cannot deliver these policies in squalid overcrowded slums where you do not have the space nor the resources actually to deliver education, training, proper healthcare and better attitudes of the kind we wish to give."

Mr Clarke spoke in favour of reducing the prison population, branding it "ridiculously excessive".

He said: "He (Mr Gove) should not shrink from prison sentencing reform."

Mr Clarke urged the Justice Secretary to "get rid of the last vestages of indeterminate sentences".

Speaking of his time in the post, he said: "I wanted to get rid of them altogether and let people out as they reached the tariff. Senior colleagues were understandably nervous and cautious about that and I was not allowed to take the step I wanted to achieve that."

On Mr Gove's reforms, he said: "If he can deliver what he's decided to try to deliver he will indeed be a great reforming Lord Chancellor."

Labour's Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) warned the Prison Service was in "complete and utter meltdown".

Tory chairman of the Justice Select Committee Bob Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) praised the "immensely impressive" analysis of Mr Gove adding it was "spot on both in terms of the cause of offending and on the way forward".

Over crowding and contraband, he added, were long standing issues.

He supported more emphasis on rehabilitation, adding Mr Clarke was "right to refer to the pointlessness now of continuing with the so called indefinite public protection sentences".

Proper structured life in prison and proper meaningful work was important he said, adding: "Perhaps we should be looking to see if we could remove some of the legal constraints that there are which prevent meaningful and paid employment taking place, perhaps it would be right to actually see prisoners doing work which is taxable and then money could be set aside for their families and themselves upon release."

Ms Chapman (Darlington) spoke of how "poorly understood, undervalued, and ignored our criminal justice workforce feel and indeed have become".

Labour's motion, which warned UK prisons are "in crisis" and called for all G4S-run institutions to be put in to special measures, was defeated by 278 votes to 186 - majority 92.