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Plenary, 21 Mar 2002

21 Mar 2002 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

Prison Estates Review

Wallace, Mr Jim LD Orkney Watch on SPTV

I did not brief anyone on the proposals and no authorised briefing took place—I gave specific instructions that no briefing should take place. It was not rocket science for the press to eliminate some of the options, but it is interesting that some of the weekend press reports, which Roseanna Cunningham suggested were the result of a briefing, mentioned cost differences of £300 million, whereas the actual figure is £700 million. Those reports were out by a long way.

Roseanna Cunningham asked why the review took 13 months to come before Parliament. During that time, I have given explanations to the Parliament's justice committees, but I am happy to put them on the record again. First, when I received the estates review, I thought that there should be an independent audit of the costings in the review so that when the consultation began, the work had been done. The PricewaterhouseCoopers financial review of the Scottish prison estates review, which is published today, is a robust piece of work and gives details of how the costings were arrived at. I recommend it to Roseanna Cunningham and to the Parliament.

Secondly, the former First Minister, Henry McLeish, Iain Gray and I took the view that the estates review that the Scottish Prison Service originally presented to Scottish ministers considered the private-build, private-operate option and the public-build, public-operate option. We took the view that there ought to be an examination of the case for the private build, public operate option. That examination took PricewaterhouseCoopers considerable time, not least because there appears to be no model of that type anywhere in the world. That is another reason for the period between the review landing on ministers' desks and today's statement.

Thirdly, significant changes in the Cabinet led to a re-examination of some of the figures. One matter that particularly concerned us—especially Richard Simpson, who has done a considerable amount of work on the matter during recent weeks—is the projection of prisoner numbers. I take no satisfaction from the fact that, with the exception of two jurisdictions in western Europe, Scotland has the highest rate of prisoners per 1000 head of population. It gave me less satisfaction to discover that that figure is projected to rise. Given that the Executive is committed to tough non-custodial alternatives to prison, we wanted to analyse carefully the statistical basis for that figure. The statistical basis of the population projections is published with the review. That issue is important, which is why we took the time that was required to consider them carefully.

Roseanna Cunningham asked about the 12-week consultation period, which is a perfectly normal period for Scottish Executive consultations. Replies that are one or two weeks late will not be ignored or put in a separate pile. Given the amount of material that has been published today, I hope that the debate will be informed and constructive. I accept that Roseanna Cunningham has not had time to absorb all the information, but she did not propose an alternative to our proposals, nor did she challenge the need for three new prisons.

Roseanna Cunningham asked about commercial confidentiality. On 8 March, the contract for Kilmarnock prison, with very few omissions, was made available on the SPS website. I think that it was the first PFI contract to be published in Scotland. She asked about the figure for Kilmarnock's staff turnover, but that figure is in the public domain—the present figure is 14 per cent, compared to about 30 per cent 18 months ago. She asked for other comparators—I will give an example. A 2001 prison survey showed that prisoners feel safer at Kilmarnock than do prisoners at comparable establishments, and that Kilmarnock is in the mid range for prisoner-on-prisoner assaults. Mandatory drug testing applies as much to Kilmarnock as it does to other prisons—recent figures for positive test results show Kilmarnock at 24 per cent, which is almost identical to comparable establishments such as Edinburgh, which is at 24 per cent, or Perth, which is at 26 per cent. Over 90 per cent of prisoners at Kilmarnock do on average a 35-hour working week, compared to 43 per cent at Edinburgh and 70 per cent at Perth. A significant amount of information is available on Kilmarnock.

I salute, as I have on many occasions, the quality of the work that is done by the staff at Peterhead prison. We are concerned about people not buildings, but Roseanna Cunningham's question suggested a greater concern for buildings than for people. I defy anyone to say that the buildings at Peterhead are fit for a modern prison estate. The STOP 2000 programme is run in other parts of the prison estate. As I made clear, the intention is that Peterhead's role in dealing with sex offenders will continue to be carried out in the public prison estate.

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Plenary, 21 Mar 2002

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