HMP Liverpool

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

We are all concerned to ensure that where persons are placed in custody, whether youth custody or otherwise, their conditions should be decent, safe and secure and that they should have the opportunity for rehabilitation. We have taken steps over the past year or so to increase quite considerably the number of prison officers employed in our prisons. The goal is 2,500 prison officers and we are on course to achieve it.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, one of the most shocking sentences in the Chief Inspector’s introduction to this report, which is a shocking indictment of the way prisons are run, reads:

“We saw clear evidence that local prison managers had sought help from regional and national management to improve conditions they knew to be unacceptable long before our arrival, but had met with little response”.


Will the Minister please tell the House who in Prison Service headquarters is responsible and accountable for the oversight of Her Majesty’s Prison Liverpool and how that oversight is exercised?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I am not going to name individuals—