Farmer Review

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for this splendid report. It is very much in the tradition of the 1990s seminal report by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, pointed out. I admire his emphasis on strong and stable family relationships—the third leg, as he puts it—that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, commented upon.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Judd, I have never been in favour of large prisons. There is an element of warehousing about them, and I remember opposing them when Labour was in power and wanted to introduce them. I remember the Shrewsbury prison from my professional days. It was a splendid, small prison dealing with people from north Wales and constantly got to the top of the “Good Prison Food Guide”—echoes perhaps of the café at Norwich to which the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, referred.

Now we have HMP Berwyn, which is less than a mile from where I live in Gresford and so I have a great deal of interest in it. HMP Berwyn flies a Welsh flag; it has bilingual notices; it offers courses in Welsh; but it is not a community prison. Of the 500 inmates who have so far have entered that prison, only 10%—about 50—are from north Wales. That compares with 228 north Wales prisoners who are housed at HMP Altcourse in Fazakerley, Liverpool. Despite the good intentions of Mr Russ Trent, who is the excellent governor of the new prison, it is not helpful when 69 people from the prison in Wrexham are housed at Altcourse and only seven are housed at Wrexham. Whoever is putting these prisoners in their places has got the emphasis completely wrong.

The HMP Berwyn visiting information says:

“At Berwyn we understand that it is constructive for men in custody and their family and friends to have the opportunity to retain close relationships and family ties whilst in our custody”.


It refers to the,

“relaxed layout to the visits hall with comfy seating and a soft play area for children”.

I would be more impressed if that did not repeat, word for word, the wording of the visitor information for HMP Altcourse, which is a G4S prison. And the map must have been added to the website by somebody with a sense of humour, because it is placed next to a hamlet called “Ystrad Ffin”, which means “End of the road”. It shows it as being on the top of a mountain, near Llanwrtyd Wells and Dolaucothi Gold Mines—some 85 miles away from the prison. Whoever has put that plan in should revise it very quickly.

But the prison in Wrexham is two and a half miles from the station. It is on an industrial estate, which I know well because I used to dig up the railway sleepers there as an early venture into jobs—learning about tea breaks and things like that. It is catering to people from a long way away. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, that it would be sensible to provide some form of support for families who are trying to visit people there—non-transferable, once-a-month rail vouchers perhaps. People might ask about the cost. If 43% of prisoners reoffend—I think the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said at a cost of some £15 billion—that makes the cost of non-transferable rail vouchers for people of more than 30 miles away to come and visit their family well worth the money.

The best rehabilitation is undoubtedly the family. It is to the family that people return, and it is that contact that is kept with parents, spouses, children, and relatives which is most likely to prevent reoffending in the future.