Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): As everyone is taking their seats, I welcome Sue McAllister, the director general, Phil Wragg, Stephen Davis and Mark Adam. You will be aware that we are recording this for Hansard, and it will be on the Committee's website in due course. I ask for five or six minutes of a response, and we will open it up to questions. If you want to add anything at the end, I will allow you to do that. There are a lot of questions, and a lot of time has been taken up already. If we could get concise answers it would be appreciated.

Ms Sue McAllister (Northern Ireland Prison Service): Thank you, Mr Chairman. We have a short opening statement, and we will then welcome questions.

We are grateful for the opportunity to brief you on the recent report following the unannounced inspection of Maghaberry in May. On Monday, the Minister provided MLAs with a detailed response on the actions that the Prison Service has taken and will continue to take to address the serious issues that were raised by the inspectors. I do not intend to rehearse that in my opening statement. I am mindful that Committee members will want to ask questions on the actions that we are taking to address the recommendations and to ensure that progress is demonstrated when the inspectors return in January. We welcome any questions that you have.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Thank you very much. That definitely was succinct. We raised the response to the report with Mr McGuigan in the first session. Both you and the Minister have talked about how the report was a snapshot of the circumstances at Maghaberry at the time. Many of us believe that that was really underplaying what was a pretty damning report, which described the prison as "unsafe", "unstable" and a prison in crisis, and one of the inspectors said that it was the most dangerous prison in Europe. Why did you seek to underplay the magnitude of the report?

Ms S McAllister: We do not make any attempt to defend the findings of the report. It was a very disappointing report, and we have no intention of underplaying the seriousness of what the inspectors found. What is important is that we respond as an organisation, take swift action to address the concerns and are able to demonstrate progress when the inspectors return in January.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Do you acknowledge that, in the three years that you have been in charge of the Prison Service, things at Maghaberry have got worse?

Ms S McAllister: No. I would say that, when the inspectors visited in 2012, they found that there had been improvement since their previous inspection. We know that that improvement continued, and we were encouraged by the improvements. We know that, about a year before this unannounced inspection, we had started to see some deterioration and, in the months preceding the inspection, we had become increasingly concerned about levels of performance. We had seen improvements, and then we identified some concerns. We always knew that, through the reform programme, there would be setbacks and challenges. We do not in any way minimise the seriousness of what the inspectors found. Overall, our reform programme has continued, there have been significant improvements across the piece and, whilst Maghaberry is our biggest prison, it is only one part of our estate. It was and is a significant setback, but it will not and cannot derail the reform programme and the progress that has been made.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): We keep hearing that there have been improvements over the last number of years but, reading this report and contrasting it against the 2012 report, it seems clear that things have got worse in a number of areas. The 2012 report made 93 recommendations. Why were only 16 of them implemented?

Ms S McAllister: We will not defend that. We have taken that very seriously, and we are putting measures and processes in place, whilst not being overly bureaucratic, to make sure that addressing recommendations is a key part of the process of responding. We welcome the fact that, on this occasion and following this inspection, the chief inspector has made —

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I do not mean to interrupt, and I appreciate that we will have time to talk about the response, but I am interested in why the recommendations that were made in 2012 were not implemented three years later.

Ms S McAllister: Because insufficient notice was taken of those recommendations. What happens following —

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Whose fault was that?

Ms S McAllister: I am not ducking the issue at all. Following an inspection, the establishment produces an action plan that is ratified by headquarters and produced to the chief inspector for approval. That should form part of the blueprint for improvement. Sometimes we do not take sufficient notice of the action plan. That does not mean that the improvements that relate to that action plan are not happening, but we need to make sure that we can demonstrate that we have used that blueprint and that we have responded to the recommendations' intent. It is indefensible, and I am not attempting to defend it.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): When you say "we", who are "we"?

Ms S McAllister: If you are asking me who is ultimately responsible —

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): You said "we have"; I am asking you who the "we" are? You are saying "we", and I am asking who that is.

Ms S McAllister: We as the organisation. As a leader, it is my style to use "we". I believe that we have a very collaborative approach to the way that we lead the service. I do not think that this is about individuals and apportioning blame to individuals for not addressing the recommendations from the action plan. It is important that we learn from that and do not put ourselves in that position again.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): You have used the term, "a collegiate approach". I noted that when you were in front of the Committee on 22 October 2014, you spoke about that as well. You said:

Listening to your interview on 'Newsline' on 5 November — last Thursday — you did not seem to take that collegiate approach then. When you were challenged about your record over the last three years in your leadership role, you seemed to point the finger of blame at senior management, saying that there was no criticism of your leadership and that it was more about local management. How do you square the circle when you say that you have a collegiate response and you work as a team, but then, last Thursday, you were very quick to point the finger of blame at management, rather than take any responsibility yourself?

Ms S McAllister: If you remember — I am sure that you do — the statements that I made were in direct response to suggestions that I should resign. That was a particular circumstance.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I am not asking you to resign; I am just saying that, if you have a collegiate response, how can you point the blame at local management rather than take on your fair share of the responsibility for that?

Ms S McAllister: I do not believe that that is what I was doing.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): So you take responsibility for how things have got worse from 2012 to 2015.

Ms S McAllister: I am ultimately accountable for what happens in this organisation — I am the operational head of the organisation — but I do not agree that things have got worse since I took up post in 2012. That is where we differ slightly.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): There has been a change of governor at Maghaberry, and we have heard positive noises about that since Mr Wragg has come in. Why did it take so long? If there were clearly identified problems at Maghaberry and you are in the performance management role of the governor, why did it take until this report by the Criminal Justice Inspection for you to take the action to remove the governor, if you believe that that is where the problem lay?

Ms S McAllister: This is not about individuals, and it would not be helpful to go into detail about individual colleagues. I am sure that you would not expect me to do that. My job as a leader and that of my colleagues — particularly the director of operations at that time — is to make every effort to support and encourage people to do the very best that they can. Nobody would want us to respond to concerns immediately by removing people from their posts. That would not be right, and it is not something that we wish to do. It is absolutely right that we give people the opportunity to show what they can do and to be the very best that they can. We do that through this approach that I have already talked about. It would never be appropriate to remove somebody as soon as concerns become apparent. The feedback from the inspectors told us that we should act swiftly and that we would be supported in doing that.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): It strikes me that you only acted swiftly or took the appropriate action once the report had been conducted. If the report had not been conducted in May, what reassurance do we have that you would have taken the action that you ultimately took? It seems to us that it took Mr McGuigan to tell you about the state of the prison before you took any action.

Ms S McAllister: Brendan and I have discussed this, and I am sure that he would agree that it was not just as a result of his concerns and the concerns raised by the inspection. Obviously, I cannot tell you what would have happened; what I can tell you is that we were managing performance. This is not about individuals, and I really do not want to go into detail about my colleagues, but we were managing performance in relation to people in Maghaberry.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): But if performance was so bad, surely you were not managing it very effectively, were you?

Ms S McAllister: We were managing performance in accordance with —

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Were you managing performance well or poorly? If performance over the period was so bad, ultimately you had the responsibility to manage the performance of the governor. If things were so bad under that leadership, at the prison level, how well were you doing your job?

Ms S McAllister: Again, this is very difficult without going into details about individuals, which I have no wish to do. We are a small service and we have a small number of senior people in those key posts, and we absolutely have to do what we can with the people we have to encourage them and develop them to do the very best that they can. Only when we felt that we had no other option did we take the action that we did.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I am keen to address another couple of issues before I open up the meeting to other members. The issue of drugs within the prison is one that we discussed earlier today, and we have raised it on numerous occasions when you were in front of the Committee. It is one that all Committee members are concerned about. I want to highlight a few public statements that were made between the 2012 report and the 2015 report. In the report, it says that the drug issue has got worse over that time. A statement was made on 28 June 2012 in which the Minister said that he had been:

There was a further statement on 26 September 2014 in which the Minister released a statement saying that progress had been made on drugs at Maghaberry. In the Hansard report of the session that we had with the Prison Service on 22 October 2014, Paul Cawkwell assured the Committee that illegal drugs usage was "reducing" at Maghaberry. Then, on 4 March 2015, when asked if the situation regarding drugs use at Maghaberry was still improving, you said:

The CJINI report paints a very different picture of the use of drugs in the prison. It talks about "the prevalence of illegal drugs" and says that drugs were more available than had been the case when it previously reported on the prison and that prisoners themselves said it was really easy to get hold of illegal drugs.

Were the statements made over the last number of years inaccurate, or were you not aware of the scale of the problem in Maghaberry?

Ms S McAllister: As we have said on many occasions, the issue of drugs is a societal problem, and we are part of that. One of the best indicators that we have, as you know, is the percentage of prisoners who test positive when randomly tested. I have some figures: in July 2012, which is one of the dates that you mentioned, the positive test rate at Maghaberry was 42%; in April this year, it was 32%; and in September this year, it was 26%. The rate is coming down. It is improving.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): That is not what the report says. Are you saying that the report is wrong in stating that the problem has worsened and that there is a greater prevalence of drugs now than when CJINI last reported?

Ms S McAllister: This is not the only indicator, as you know. This is our best indicator. As we said, and as the chief inspector acknowledged, our intelligence-led approach to searching for drugs means that we find more. That, I think, is a good thing. We have an issue with what are sometimes called legal highs, and we do not yet have a testing regime that supports their detection. We must do that, but it is an emerging challenge. The percentage of prisoners testing positive for drugs in Maghaberry has gone down, so it has got better. Phil, do you want to say anything about drugs in Maghaberry?

Mr Phil Wragg (Northern Ireland Prison Service): Yes, if I can. As Sue said, drugs are a societal problem, and we have to test robustly. We continue to do that. The difficulty is that we will also have to take the positive results and stream those to our security committee so that we can attack where we think the drugs are coming into the establishment. As you will be aware, drugs come into the establishment through a variety of routes. Therefore, we need to be equipped to be able to screen for that. We take this very seriously, and we are lowering the prevalence month upon month.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Is the scale of the problem at Maghaberry comparable with that at Magilligan or Hydebank? Is the scale of the problem the same in those two institutions?

Ms S McAllister: It is a different problem. As you know, Stephen Davis was, until quite recently, the governor of Magilligan, so he might want to say something. It is a slightly different issue there because it is a lower-security establishment.

Mr Stephen Davis (Northern Ireland Prison Service): The nature of the problem across the adult estate is similar. In Maghaberry and Magilligan, the type of prisoner and the type of drugs abused are similar. Hydebank has a younger population, and a different type of drug tends to be abused. We saw the recent report by, I think, the Department of Health on the amount of prescription medication. Ultimately, the main drug of choice coming into the prison continues to be alcohol, believe it or not, rather than prescription drugs or other chemical compounds.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I appreciate that they are different types of prison; I am asking about the scale of the problem with illegal drugs in each. Leaving aside prescription drugs, is the problem of illegal drugs getting into the prison worse in Maghaberry than in the other two prisons or is it comparable?

Ms S McAllister: We can write to you separately and give you the positive drug testing rates for each population. We know that young people tend to be less sophisticated in working out ways to bring drugs into prisons. The positive testing rate is typically much lower for the young offenders in Hydebank — the students — than for the adult males. With women, it tends to be prescription medication rather than illegal drugs. They are very different societal groups, and you see different rates and types of drug use in society according to age and gender. We have the figures for Maghaberry here. We do not have the figures for the other establishments, but we can certainly supply them to you.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I appreciate that.

In our first session, we discussed the fire at Erne House. Colleagues asked the Minister about the fire, and I do not think that the public got the impression that it was as serious as it perhaps was. Certainly, the inspector would say that the fire should not be underplayed in any way. Why were efforts made or seemingly made to underplay the significance or magnitude of the fire? Who is carrying out the independent investigation, and when will we hear the outcome of that?

Ms S McAllister: We have no intention of underplaying that. In accordance with the recommendation made by the chief inspector, and as a result of conversations that I subsequently had, I have commissioned an independent investigation into that incident, so it would not be appropriate for me to go into any more detail. That is being carried out by a senior governor from the National Offender Management Service. We have made it clear to him that we expect it to be completed by Christmas.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): The environment in which prison officers in Maghaberry work is an issue that has been raised with the Minister in the House during questions for oral answer a number of times, and we raise it with you any time that you are in front of the Committee. From talking to prison officers, my impression is that they felt as though they were not getting support. They felt that they were very vulnerable and that they were operating in very difficult circumstances. That is reflected in the report, which states that, in certain circumstances, officers were not given the support to fulfil their duties in very difficult and threatening environments and that it was unsafe for prisoners and prison officers. Were the concerns raised taken seriously enough by the Prison Service? What were the results of dynamic risk assessments that you have conducted over the past number of years, and what action was taken as a consequence?

Ms S McAllister: As we have said on many occasions, we are absolutely not complacent about the safety of our staff, either inside our prisons or if there is any threat that they might face outside. We work very closely with the police and take action when threats are identified. We understand that prisons are inherently challenging environments, and Maghaberry, as a high-security prison, is particularly challenging. It has its own challenges in terms of some parts of the population, but we take those challenges seriously.

I will hand over to Phil because, on taking up post, he immediately took steps to further support some of those staff, including giving them additional training and putting in place rotation policies so that staff can move through those areas more quickly.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I am keen to hear what has been done since May, but I am more interested to hear what was done leading up to the report, because that is the period that we are interested in. Primarily, we are interested in the period between 2012 and 2015, and the fact that things seem to have worsened. I am interested to hear when the concerns were raised, either directly with you, from a Committee point of view, or with the Minister. I am also interested in hearing about the assessments that you were carrying out at that time and the sort of action taken to make sure that prison officers were safe within the compound.

Ms S McAllister: We have never, ever, been complacent, either leading up to the inspection or since, so I am not really sure what you are specifically asking. We have never taken threats anything but seriously. We have always worked closely with the PSNI, whether that is in responding to specific threats or requesting updated threat assessments. We have always taken those threats very seriously.

Mark, do you want to say anything from an HR point of view about supporting staff?

Mr Mark Adam (Northern Ireland Prison Service): There are a number of things that we constantly do. I have conversations with the unions and staff about what support mechanisms we can put in place for staff, such as Carecall; about all the support that we can give on a day-to-day basis; and about security. In the middle of last year, we introduced a programme for particular staff working in Roe House. It looks at how they provide an approved support mechanism. Phil has been continuing the training on that since he arrived in order to get a greater rotation system in there to support staff. It is not an easy environment, and we constantly have to look at and refresh what we do and how we support people.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): The report specifically states:

We have raised the issue of the safety of prison officers in Roe House on numerous occasions. The report found that they were not given sufficient support. Why, when the issue was continually raised, was that the case?

Ms S McAllister: It is difficult to understand specifically what was meant because, on the other hand, we are criticised for always putting resources into Roe House when we are short of staff elsewhere. For example, we would not have anything but the required staffing level in those areas.

We absolutely support staff when an individual threat is identified. We support them through measures that are available to all staff: through the Carecall contract, through line management and through their trade union representatives.

We know that our staff work in a very difficult environment. That is why we are rotating them more quickly and improving their training. We do not accept that we did not support staff working in those areas.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I presume that, subsequently, you had a conversation with Mr McGuigan about this.

Ms S McAllister: We have had conversations across the whole report, particularly some of the key concerns raised in the strategic recommendations. We have talked about the strategic issue of separation and how we might address where it is, how it is resourced and how it is managed.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): The report asks for innovative or radical approaches: have we any idea of what that radical thinking will be? What are your ideas for providing a solution to the separated area?

Ms S McAllister: We absolutely support the concept of the reconfiguration of Maghaberry into three mini prisons. One of those is the high-security or high-risk facility, part of which would be the separated prisoners. We have also —

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): When did you become supportive of that?

Ms S McAllister: We have always been supportive of it. I note that Brendan detected some lack of support. I inferred that he was talking at establishment level rather than headquarters level. We have always supported the reconfiguration. Indeed, the contract for the first element of that, the 360-cell accommodation block, is about to be let. That is the first piece in the jigsaw. Obviously, some of it remains subject to capital funding, but it is a priority for us. That is our solution.

We have explored other options, including putting those prisoners elsewhere in a completely separate place, but it is not realistic to expect the funding to be made available for that. We are committed to the reconfiguration of Maghaberry and the high-risk facility as part of that.

Mr Douglas: Thank you for your presentation. I go back to the fire in Maghaberry. In the previous session, it was stated that 140 prisoners had a near miss. That will send shock waves through prisoners who might not have been aware of that, as well as their families. Can you reassure us today that you have implemented measures? What have you done in relation to that serious recommendation?

Ms S McAllister: I do not think that "near miss" was my term, but we understand that, when things like that happen, they are very frightening for prisoners, staff and the families outside. We identified some things very quickly. As I said, it would not be appropriate for me to prejudge what the independent investigation will find, but we identified a need for us to do more training and to be clearer about what we expect of the different layers of management when it comes to managing incidents. We immediately gave training in the management of incidents so that we would have swifter responses to that type of incident.

Mr Douglas: Sue, are you saying today that you are confident that, to the best of your and the management's ability, such a serious fire will not happen again?

Ms S McAllister: That is very difficult, obviously. I am not being flippant, but high-security prisons —

Mr Douglas: I am talking about that type of fire.

Ms S McAllister: We identified issues that may have contributed to the circumstances that allowed it to happen, such as how many prisoners were in a particular place at a particular time. It is very difficult to pre-empt what the inspection will say, but we have responded. I believe that an incident identical to that would be significantly less likely today than it was back in April.

Mr Douglas: In the previous session, someone mentioned the failure to allow prisoners out of their cell for medical appointments. I received a phone call on Tuesday night at 9.30 pm from a prisoner's wife who had heard reports of that and was very concerned. Her husband is in hospital, and she asked me to reassure her that, if he needs medical help and support when he gets back to prison, he will get it. Will you reassure her and other families that new measures are in place and that, if someone needs medical help, they will get it?

Ms S McAllister: Yes. That should absolutely be the case.

Mr Wragg: Sammy, we have taken very positive steps to ensure that our landings are staffed appropriately and that we are working to have more prisoners out of their cell as part of a constructive regime. However, that constructive regime does not include prisoners being out of their cell for the basic essential. Yes, I give you the assurance that medication is a primary objective, and we will ensure that people are medicated.

Mr Douglas: Phil, CJINI will go back in January. How confident are you that the inspectors will be able to say that major changes have been made since the inspection that led to this report?

Mr Wragg: I think that I reported before that the three key elements to making sure that Maghaberry is safe, secure and decent centre on resources, regime and outcomes for offenders. The very swift and positive action that we took is resulting in dividends for resources. With the help of Sue and the team, we have had staff posted in from our other two establishments. That has bolstered our staffing numbers, and detached duty is also operating. You will be aware, because it has been reported, that the figures for non-attendance due to sickness have now reduced. We have more people in work and more people at work, and that allows us to do greater things.

We will now start in earnest the second major piece of work, which is on regimes, and we are calling it our core day transformational agenda. People from other parts of the Northern Ireland Prison Service are assisting us. It is work in progress, but it will really start to take off on Monday. I am confident in saying that, when the inspection team goes back in January, it will see a safer, more secure and cleaner establishment that is making progress in delivering an effective regime for all offenders. Of course, it is a quick return by the inspection team, so some of this will be work in progress beyond January, but the team will have evidence to give it assurance.

Mr Douglas: Will the 360-cell accommodation be up and running by then?

Ms S McAllister: No, the contract has just been let, so it is some way off being ready for occupation.

Mr Adam: It will be ready by 2017, I think.

Ms S McAllister: Yes, the year after next.

Mr Douglas: I am very disappointed that Brian McCaughey is not here because I was going to ask him a question.

Ms S McAllister: We were restricted to four people. If we had been able to have five, he would be here, but, as you know, Steve was bounced last time because we could not have five. We are a bigger team than we have seats at the table. That is all it is.

Mr Douglas: I see him sitting at the back of the room. Maybe you can answer the question that I was going to ask. One positive to come out of the report related to community and voluntary organisations. The Probation Board for Northern Ireland was cited as a good example of the difference that such organisations can make. What is your response to that? Do you agree?

Ms S McAllister: Absolutely. I will ask Mark to talk about the detail in a moment because he has led work looking at how we can commission services from the voluntary and community sector in the future. There is less money, and we need to be sharper in how we commission services, so we will look at outcome-focused arrangements with our voluntary and community sector partners, whereas, previously, we have been more concerned about the process. We agree that their contribution to what we do in our prisons is crucial.

Mr Adam: Although not an explicit recommendation in the Owers report, something certainly underlined was the need for the Prison Service to become more open, more transparent and more integrated into the wider community. Part of that work has been to ask what more we can do with partners such as the Probation Board. Our work with probation is hugely successful. Over the last year, we have been asking what we can do with Belfast Met, the North West College and all the other smaller organisations that are constantly in and out of our door, including the Prison Fellowship, the Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NIACRO), and all the various people who come into prisons and make a big difference. Part of the work that Brian has looked at and which we are working on is how to be more thematic so that we can ask ourselves, "What are our interventions to support families? What are our interventions to support employment? How do we get more people involved, rather than fewer? Rather than people getting little bits of small contracts to do something, why do we not move more into co-design?". I am in the process of putting something to the Minister that starts to explore that further.

Mr Douglas: Finally, the next report will be in January, which, taking into consideration the Christmas holidays, is only a few weeks away. It would be good for us to go back to visit Maghaberry in response to that report.

Ms S McAllister: That would be very welcome.

Mr McGlone: You accept that it is a damning report.

Ms S McAllister: It is a very disappointing report; I absolutely accept that.

Mr McGlone: What I am trying to get my head around and what we were trying to determine from Mr McGuigan is that we see a deterioration in the situation since the previous report. I listened carefully to you, and you talked about managing performance and a collaborative approach to how you lead. Given the facts as Mr McGuigan has presented them to us, all of that seems to have fallen down and crashed. He referred to the need for a therapeutic environment for prisoners but said that it was impossible to create that with what he saw in 2015. There was an inability to bring to account the paid-for services, staff were not being listened to, and there was a lack of development skills and leadership skills. Where does the responsibility rest for addressing those — to him, blatantly obvious — issues?

Ms S McAllister: We have talked on many occasions at this Committee and elsewhere about the historical absence of investment in leadership development. We knew that that had resulted in a capability issue. That is what we were dealing with, and that is what I inherited when I came into post in July. We have very talented people in our service, and some have not been given the development that they might have expected. We have addressed that, and we can talk about our ongoing work to develop our leadership for now and for later.

Mr McGlone: Will you please clarify for me when that investment started? Is it purely on foot of or since this report?

Ms S McAllister: No.

Mr McGlone: If it had been initiated, it does not appear, according to the report, to have borne fruit.

Ms S McAllister: It was not just on the back of this report. For the last three years, we have been working with Queen's University, Cranfield School of Management, Ulster University and our internal training organisation to develop staff. It will not be a quick fix. We are working in the context of an absence of development for a long time, but we are making headway. We are making progress. We have not just started: there was and is a commitment to build leadership for the future.

Mr McGlone: I hear what you are saying, and I am sure that it is happening. Can you be specific? How many people have been sent for x type of training? How many people have been seconded elsewhere? How many people have been sent elsewhere to look at other prisons and come back with that experience? You referred to managing performance. The report refers to insufficient notice being taken of an action plan. As I said to Mr McGuigan earlier, the last thing that we want is for him to come back in a year or 18 months' time and have a rerun of the same scenario.

Ms S McAllister: We do not want that either, Patsy. We can write to you separately with the specific numbers. Suffice it to say that all our new officers, over 300, have been through a programme accredited externally by the Ulster University.

Mr McGlone: A programme in what?

Ms S McAllister: This is their initial prison officer training, which then forms part of their foundation training.

Mr McGlone: Forgive my ignorance. Did you say prison officer training?

Ms S McAllister: Yes. This is for our new recruit prison officers. From the very beginning, when people enter our service, they —

Mr McGlone: We have maybe been deflected and are off on to something else.

Ms S McAllister: Are we at cross purposes?

Mr McGlone: I would have thought that new prison officers were trained anyway.

Ms S McAllister: Yes, but that training was not always externally accredited by a university. We have improved the quality of that training.

Mr McGlone: OK, I am getting a wee bit of this now.

I go back to the chain of command. You referred to being collaborative. From my days of doing Latin at school, I know that that means people working collectively together.

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr McGlone: It does not seem to have borne much fruit, given the deterioration shown in the report. I am trying to establish what went wrong and whose responsibility it was, collaboratively or otherwise, to make sure that it did not go wrong. You said, for example, that there was an action plan. Whose responsibility was it to do the tick-box exercise for that action plan? Why was that not done or not done properly, leading to the outcomes in the report?

Ms S McAllister: As I have said before, this is not about apportioning blame to individuals —

Mr McGlone: No, Sue. I hear all that, but, if you do not apportion responsibility somewhere, you will never really get to the bottom of your problem. I am trying to establish what went wrong and why it went wrong.

Ms S McAllister: Absolutely —

Mr McGlone: I do not want to hear this stuff about spreading the blame and spreading the pain; I just want to know what the structure is so that, if things go wrong, someone gets them right. I want to know that there is a chain there to make sure that, if things go wrong, they are put right and do not go wrong in such a way as to lead to the awful report that we have before us today.

Ms S McAllister: Absolutely. We should say that a good number of our senior colleagues have responded extremely positively to the development and are performing to a very high standard. That is why prison reform has not been derailed by this significant setback. The Minister, when making his statement on Monday, talked very openly about the action taken in relation to some individuals. I do not wish to go over that again. I do not think that it would be helpful. It is more helpful to look forward and say that we now have a refreshed and strengthened —

Mr McGlone: That is grand, but —

Ms S McAllister: — senior team in Maghaberry, which I believe will be able to demonstrate by January that they have made a difference.

Mr McGlone: You are not answering my question. You had an action plan that was ignored or not looked at. Was that to do with a management style or something in management? Were people working collaboratively to bring out the action plan? Did they check that a, b and c had been done and make sure that d, e, and f, which had not been done, were done? Whose responsibility was that?

Ms S McAllister: The governor's.

Mr McGlone: Whose responsibility is it to make sure that the governor does his or her job?

Ms S McAllister: It is for the director of operations, on his regular monthly visits, to look at that against a range of performance issues. That, I suggest, is what was happening.

Mr McGlone: If that was happening, how did we get a report such as this? Does that mean that two people at senior management level were not doing their job properly?

Ms S McAllister: No, it means that these things can be very difficult and take a long time. I really do not want to get into apportioning blame and looking back.

Mr McGlone: Nor do I. I just want to find out what went wrong, how it went wrong and how you arrived at this position. You can talk about drawing a line and looking ahead, but, in looking ahead, you cannot ignore the handling that there was before. I repeat the point that the last thing that we want is to have a report this time next year or the year after that is highly critical and says that management performance was not right, that people were not taking sufficient notice of an action plan, and that the collaborative approach to how we lead was inadequate. I want to know what went wrong, how it went wrong and what measures are in place at management level to ensure that something is done and, if that person is not making sure that it is done, that someone with oversight of that person makes sure that it is done.

Ms S McAllister: Let me assure you that we have learned lessons from the way that this was managed. We have learned lessons in such a way that we will not make the same mistakes again. I really do not think that there is any more that I can say in terms of singling out individuals.

Mr McGlone: What are those lessons?

Ms S McAllister: The lessons are about how we develop a stronger performance management culture and work with people to address concerns and shortcomings earlier and in a more transparent and supportive way. That is a cultural issue for us. We always knew that the cultural aspects of our reform programme would be the most challenging.

Mr McGlone: Lessons learned takes me back to that action plan. How many of those boxes have been ticked since? Who is responsible for making sure that that action plan is delivered?

Ms S McAllister: We now have an action plan that gives us nine strategic recommendations. I welcomed that because we can sometimes drown in action plans that have many, many recommendations. The nine strategic recommendations give us a real focus. I would say that Phil accepts that he is responsible for taking action against that action plan and for demonstrating to the chief inspector, when he returns in January, that those actions have been addressed.

Mr McGlone: This is getting into the mechanics of it, but I want to ask about the action plan that has been ignored either partially or in total since the previous occasion. Has someone brought it out, dusted it off, sat down with it and said, "Right, where are we going here, what has been missed and who is going to take it forward?".

Ms S McAllister: Yes. Let me ask Phil to answer that.

Mr Wragg: I have taken the previous action plan, Patsy —

Mr McGlone: This is the first time I have met you, I think.

Mr Wragg: — and I have incorporated it into the 2015 action plan. That is a matter of public record now; it is on the Internet. The read-across demonstrates quite clearly the 2012 recommendations that phase into the 2015 recommendations, the dates about very specific work that is required and who has responsibility for it. We meet on a fortnightly basis to cross-check that action plan, the actions taken and the work that has been delivered to date.

Mr McGlone: OK. Whose responsibility is it to make sure that that is done?

Mr Wragg: Ultimately, it is my responsibility as the governor. I chair the committee meetings.

Mr McGlone: Right. And if that is not done?

Ms S McAllister: That is for me to take into account

Mr Wragg: That would be the director of operations.

Ms S McAllister: It would, yes.

Mr McGlone: Is a mechanism that was absent the last time set in place this time to make sure that it is done?

Ms S McAllister: If you are asking me whether we have a stronger focus on the recommendations arising from CJINI inspections, I can say that we have.

Mr McGlone: No, I did not ask you whether you had a stronger focus. Is there a stronger focus with mechanisms to make sure that it is dealt with?

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr Wragg: There is a two-monthly review that is sent through on actions undertaken and on what is left outstanding to ensure that we are compliant with dates.

Ms S McAllister: Stephen, did you want to say something?

Mr Davis: There is an audit team at headquarters for the other two establishments that I am responsible for. It is going into those other two establishments to look specifically at the outstanding actions and the action plans at Magilligan and Hydebank.

Mr McGlone: Is that audit team a new thing that was not there before?

Mr Davis: The audit team was there, but its focus was on particular standards. As a consequence of this, some of this has been diverted to look at the role of action planning and the impact that that has within the establishment.

Mr McGlone: Is there any reason why that audit team did not have that oversight capacity?

Mr Davis: It is because it was set up primarily for a standards audit purpose, as opposed to looking particularly at action planning and everything else, so it was not part of performance management. It was looking at a part of the culture of improving standards in particular areas of concern.

Mr McGlone: So, its remit of responsibility of duty has now been expanded.

Mr Davis: It has been expanded.

Mr McGlone: How often does it meet?

Mr Davis: It is a stand-alone group. It goes into the institution, and part of its remit is to look at compliance against action plans.

Mr McGlone: Yes, but I am trying to get at how often it audits what it was set up to audit.

Mr Davis: It will be in Hydebank on Monday, for example.

Ms S McAllister: It has an audit programme, which is a document that we can share.

Mr Davis: It is not a group that comes together, breaks up and comes back together again. This is its function.

Mr McGlone: Is it ongoing?

Mr Davis: Yes. It has a range of functions that it performs, added to which will be compliance to the CJINI action plans.

Mr McGlone: It goes into each individual —

Mr Davis: It will, yes.

Mr McGlone: It will, or did it?

Mr Davis: No. That has been added to its functions. It had a function for standards in the Northern Ireland Prison Service standards manual, and that was its prime function. As a consequence of this, one of the other functions that has been added to its role will be to assess compliance against what the prison reports and what is reported through to headquarters.

Mr McGlone: I am trying to get my head around the mechanics of this, because it is very important. Did what it was doing previously, with the now added duties and responsibilities, incur visits to each site? I mean on site; I am not talking about doing it at arm's length.

Mr Davis: It was on the ground and was talking to staff.

Ms S McAllister: To put a label on it, what it did before was thematic, and now what it does is specific to those recommendations.

Mr McGlone: Plus an additional duty, as we just heard.

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr McGlone: Under that mechanism, who will it report to?

Mr Davis: It will report to the director of operations and the director general.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Just before I go to Raymond, Patsy asked a question about the development of staff and training. I left the first session with the impression that it has started only just in the last three months, but are you telling us that it was going on before that?

Ms S McAllister: The leadership and development training?

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Yes.

Ms S McAllister: I cannot remember the date.

Mr Adam: Is this at officer level or at management level? There are two programmes.

Ms S McAllister: I think it is the leadership training.

Mr Adam: If it is helpful, I will talk about both.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I am just asking whether it was going on. The impression that I had was that it has been happening only really in the last three months.

Mr Adam: No. We have been working with Queen's for at least the last 18 months and with UU for the last two and a half years. In the last three months we have got to having a much tighter support and management system that we refer to as the T50 programme, which includes elements of 360, more mentoring and some quite robust purpose-designed development programmes for individuals. We have had a good training programme in place for quite a while.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Am I right that the oversight group would not sign off on the good training programme that you say you had in place prior to three months ago?

Mr Adam: No, it would not.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): So, three months ago it did not think that it was a good leadership programme that you had in place?

Mr Adam: It did not, but that was for some very specific reasons that were absolutely valid. First, the commitment was always that we wanted to get more of it externally delivered, but the finances stopped. We use UU for as much as of that as we possibly can. The other challenge is on doing more of the bespoke stuff and on the interchanges. We have secondments for people and have sent them to other jurisdictions and organisations, including the Criminal Justice Inspection, where they went in and spent time. The justifiable feedback was, "Do more of that."

That is why we have taken that now to be much more tailored. So, as well as the fact that you will go through nine or 10 modules as part of your development in leadership for resilience and influencing, there is also what has been developed into a unique programme with Queen's on leadership, management and challenging organisations that has been purposely done for us and the police to deal with some of the challenges that we have. They will also start to look at how we do more of that targeted work, depending on what I or Phil or Stephen may need, but the issue for each governor who falls into that area is how we get into very targeted development that supports them in the best way we can, or if there are needs, how we jump on top of them quickly and deal with them in the most supportive way we possibly can.

Mr McCartney: Thank you very much for your presentation. One of the strengths of the report is that it now puts us in a position where we at least know what the deficiencies are. The task now is to take us to the place where Maghaberry should be and perhaps should have been a long time ago. I am not sure whether you heard what the inspector said. I know that you were sitting outside for some of it; I do not know whether you got any of it.

Ms S McAllister: We heard some of it.

Mr McCartney: Right. He was very clear in his opinion that this was not a snapshot. I think that he said that if he had gone in a month before or a month after, it would have been the same report. It is just to move that on. Two of the things that come out very clearly are — I think that he used these words — lack of leadership in Maghaberry and an ineffective relationship between Maghaberry and headquarters. Do you have a clear understanding of what "lack of leadership within Maghaberry" means?

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr McCartney: What would that be? He was very clear in his commentary that he was not talking about one or two people at the top; he was talking about leadership or the lack of it at every tier, right down to the bottom.

Ms S McAllister: Yes, I think that we completely understand what that means. That is why we have strengthened the leadership team at every level. It looks very different down through the different levels of management. Because we understand what it means, we have been able to take steps to address it.

Mr McCartney: How did the lack of leadership translate into the day-to-day operation of the prison?

Ms S McAllister: I think that some of the obvious indicators were the very high rates of absenteeism, which we felt were not being addressed, and the consequence that had on the availability of staff to deliver a safe, decent and predictable regime. It made it very difficult on a day-to-day basis.

Mr McCartney: How did the ineffective relationship between Maghaberry and headquarters manifest itself on a day-to-day basis?

Ms S McAllister: That was really about the concerns that we, as a senior executive team, had and the tension that that brought into the relationship between local management and NIPS headquarters management. It was really about the challenge to performance, and it was very clearly meant to support local leaders to deliver and to improve, but it resulted in a tension within that relationship.

Mr McCartney: Did it lead to instructions being ignored?

Ms S McAllister: I think that was all part of it. It was symptomatic of it.

Mr McCartney: What instructions were ignored?

Ms S McAllister: Is this something that was referred to in the report?

Mr McCartney: I am talking about there being an acceptance that there was an ineffective relationship. You were part of that relationship, so you should know what "ineffective" meant on a day-to-day basis. You have accepted that there was tension.

Ms S McAllister: There was absolutely a tension. This is not about individuals, and it is not about looking back — it is about looking forwards. For example, probably the most important and frustrating aspect was the inability or unwillingness to tackle staff absenteeism despite a very clear message from me and my senior colleagues that that was what was required.

Mr McCartney: If the inspectorate had not gone in, how long would that situation have continued without the type of decision making that, ultimately — maybe "forced" is too strong a word — and certainly speeded things up? The inspection was in May, and the report was not published until October. I think that everybody knew, with the appointment of Phil, that the inspector's report had created a dynamic, let us put it like that, for change.

Ms S McAllister: Absolutely. I think that Brendan described it as "a setback" and "an opportunity". I really do not know how long it would have taken, but I can tell you that we were moving towards that. Independent scrutiny by the chief inspector, which we welcome, sometimes gives us an additional opportunity and the permission to act swiftly.

Mr McCartney: The reason I am saying this is because, if we put this into the context of the Owers report, where you track good progress, you can see it and it can be very clearly seen. The inspector talked about that. Even in this report, resettlement gets a favourable mention, because it seems to have followed the Owers report. I take it that the relationship between the governor of Hydebank and headquarters would be effective?

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr McCartney: Is it the same for Magilligan?

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr McCartney: Was the leadership of a dispensation that it at least followed instructions?

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr McCartney: On some of the issues in the Owers report, there has been the appointment of a new governor, which is Phil, and everybody wishes him well in the job he is doing. Has he a clear view on the need for leadership and for an effective relationship between the prison and headquarters? Does he also have the support to start to make the decisions that are necessary from the other tiers of leadership? I think that if you read other aspects of the report, you will find that it would be wrong to try to portray this by assuming that whatever happened was because of a senior governor. I do not want to personalise it; this is not about the failings of a single person.

Ms S McAllister: Yes, Raymond. I would turn to Phil on my right, and I hope that he would say that he absolutely understands the need for those relationships to be strong. They are quite new relationships, but what I see at the moment is that they are strong.

Mr Wragg: Complex establishments require hands-on leadership. The leadership is in place throughout the organisation. It is pretty new, but it is developing well, and the relationship with my colleagues in headquarters is equally very, very good. The support mechanisms are absolutely and robustly in place.

Mr McCartney: Yes, but if there was an atmosphere, for want of a better word, that made part of the management team at Maghaberry feel in the past that it could just say to more senior people, "We don't have to listen to you, and we don't have to do what you tell us", we can see how Maghaberry got the spin it did in this report.

Mr Adam: I will just say a little bit about where I think we are with reform, because it kind of plays in to that. The kind of cultural shift that we have tried to achieve over the last three years is hugely ambitious. Usually, you would say that an organisation like this could take about nine or 10 years to start coming through that process. I am talking not about all the mechanistic stuff that we have done a lot of but about everybody, and I mean everybody, in the organisation thinking, behaving and believing differently.

One of the things that has been difficult right the way through has been the pace. That includes the expectations for the pace of reform have caused difficulties throughout, especially when you are taking money out. We have had a lot of challenging and difficult conversations — they have been challenging for us and for staff — about the pace that we need to do things at, the unfortunate lack of resources in some areas and the outcomes that we want to achieve. Culture is the thing that happens when nobody is looking, and that is where we have got to get to.

A reformed Prison Service is not one where we sit on everybody's shoulders saying, "We told you to do that yesterday. Do it again today". The issue is about how we start to engender the trust, the good relationships and the constructive working. That has involved me having some healthy and challenging conversations with unions and staff, but it is the bit that takes time. Saying that it is a "snapshot" is not necessarily right, because some of that is still working its way through. There will always be those bites of tension as we start to say, "Our expectations have gone up, the expectations of the Prison Service from wider society have gone up, and we and our staff have got to respond to that".

Mr McCartney: I have no doubt that when any big organisation — not just this organisation — has done things for a long number of years in a particular way and is then told, after an examination, to do things differently, it will find that, if it does not get off to a good start, most people would accept that the changes will not work in the way that they perhaps should. Indeed, Anne Owers, in her interim report as far back as 2011, said that after eight months she was considerably of the view that there was resistance to fundamental change. If Anne Owers had come back and visited Maghaberry in May along with Brendan McGuigan she would have said, "I told you so". What do we do to ensure that the recommendations she made are implemented?

I just want to go on to recommendation number 5, because there has been some discussion today about the idea of three mini prisons in Maghaberry. I said before — I think I said it at this Committee but certainly to senior managers in Maghaberry — that I detected a resistance to that idea from day one. I could not work it out, because I think that most people would accept that Maghaberry is a very complex prison. This was a very practical solution coming from an independent team with no axe to grind. I know that the Minister's statement talked about this not coming into place until maybe 2019. You have it in your head that there is resistance. I cannot work it out. The question that I would ask — perhaps it is one for Phil to consider — is this: if he was given the task today of turning Maghaberry into three mini prisons, could he do it without any new builds?

Ms S McAllister: We know that it would be more difficult without the new buildings, because it is about configuring. Certainly, everything that we know — between us we have nearly 100 years' experience of working in prisons — tells us that smaller prisons are more effective prisons. We know that Maghaberry is large. We are therefore fully committed to the idea of three mini prisons. The 360 building will be a new build; Brendan or Ian talked about Quoile House. It will be the same sort of design: very open, with good lines of sight and good safety mechanisms in place. That will allow us to close square houses. It is the first step to moving away from those awful square houses that are not conducive to safety and decency. The 360 building is part of that. We know that it will be built, because we are just about to let the contract. Even if that were the only element, we would still need to reconfigure Maghaberry into three mini prisons, because at the moment, although we have free flow, which has come only in over the last few years, and we are developing a more proportionate approach to security, there is a danger of taking a one-size-fits-all approach and that the one size is high-security. We do not want that; we cannot afford it; and it is not the right thing to do.

Mr McCartney: Most people you talk to about this — I am sure they give it good consideration — see the idea of three mini prisons as providing a solution to the complexity of Maghaberry, but no steps have been taken towards that — none whatsoever.

Ms S McAllister: Actually, we have been working quite hard behind the scenes to design it. We know what needs to be done, and we have a vision of what it needs to be, but part of that is capital expenditure to build new buildings and to provide the infrastructure for that to happen.

Mr McCartney: I accept that, but you could say that the three mini prisons is the ideal model. Has any work been put in to move from saying, "Right, we can't come up with the model until 2019", which will be eight years after the recommendation, to saying, "Here is one way of trying"? It might be two mini prisons, two and a half mini prisons or a mix. The point I am making, and I am going to make it, is that I think this was driven by the resistance within the establishment, rather than by any desire not to see this as the way forward.

Ms S McAllister: OK.

Mr McCartney: That is what we have to try to tackle, and that is why I want a clear definition that we all understand what "lack of leadership" and "ineffective relationships" mean. I have heard today that there was a culture in Maghaberry of people saying, "If we do not want to do something, we do not do it". We need that corrected, and we need —

Ms S McAllister: We absolutely do, and I am sure that Phil is listening.

Mr Wragg: Can I just come back on that? Change is a thing that you have to sell. It is all about communication, effective empowerment and engagement, and we now have those in place at Maghaberry. Therefore, I am confident that, on any of the big changes that you talking about that we need to make, we have an opportunity to canvass our staff very well. Our staff are on board with the process of change and are party to it. Their opinions are taken on board, and they are delivered against the actual change culture.

Mr McCartney: This is my last point, Chair, and thank you for your indulgence. Without second-guessing any decision, I think that the governor should be put in a position where, if he makes decisions, he is supported. There should therefore not be this approach. I made the point to Mr McGuigan when he was in that the separated regimes were designed 12 years ago to create a controlled and restricted environment that would be difficult for prisoners to opt into. That has not worked. We said at the time that it was flawed. As a result of it, too many staff are containing a small group of prisoners to the detriment of everyone else. If the governor thinks that should be changed, it should not be a sacred cow. It should not be a case of, "You cannot touch that because that is in a vault, and the Steele report is fixed". It is not; it should be flexible enough to allow the governor to run the prison in the best interests of all people there — the staff and prisoners.

Ms S McAllister: Absolutely. I do not think that it was ever anything different. I think that we have always been able to have flexibility within the constraints of the principles of the separated regimes. We now need to make sure that Phil makes best use of that flexibility, and we have been working very hard on the issues that Brendan identified and on some other issues that we were working on for a long time to mitigate the harm that having that regime in Maghaberry can create.

Mr McCartney: I will make this final point. In my opinion, the ineffective relationship, which you have defined, allowed Maghaberry to say, "If we say that you do not interfere, do not interfere".

Ms S McAllister: OK.

Mr Poots: Sue, there has obviously been a lot of focus on Maghaberry, but you indicated that you are responsible for all prisons and that it has not been bad elsewhere. Have you seen improvement in the other two facilities — Hydebank and Magilligan — over your period of leadership?

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr Poots: When the inspection took place in Maghaberry, how many uniformed officers were available to the governor?

Ms S McAllister: How many?

Mr Poots: Yes.

Ms S McAllister: Could I just be sure what you are asking, Edwin? Are you asking for the staff-in-post figure at the time of inspection?

Mr Poots: There is a recommended complement. What was available?

Ms S McAllister: Let me check whether we have that. If we do not have it here, we can make that available to you. I have the figures for June 2014 and October 2015, but we will get you the figure for May 2015.

Mr Poots: The Prison Governors Association has put out a press release that indicates that the prison was:

Is that something that you would disagree with?

Ms S McAllister: We will have to check that figure and come back to you.

Mr Poots: I assume that it has not made a claim like that without it being reasonably accurate. If that —

Ms S McAllister: I am sorry. I do not have that —

Mr Poots: If that figure is reasonably accurate, is it the case that it was operating with two thirds of the required complement of uniformed prison officers?

Ms S McAllister: I am sorry. I do not have that figure, so I cannot base —

Mr Poots: Do you want to tell the Committee that it had the full complement of officers?

Ms S McAllister: No. We know that that was not the case. We know that —

Mr Poots: You know that it fell well short of what the full complement was?

Ms S McAllister: We know that it was short on its staff-in-post figure, but as I said, the difference between staff in post and the target staffing level can be covered with overtime, because the budget is available to do that. What was causing the difficulty was the number of staff who were absent and still on the books, if you like, so those who were still receiving their salaries but were not available at work to be on the landings.

Mr Poots: The only problem was that the previous director of operations indicated that there was a whole series of areas where overtime was not available. Are you aware of that?

Ms S McAllister: I know that the previous director of operations had some concerns about the way that overtime was being allocated and the way that the detail office was being worked. His concern was such that he asked the head of internal audit to carry out an independent review of that so that we could be sure we were spending public money properly, which is what overtime is.

Mr Poots: But the governor was totally reliant on overtime because a full complement of uniformed officers was not available.

Ms S McAllister: Overtime to cover the difference between staff in post and the target staffing level was available. If, for a particular reason, that was not all available at a particular time, that would have been discussed with the governor and deputy governor, who, at the time, was in charge of the detail.

Mr Poots: During the Second World War, the Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, sought support from the Americans to fight the war, and he said, "Give us the tools and we'll do the job". Have you given the governors the tools through the resource to do the job?

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

Mr Poots: You need to be very sure that you can stand over that, Ms McAllister. I have put something very specific to you. You have come here, and you do not know the staffing complement at June 2015, when this took place. I have specifically asked you whether you can stand over the view that the prison governor had the tools to do the job with the staffing resource. If you come back to us and are able to tell us, "Yes, there was an absolute full complement of staff available in June 2015", you can stand over what you said, but, if you cannot, you cannot stand over what you said to the Committee. You need to be very cautious about that.

Ms S McAllister: As I said, the difference between staff in post and the target staffing level can be covered through overtime.

Mr Poots: Yes. Mr Cawkwell denied that to the governor.

Ms S McAllister: The real tool that was available was our sick absence management policy, which allows us to manage people and which we now know is being used very effectively. The difficulty was that not enough staff were available on the landings. We are absolutely in agreement about that. I will say that the real challenge was in managing the staff who were absent on sick leave.

Mr Poots: I welcome that you are not in a blame culture today. Unfortunately, on Monday, our Minister was in the blame culture. He blamed everything on two individuals. You must have been very pleased that you were not one of those individuals. Before you were appointed, we were seeing green shoots of recovery. Now, on three of the four measurements, we see ourselves in decline. Interestingly enough, when one of the individuals was appointed, we were told that it was a new dawn for the prison. They had previously been in Magilligan, which you, at the start of this, indicated has seen progress throughout your period. We had someone who was a governor in Magilligan and had seen progress in Magilligan, who was then put into Maghaberry but did not see progress in Maghaberry; in fact, they saw the thing going backwards.

We then have the issue where prison officers were allowed to leave on enhanced packages and so forth as a result of the Department of Justice, and the Minister then apportions all the blame to the two governors involved.

I think it is very clear that the Department of Justice has a significant role to play in not having the resource available. Indeed, at the Committee, in March 2014, concerns were expressed to the Justice Committee that budget cuts were too severe and would ultimately impact on the regime in other areas of the prison. There is plenty of evidence that, "I told you so", was available some time ago on this front.

You mentioned the issue of sickness. Phil is with you. Are you taking full account of the occupational health reports that are being presented to you at the moment?

Ms S McAllister: That is part of our processes; so, yes.

Mr Adam: Yes, we do.

Mr Poots: They are not being ignored.

Mr Adam: No, they are not ignored. Do you want the statistics on what has happened with those?

Mr Poots: Maybe you would give us the statistics of how many prison officers have medically retired in the last two years?

Mr Adam: That is no problem. I have the exact numbers; I will go back three years. In 2013, there were 22; in 2014, there were 19, and in 2015 there have been 57 to date.

Mr Poots: Fifty-seven?

Mr Adam: Yes, there is a threefold increase there.

Mr Poots: That is an astonishingly high figure, is it not?

Mr Adam: It is. I cannot give you all the reasons for that, but we estimate that the majority of those are post-traumatic stress disorder related. Officers cite considerable experiences over earlier parts of their career, but not now. As soon as that started to come to light, and when the number began to look worryingly high, we started to initiate a lot more recruitment campaigns, which kicked off in March this year. We are starting to see the outcomes. Yes, we had not predicted that we would suddenly find that early retirement on medical grounds would have gone that much higher.

Mr Poots: It would not really take you to be a brain surgeon or rocket scientist to identify that a considerable number of staff have been allowed to leave and that there has been an over-reliance on overtime. We have a considerable number of staff who are leaving because of mental health issues. It has been reported to me that staff have had occupational health reports ignored; they have felt forced to go to work; and they have been engaging in self-harming activities as a consequence. This is very serious. You have a duty of care to your staff. Occupational health reports are made by professionals and should not be ignored.

Mr Adam: I do not know what you are referring to, specifically, but it is an independent process and nothing is ignored. If a recommendation is made by those health professionals, it is seen through. We do not have a position. If they recommend that somebody needs to be retired, we have never said that we are ignoring that professional opinion, for all the reasons that you have just described.

Mr Poots: I know. I welcome a reduction in sick leave; I think that it is a good thing. However, it cannot be achieved by bullying staff to come into work when they are unwell. That would not be right.

Ms S McAllister: Absolutely.

Mr Adam: We rely heavily on our occupational health providers in building relationships. They ensure that any underlying issues are properly identified, addressed and supported. Either, staff will come back to us with reasonable adjustments that we will make, or they will come back with recommendations for early medical retirement, which they have done in 59 cases. I do not want to push it, but we think that there are probably another 10 or 12 who will also see their way through this year as well; so the figure of 57 will probably end up closer to 70, by the time we get to the end of this financial year.

Mr Wragg: I assure you that we do not bully people back to work. We are conscious that we have an absolute responsibility. Each case is considered on its merits individually. We bring people back to work on a phased return and put them into non-front-line operational duties, to allow them to have an opportunity to get back into the workplace. So we support our members of staff coming back into the workplace. I have seen circa 42 people individually to try to assure them about a good and effective manner in which we can bring them back to work where they do not feel that they are being bullied but are being supported by their employer.

Mr Poots: Fair enough. I hear what you say, but we will be keeping an eye on that one. In terms of the additional support that has been given, I welcome the fact that staff have been transferred from Magilligan and Hydebank to Maghaberry. Why did that not happen before June 2015? Why was the support that has rightly been given to Phil not given to the other senior management team players?

Ms S McAllister: Bringing in staff from elsewhere was just one element of managing more staff back on to the landings. It was really the confidence that Phil was tackling the issue of staff sickness, which was the primary mechanism for getting staff on to the landings at Maghaberry. We were able to explain to some of those staff in Magilligan and Hydebank, who perhaps were not keen to go to Maghaberry, that that was part of a bigger package and an organisational solution.

Mr Poots: OK, so it was really down to the sickness issue that the staff and prisoner governors did not get the support.

Mr Adam: Those conversations were going on with the Prison Officers' Association, the Prison Governors Association and the management within Maghaberry long before. It was not an idea that was had later. We were looking at a range of alternatives. In the same way as, we have said on a number of occasions, we were concerned when turnover was much higher among our custody prison officers than it should have been. We were looking at what we could do around pay to support that and how we could recruit people as prison custody officers. All those processes were kicked off in March. Unfortunately, the recruitment process, with vetting, takes time, and we are only starting to see the benefits of that now, but those processes started in the early part of the year.

Mr Poots: And, unfortunately, you had an inspection in between. Why did Mr Cawkwell leave so quickly?

Ms S McAllister: His period of secondment came to an end. He was only ever here for two years. He came on 10 June in 2013 and left on 9 June 2015.

Mr Poots: He seemed to disappear very quickly.

Ms McGahan: You are very welcome. The report states that healthcare services need urgent improvement to ensure patient safety. Have you met the South Eastern Health Trust regarding its plans to address the concerns in the report?

Ms S McAllister: Hugh McCaughey and I met, probably about six weeks ago, and had a really honest conversation about what we needed to do. Our plan is to get half a dozen of their senior people and our senior team together and address it. Actually, part of the Owers review is to have that joint health and justice strategy. We are very keen to work in partnership with them; so, yes, we have met, and we continue to meet. Stephen attends the operational forum, which is at that operational level. I think that the last meeting was last week.

Mr Davis: Yes.

Ms S McAllister: So, there are regular meetings with the South Eastern Trust.

Ms McGahan: When I read in the report that chronic disease management needed urgent attention and that some aspects are not safe, that strikes me as medical negligence. It is deeply concerning. I have also read in the report that GP attendance at the jail has been affected by lockdowns. How will that be addressed, if a prisoner requires medical attention? Also, for example, stock inhalers are not always available. What happens if a prisoner goes into a fit of coughing or wheezing? How will you address that?

Ms S McAllister: I am not avoiding it, but all of that is for the South Eastern Trust to answer. We have what Brendan referred to as "a bought-in service", which is a term I will now use, because it is very good. It is not a contracted service with the South Eastern Trust. It is just that they deliver healthcare services in prisons; but we do not actually have any contractual levers to dictate or determine what they deliver, so that is probably a conversation for them.

Ms McGahan: Absolutely, but have you flagged up those concerns with the health service?

Ms McAllister: Yes, that continues to happen. Stephen, do you want to —

Mr Davis: First, there is an absolute requirement that both NIPS and the South Eastern Trust provide within one month of the publication of the report an action plan on exactly how we will address all those issues. One of the things you said was about access and lockdowns, and Phil has already given a commitment that, while there may still be lockdowns, they should not inhibit essential services. That commitment has already been given.

With the overall management of health, not only in Maghaberry but across NIPS, because there will be read-across lessons for all of us in all the other establishments, we will renew the operational focus so that lessons learned in one area will be read across into other areas. Things like that will be flagged up and become issues for other jails to ensure that those issues are not repeated.

Ms McGahan: The public services ombudsman has a responsibility to investigate maladministration. Have any prisoners ever been advised to make complaints to the ombudsman based on complaints about the health system?

Mr Wragg: I am not aware of —

Ms S McAllister: I do not know, but we can check to make sure that prisoners are aware of that. I am sure that they must be aware, but we ought to check that they know about that avenue of complaint.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Who is responsible for managing the contracts for health provision?

Ms S McAllister: There is no contract between NIPS and the South Eastern Trust. The funding for the delivery of healthcare services was transferred to the South Eastern Trust, but it is not a contractual arrangement. It now owns the budget and, through a healthcare needs analysis, determines what it will deliver.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Are you saying that there is nobody in the Prison Service who is responsible for ensuring that the service provided is adequate?

Ms S McAllister: The mechanism for that is through three layers of meetings. There is the strategic partnership board, which Hugh McCaughey, the chief executive of the trust, chairs and which I and the director of ops attend; there is an operational meeting, which Stephen attends; and there are local meetings with each of the governors. The Prison Service's responsibility is to provide the environment in which healthcare can be delivered. It is exactly what we said about not having prisoners who are inaccessible. Through our prisoner escort and custody services (PECS) group, we provide escorts for people to go to hospital. Ultimately, there is a head of healthcare in the prisons who works for the trust, not for the Prison Service.

Mr Frew: We have a very complex and detailed report. Its many pages go on about certain aspects of the prison. Many target recommendations were not met, and some were achieved. I have the utmost respect for your line of work and the work that you do, and I have the utmost respect for every single prison warden and prison officer in the country. They have done a tremendously difficult job — as have you — for many years in the most horrendous conditions and circumstances that we found ourselves in in this country. Without doubt, being a prison officer in Northern Ireland is an extremely hard job, compared with some other countries. I have the utmost respect for all of you who have come through the system in this line of work. It is bound to be tremendously challenging on any rung of the ladder. Politicians may sit in this room and ask questions, but you do the job day in and day out.

That said, we are here to scrutinise and to try to make things better for everyone in the country: our people, our prison officers and the prisoners, because they are also important. There have been massive failures. We cannot tolerate having the worst prison or the most unsafe or unstable prison in Europe or even in the UK. We cannot tolerate that, and we have to do something. The Minister was very blasé in saying that it was OK and that improvements have been made. He said that, since May, a new man is in place, the old team is away, and everything will be fine — that is basically what it came down to. The signal that that sent out to your staff was absolutely horrendous. They want things to change for the better. They want people to realise what is going wrong and to fix it. I am going to try to help somehow with that, even in my limited capacity.

I will take one aspect — bullying — because we would be here all day if we talked about the whole report. Paragraph S4 states:

So many questions arise from that one paragraph out of many paragraphs. Why was the anti-bullying policy not sufficiently effective? Why was data analysis inadequate? Why was the monitoring and investigation of bullying not up to standard? Why was there an absence of data on unexplained injuries? If they have done a report and seen all that, how could you, Sue, not have seen it?

Ms S McAllister: Paul, you are absolutely right. We did see some of that, and, if I were to go back over the director of ops' reports — I think that Brendan mentioned this — some of the concerns raised in those chimed with what was raised in the inspection report.

The level of assaults in Maghaberry has stayed fairly stable; in fact, there has been a slight reduction. However, every assault is one too many, so one thing that Phil and his team will need to assure themselves of is that those things are being addressed. As you said, this is not the time to go into detail, but some of those concerns were precisely the concerns that Paul raised at the time through his monthly visits. We have always said that Maghaberry is an enormous establishment and a big challenge. It will take time to address some of those issues.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): In October 2014, Paul told us:

Ms S McAllister: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): This report does not suggest that it is down quite significantly.

Ms S McAllister: The figures that I have show that, from April to September this year, they are down 22%. Between July 2012 — for obvious reasons, I have the information for that — and September 2015, there is no real change, but, over periods, we have seen a significant reduction. At the time that Paul said that, it would not have been untrue that there had been a significant reduction.

Mr Frew: The Minister thought that things were getting better. We will see that tested over time. I really, truly hope that that is the case and that the reports get better from here on in. However, it is not good enough to say that we are a team, it is everybody's failure, and we all have a responsibility. There is a structure, and, when it is everybody's responsibility, it becomes nobody's responsibility. It has to be someone's responsibility, and someone has to make the call. Is that structure robust enough so that you, Sue, at the top, know exactly what is happening and when it is happening? Do red lights go off in your office at the most sensitive issue so that at least you know that you can make a decision? Whether or not you make the right decision is a different issue, but the point is whether you can react somehow. Are those structures in place?

Ms S McAllister: It is a good question. We are a hierarchical organisation and have clear structures in place. If you are asking me whether I am always micromanaging — no, I am not. I would not be doing my job if I were micromanaging. We have identified that there have been issues with trust and confidence within and between layers of management, which we mentioned. Our structures lend themselves to my becoming aware of things that I need to act on, but sometimes those things go wrong. We need to learn lessons from that. That is not about changing the structures but is sometimes about making sure that those structures work properly.

Mr Frew: I am not being flippant, Phil, but is there a better time to come in and take over a prison?

Mr Wragg: Taking over a prison at any time can be challenging. There are different challenges with each prison. It is not about representing whether there is a good or a bad time. I have a job to do. Maghaberry has a task that it needs to complete. I am there with my team — when I say "my team", I mean every single member of staff in Maghaberry and the headquarters team — to ensure that Maghaberry is a better place.

Mr Frew: Are you confident that the structures around and above you are robust enough that, when you say something, it will be heard?

Mr Wragg: I am absolutely, totally confident that I have unequivocal and unswerving support from Sue and the team above me. I have a senior management team in the establishment that, as I have probably put on record, is the best that I have ever worked with. My staff are committed and loyal to wanting to get the job done in Maghaberry. I am not sitting here today concerned that the job cannot be done: the job is already under way.

Mr Frew: I always get the impression that, even though the job of everyone here and all your staff below you is horrendously difficult, when you come before the Committee, a rose tint is put on everything. As I said to the Minister on Monday, he would do well to tell people out there how it is and the pressures that are on you. I wish and hope that that were the case. I have not been on this Committee for long, but, every time you come to present, I get the impression from everyone in the Prison Service that the whole truth and nothing but the truth is not being told. I am not accusing you of lying but am just saying that things can be hidden that do not come out in a presentation. It does not serve you well when we get a report like this that blows all that work up into the air. If, in a previous presentation before this report was issued, someone had told us what would be in the report, in your own words and your own thinking, that, Sue, would have done the credibility of you and your team the world of good. There is no way that you could have been blindsided by this. There is no way that you could not have known that the inspection was coming soon and that the inspectors were going to come in and say a, b and c. If you were doing your job and role properly, there is no way that you would not have suspected that, somewhere along the line, we would get a report like this.

Ms S McAllister: OK. I note your comments.

Mr Frew: It is very difficult for politicians to do their jobs. It is horrendously difficult for you to do your jobs. For everything to get better, we need to know the truth. As much as anything, we are here to support. We need to hear everything — good or bad — because that is the one way that we will resolve the issue. A Minister in a Chamber is not going to tell everything the way it is. You are in a really good position to tell this Committee, which is here to support as much as to scrutinise, warts and all, so that we can effect changes and make difficult situations that bit better. Your prison officers are our constituents. That is why we are here.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): You have also taken over the role of director of reducing offending. Given the difficulty that we are in with Maghaberry, are you confident that you have enough time to do both roles and give this your full concentration?

Ms S McAllister: It is less about doing two roles and more about taking an overarching responsibility. The Youth Justice Agency still has a very capable chief executive. Through me, he is responsible, but I am not required to have a hands-on role in the minutiae. We also have Brian as the director of rehabilitation, whose role expands now beyond NIPS into the reducing offending directorate.

It makes so much sense with those small coterminous services to manage them together because you get efficiencies in the way in which we use resource, but, more importantly, you should get more joined-up working, which means better outcomes for offenders and Northern Ireland. It is absolutely doable with the team that I have in place.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I thank all of you very much. The answers were very concise today. That helped it to flow a little bit. I always like to keep the members happy, particularly Sammy. He is always looking for a reason to be cheerful; hopefully, when you come back in January, you will provide that reason to be cheerful.

Mr Douglas: At least one, anyway, Chair.

Ms S McAllister: Thank you.