Shabana Mahmood’s plans to reduce migration hit a setback yesterday. It emerged that around 2,500 foreign national prison officers who no longer qualified to remain in the UK will have their visas extended. The officers, most of whom are from West Africa, were going to have to leave their jobs because the new skilled worker scheme requires that people earn £41,700 a year, above the level which most early-career prison officers are paid. Just six weeks ago it seemed that the Home Secretary wouldn’t budge, but it seems that concerted lobbying by Justice Secretary David Lammy and prisons minister Lord Timpson, along with an intervention from the Prime Minister, has caused the rethink.
According to the Ministry of Justice they ‘have given a specific, time-limited exemption to visa rules for prison officers who are already in the country’, because it was necessary to ‘ensure jails can continue to run safely’. There is some truth to this. The 2,500 foreign prison officers represent 11 per cent of all frontline prison staff, but they are not evenly distributed. Bullingdon, Elmlea, Guys Marsh, Liverpool and Swaleside all have very high levels of foreign officers. The last jail in that list is of particular concern.
The prison service is in permanent crisis
Earlier this week Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, issued an urgent notification for the high-security prison on the Isle of Sheppey. He described a jail suffering from ‘very high levels of violence’ and where a third of prisoners had been assaulted. Officers too ‘were subject to high levels of violence’, and the prison ‘had failed to solve chronic staffing problems…for too long, Swaleside had been reliant on detached duty officers from other jails.’ No doubt the lack of a permanent governor for much of last year and this has exacerbated these problems, something Taylor described as ‘shameful’, particularly for such ‘an important and risky prison’.
No doubt removing many foreign officers from Swaleside would only make it worse. But it should not be like this. We’ve only been hiring foreign national prisoner officers for two years. In that time they have come to represent more than 10 per cent of prison officers because our jails can’t hold on to staff. In the 12 months to September, despite appointing 2,338 new frontline prison officers, our jails actually saw frontline staff headcount drop by 1,015, or 4.3 per cent.
Generally, these officers seem to be a mixed bag. Some are well-regarded while some barely speak English. There are also concerns about their levels of vetting. While I understand from the Ministry of Justice that applicants from overseas are required to provide a criminal record certificate from the relevant country, I have heard suggestions from other sources that these certificates are not consistently verified, and that there are particular concerns when applicants are from countries with known high levels of corruption such as Nigeria.
In truth, we shouldn’t need to hire any foreign nationals to work in our prisons. Robert Jenrick, shadow justice secretary, told me:
It’s ridiculous that we have become so dependent on foreign nationals for prison officers. These are difficult jobs that should be done by British citizens who are properly trained.
Meanwhile, Rob Bates, Director of the Centre for Migration Control said:
The prison staffing crisis could have easily been averted with sensible employment strategies. The visas of these prison officers should not be renewed. The state should embark on a concerted effort to bolster recruitment of new officers and look to induce the return of those who have recently left. It is quite clearly a national security issue to have our prisons managed by people who are not citizens of this country.
What is particularly astonishing is quite how quickly this part of the British state has become dependent on shipping staff from West Africa instead of hiring in the UK, and treating staff well so that they stay in their jobs. Instead, as Rob Bates says, ‘mass migration is used as a sticking plaster for labour shortages whilst simultaneously worsening the underlying problems.’ That is to say that it suppresses wages.
This week’s concessions will only make things worse. While the Ministry of Justice insists these changes are ‘time-limited’ and would only apply to people who are already in the UK, they weren’t able to provide any guidance on what salary threshold will apply to future prison officer hires from overseas. No doubt there will now be pressure to change the rules there as well. The prison service is in permanent crisis. It’s hard to believe there will ever be a moment where it’s able to wean itself off cheap foreign labour.
Similarly, other departments and organisations which are addicted to importing cheap labour will be lobbying for their staff to be excluded from the new visa rules, no doubt emboldened by this news. In reality, we know that very few migrants will actually make a positive financial contribution during their whole life in Britain, and meanwhile we are facing rising unemployment, and in particular youth unemployment.
A responsible civil service and a responsible government would work to fix these problems instead of pouring more costly migrants into our country. Unfortunately neither our civil service nor our government is responsible.
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