Political Responsibility for UK Prison Security – Ministers Escape Again

Abstract

Two very serious prison escapes in 1994–5 prompted the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, to dismiss the Prison Service head, Derek Lewis (a contracted businessman) who successfully sued for full compensation and costs. This sacking and law suit were unprecedented events which highlighted familiar tensions about the ‘policy’ and ‘administrative’ (‘operational’) distinction and what passes for the theory of individual ministerial responsibility to Parliament. This article reviews four serious prison security failures in England and Northern Ireland since 1983 and the standard ministerial posture blaming operational error rather than their own policy framework. Drawing on interviews with relevant senior figures, the exceptionally politically sensitive case of executive agency status for the Prison Service of England and Wales is considered. The ‘Lewis vs. Howard’ affair is placed in its context of the increasingly managerial ambitions of both ‘incomer’ and career civil servants which conflict with traditionally comprehensive, but symbolic, ministerial responsibility.

The Bureaucrat Who Fell Under a Bus: Ministerial Responsibility, Executive Agencies and The Derek Lewis Affair in Britain

“…8 But before we blame Next Steps for enabling ministers in the firing line to see to their own safety by offering up agency heads as diversionary targets, let us take a brief look at two prison escapes dating from before the Prison Service was set up as an agency. Both are well documented in Woodhouse (1994) and Barker (1998), the account below being no more than a brief summary.…”

“…He used to be summoned to the Home Office at least once a day to discuss operational issues. The Home Office chose to settle out of court: Lewis won a total of £280,000 in damages (Adonis and Suzman 1995;Talbot 1996;Barker 1998).…”

An Exocet in a Red Box: Parliamentary Accountability in the Sandline Affair

“…The second is the distinction between ministers' accountability (their formal obligation to answer to Parliament for the activities of their departments) and responsibility (personal culpability, which extends only to their own actions). These notions, it is argued, enable ministers to evade responsibility, even for matters which should properly be laid at their door (Woodhouse 1994;Campbell and Wilson 1995;Foster and Plowden 1996;Gray and Jenkins 1997;Barberis 1998;Barker 1998).…”

“…The weight of opinion here favours parliamentary select committees with an expanded role and greater powers (Plowden 1994;Woodhouse 1994;Theakston 1995;Bogdanor 1996Bogdanor , 1997Barberis 1998;Barker 1998). Select committees in their current form are considered to be too weak.…”

Accountability, New Public Management, and the Problems of the Child Support Agency

“…The escape, which warranted a special inquiry, 26 raised in acute form the effect of the policy/operational divide on ministerial responsibility and culminated in the dismissal of the chief executive, though not the minister. 27 In the saga of the Child Support Agency issues of accountability were raised still more starkly and in a more complex form. Seven years after its establishment the CSA had been the subject of a record number of inquiries, audits and reports.…”