‘The momentum we’ve got is important’

Five days before he left his job in Government, Lord Timpson spoke exclusively to Inside Time

When Inside Time turned up at the House of Lords to speak with Lord Timpson, we did not know it would turn out to be his farewell interview.

We had arranged the meeting months earlier, and invited readers to submit questions for the Prisons and Probation Minister. As he answered them, he gave every impression of a man who was enjoying his job and planning to stay in it for some time to come.  

He defended his claim, reported on the front page of last month’s Inside Time, that he is “fixing the system”. He pointed out that 12 of the last 16 prison inspection reports have shown an overall improvement. “Staff retention has improved a lot. Violence is down, self-harm is down, assaults on staff are down.

“If you look at the football league table at the end of the season, the scores don’t lie. Within the season, not everything goes to plan. You lose some matches and you have a bad spell, but the momentum we’ve got is really important and it’s important that that story is told.”

What about probation? In this month’s Inside Time we report that nine Approved Premises hostels are shut due to staff shortages, while 15 per cent of people who are meant to be wearing tags don’t have one. Isn’t the system in crisis?

No, said Lord Timpson, pointing to findings by inspectors showing that 90 per cent of probation regions have improved. “Probation is where the heavy lifting of the justice system is done,” he said. “If you don’t fix probation, you will never fix prisons. And for far too long, probation has been the poor cousin of the relationship. 

“So we have managed to get all the funding we need, a 45 per cent increase to recruit enough staff to have enough beds, to have enough tags, and to have enough technology. That will mean by April next year, supply will equal demand for the first time in many, many years. 

“Already the average number of cases per probation officer has come down to 32, whereas before it was in the high 40s. And we’ve had a lucky break with Justice Transcribe, an AI dictation tool which is saving hours and hours of probation staff time. But we’ve got to get through to April, which is not going to be straightforward because we’ve got big growth in probation.”

The interview was taking place on 15 July. We knew that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister who appointed Lord Timpson to oversee English and Welsh prisons, would be standing down in five days’ time to make way for Andy Burnham. So we asked the minister if he would be staying on in his job.

His reply was brief – “It’s not in my gift. But I’m the longest-serving prisons minister in 15 years.” He added: “If not, I’ll be repairing shoes and cutting keys.” It was an acknowledgement of Mr Burnham’s power to dismiss him.

Lord Timpson’s resignation on 20 July surprised political observers at Westminster, where he was widely regarded to have done a decent job in a difficult role – and without drawing a ministerial salary. Science Minister Lord Vallance, another non-political expert who had been brought into government by Sir Keir, resigned on the same day – suggesting that Mr Burnham intends to return to the usual practice of filling ministerial roles with MPs from the governing party. Between 2010 and 2024, the job of prisons minister was held by 13 different Conservative MPs.

A year ago, Inside Time interviewed Lord Timpson during a visit to HMP Isle of Wight. At the time, he told us he was frustrated that the jail’s laundry had been broken for a long time, so laundry had to be taken by ferry to the mainland, washed there, and returned. He said he would add it to his list of problems that needed fixing. 

So, a year on, we asked him whether the Isle of Wight laundry was now working. “The laundry is not fixed, but we’ve got washing machines and dryers there,” he replied. So dirty sheets are still going by ferry? “I’m not sure where all of it is being done, but we’ll get you the details,” he said. We didn’t hear back.

The episode illustrates the difficulty that any minister, even a troubleshooter like Lord Timpson, faces in trying to oversee a sprawling public service where things can, and do, go wrong every day. Did he resign because he felt he had done what he could in the role, or was he axed by a new PM wanting to make his mark? For now, he is not saying, but his replacement will find that being Prisons Minister brings many challenges.

Big Clean Day

Every June, prisons take part in the Big Clean-day. It’s an initiative across England and Wales where prisoners and staff work together to improve their prisons, with trophies for regional winners. Lord Timpson told Inside Time that it’s about more than litter-picking – it’s about building a community.

‘We need prisons that are clean, that don’t have weeds or litter or broken windows or broken furniture,’ he said. ‘You need to get everybody who lives and works in that prison to improve the standards. And loads of prisons have embraced it. Prisoners work with staff, together, to clean the wings, to clean the kitchens, everything.

‘I’ve met so many prisoners who got really stuck in, and properly cleaned them [the wings]. And then, funnily enough – self-harm is down, violence is down, staff-prisoner interactions improve.’