Jail watchdog threatens to quit

Fresh crisis for Prison Service as Ombudsman accuses Home Secretary of making his job 'a joke'

THE Prisons Ombudsman has warned that he will resign this week unless Michael Howard drops proposals that would curtail his independence.

Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Woodhead, who investigates injustices in the country's 133 jails, is angry because the Home Secretary proposes to stop him investigating certain ministerial decisions about sentencing and to restrict his access to government papers. He has told Prison Service officials that Mr Howard's proposals would make his job "a joke".

A civil service source said: "Basically, they want to confine him to looking at complaints about prison food." Sir Peter's disillusion with the Home Secretary is all the more remarkable because Mr Howard appointed him in 1994 after deciding that rival candidates were too liberal. He is a former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander (Atlantic) to Nato.

He first clashed with Whitehall over the treatment of the society fraudster Darius Guppy and other high-profile prisoners. He discovered from official papers that Mr Guppy had been denied day release from prison because his outing would coincide with the Conservative Party conference and might embarrass Government ministers.

Now the Home Office plans to stop Sir Peter having access to all government papers about a prisoner with a grievance. Civil servants will decide in future what he can and cannot read.

He will also be banned from investigating ministerial decisions affecting the 3,200 life sentence prisoners. All other cases involving security and civil servants' advice to ministers will also be put outside his remit.

"Any politically sensitive prisoner who could embarrass ministers will be out of bounds," said a civil service source.

The first hint of the Home Office's new hard line towards the Ombudsman came in an unreported case at the High Court in London two weeks ago. Mr Howard had ruled that the Ombudsman could not investigate the case of Edward Koranke, who was given a life sentence for murder in 1980. Koranke's grievance was that the Home Secretary stopped him being transferred from Wakefield Prison to a secure hostel prior to release. But Mr Howard said that Koranke was not going to be released, because he "was not trustworthy".

Koranke's High Court case was postponed until after a meeting between Mr Howard and Sir Peter this Wednesday.

Harry Fletcher of the probation workers' union, Napo, said the pressures on Sir Peter were disgraceful. "If this package goes through, the Ombudsman will be rendered powerless. His job will be almost meaningless and ministers will know their decisions will escape scrutiny."

In a statement, the Prison Service said: "The Home Secretary keeps the operations of the Ombudsman's office and its remit under constant review." Parliament had given the Ombudsman no independent power, a spokesman said, and the "Home Secretary appoints him and determines his remit".

If Sir Peter resigns it will be a fresh blow to the Prison Service, which has been in disarray since Mr Howard fired Derek Lewis, the director- general, last October. He has been unable to find a replacement.

Mr Lewis's dismissal led to opposition attacks on Mr Howard for his failure to accept responsibility for the state of the prisons. These were echoed by Judge Stephen Tumim, the caustic Chief Inspector of Prisons forced to retire early when Mr Howard did not renew his contract. The judge complained that the Home Secretary did not seem to want independent advice.

The Ombudsman's office was set up after the Strangeways jail riot of 1990. Lord Woolf's inquiry into the violence concluded that it was essential for prisoners to have an independent complaints system they trusted if further trouble was to be avoided.