I spent a week with Narey when he agreed to be filmed for BBC2s Back to the Floor TV series where bosses leave their ivory tower and go to work on the front line. Back to the Floor film shoots are extraordinary affairs. For an entire week you do virtually everything with the boss apart from sleep with them and we quickly found out Narey is one helluva tough cookie.
But if you look at his cv you might be forgiven for expecting the opposite. For Martin James Narey is a lifelong civil servant who joined the prison service as a management trainee. Hes never been a prison officer. He kicked off his career as an assistant governor in a young offenders institution and then went straight into the Home Office. He spent two years co-ordinating computerisation in the criminal justice system, then onto the Crime Prevention Agency and steadily up and up until on Christmas Eve 1998, at the age of 43, he was appointed the youngest-ever boss of the prison service.
Our front line for Narey was the notorious Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight which only takes prisoners serving sentences of more than four years. Its a grim, bleak, oppressive place with staff morale at rock bottom.
The surprises started long before we got there. Back to the Floor normally features the bosses saying goodbye to their families and the locations are usually pretty impressive mansions, rolling lawns, Bentleys and swimming pools.
Nareys home is like everyone elses. Its a semi in a suburban street and the front gardens been concreted over to provide a car parking space. The only trappings of luxury are his chauffeur-driven government car equipped with fax and phones so he can work on the move.
And he certainly works. Hes normally on the road by 6am, rarely returning before 8pm. He clearly misses spending time with his two teenage children, Lizzie and James. His wife Jan they were childhood sweethearts told us, He likes to come home, close the front door and leave the world outside and just be with his family.
Nareys job is a nightmare. He wears a bleep at all times and when it goes off he shudders as it may well be alerting him that yet another prisoner has committed suicide. He gets genuinely upset not because it means more work, or targets not achieved, or adverse press attention, but because he feels they have failed someone in their care.
When we found out that Narey is a Porridge fan because, he says, it captures the dynamics in prison, the humour and the constant battle between staff and prisoners I asked whether he wanted his staff to be Barracloughs or Mackays. They both have something to offer: Barraclough compassion, and Mackay because he realises that weve got to keep people locked up. And if he could only have one of them? Barraclough, he said without a moments hesitation.
Narey is determined to shake up the prison system and in my book he stands a fair chance. What struck me most was his lack of fear and his ability to get a dialogue going with the prisoners. He seemed far more at ease with the inmates than his staff.
Its impossible to keep any secrets in prison and within hours of our arrival absolutely everyone knew who Narey was. To have the top man working on their wing was a big deal for the prisoners.
After tea one night when the prisoners are allowed free association on the wing, Narey was surrounded at the end of one of the landings by five or six angry cons. Some of these guys were truly fearsome and all were shouting at him and getting more and more heated. If youve never been in a prison, it is very difficult to convey how oppressive and scary the atmosphere can be and it was definitely a time to put the camera down and stand back.
No other officers were on the landing with him and I seriously thought that someone was going to take a swing at him and become the local hero. The inmates were complaining they had either been wrongly convicted, been beaten up in other jails, or unfairly treated in some way. Narey was completely alone but he just crossed his arms his trademark style stood his ground, listened and argued his corner if he thought they were talking rubbish or agreeing if he sympathised with them. If he felt it warranted more than that he would take a quick note and promise to look into it (which he then did). He showed no fear and gradually won the prisoners over. He had bothered to listen and from then on seemed to have gained their respect. It was a truly impressive performance.
Prisons are all about respect and all jails are run on the goodwill of the prisoners. As the week went on and he got more and more relaxed he was able to strike up remarkably good bantering sessions with the inmates. During a cookery class (Narey adores cooking) he was quizzed on what he earns. How much do you think? he retorted. You must get a bank managers wage? asked one con. To the astonished throng Narey then said he earned 100,000 a year, adding that it was an awful lot less than somebody would earn for this type of job in the private sector. The fascinated cons, who had clearly never had someone in authority talk so frankly and openly to them wanted, to know more. Any perks with the job, gov? one chipped in. I get a car and a driver but thats strictly for work, said Narey. Can you take it clubbing or to the Ritz in Paris? they asked. Sheer magic.
Throughout the week the tension between Narey and the staff remained close to boiling point. As he candidly admitted: Im not frightened of doing things which will make me unpopular. Although Narey controls a budget of 2.1 billion, he is cutting prison officers jobs and changing working practices to save money.
And Nareys biggest beef is the amount of sickness absence running through the service. At Parkhurst its 12.4 days a year far more than the national average. But for many of the prison officers the reason why sickness is so high is because morale is so low.
One particularly heated exchange sticks in my mind between Narey and a dedicated prison officer called Alan over staffing levels. Ive been doing this for 13 years and in 13 years I feel worse and worse and worse. We have a higher incidence of sickness than the average, dont we? But youve got to address the underlying problem. Staff morale. They are going sick because they are fed up with the way they are being treated, argued Alan.
But Narey was having none of it. I dont believe that being fed up with work is an excuse to commit a fraud, or for not going in when youre not sick. I plan to reward those staff who come to work for long periods and dont take sickness absence. He wasnt, he said, targeting the people who have a bit of a cold or who are genuinely ill, its the people who have had a few beers the night before. Theyre the people I plan to get. And you know that he meant it.
Nearly a year on we are reminiscing about the Back to the Floor experience. Narey is in a good mood: that morning he had accompanied Tony Blair around Pentonville the first time a serving prime minister had visited a prison. Narey says, Back to the Floor was important for me and it was certainly worth doing. Inevitably I wished better things would have come out but you have to take the rough with the smooth and overall I was pleased with the result.
What working at Parkhurst did was confirm my view that the amount of sickness absence was unacceptable and that the people taking a lot of sick leave were exploiting all the good staff who turn up day after day come what may people like Alan.
Since Nareys week on the front line sickness absence has dropped dramatically at Parkhurst. There are 11 off sick today and when we were filming it was averaging about 20 a day, he says. Nationally, however, the level of sickness absence in the prison service hasnt improved at all and Narey clearly cant go and spend a week in each jail. So hes determined to get even tougher. He continues: Some people are swinging the lead and they are going to get dismissed. What Ive decided to do is to introduce a more rigid system of sickness management.
But his pilot scheme to reward those who dont go sick appears to have been put on hold. We are going to pilot it next year, he says, although he insists that the delay in introducing it had nothing to do with the row he had with Alan.
I wonder. The beauty of Back to the Floor is that it does allow the rank and file direct access to the boss. They can speak their mind and their views are not filtered down by middle management.
Although hes still got huge problems with sickness and basic conditions in some prisons, Narey feels he is making huge inroads elsewhere. He says, Escapes are the lowest ever and suicides have fallen for the first time in five years.
Narey has also abolished drill instruction for prison officer recruits Mackay would turn in his grave. But the most amazing achievement from Nareys week on the floor was what is now happening to mental health care in prison. It wasnt a subject we planned to deal with in the programme but what subsequently happened had huge ramifications.
The prison officers at Parkhurst wanted to show they were so undermanned that security was being compromised. They also wanted Narey to experience how unpleasant some of their work was. The plan was to send Narey off with the security detail to search a cell in Parkhursts hospital wing for weapons. A man had been threatening the female nurses. In Back to the Floor we always try and get bosses to talk to the staff about issues while they are doing something physical. This seemed perfect. And it was.
Narey was truly shocked by what he found. There was excrement on the floor and rubbish everywhere. The walls were covered in newspaper and magazine photos of scantily clad women. One of the officers warned Narey, Just be careful of what these posters are held up with its his own sperm up there. As they took the photos off the wall and threw them on the floor Narey exclaimed, Weve got to get this man into a psychiatric hospital. Now this stuff is sticking to my shoes. Its not glue thats making it do that.
When filming finished Narey went to see the home secretary, Jack Straw, and told him in vivid detail about the horrendous cell search. Straw, who was clearly shocked, promptly gave him an extra 35 million pounds to spend on psychiatric nurses.
So is he going to carry out his threat and go? The press blew it all out of proportion, says Narey. What I was saying to my governors was we have to make huge improvements and if they are not going to back me then Im off. Their response was fantastic. I got exactly what I wanted and Ive got no intention of going.
Further information
Back to the Floor returns later in the year and the team is looking for new organisations to film. Twenty eight bosses have taken part so far ranging from Sainsburys to the RSPCA. Contact Hugh Dehn at Room 4155, BBC White City, London W12 7TS
