I attended the Scarisbrick Parish Council meeting last night, where they were due to discuss the recent reports of a prison to be sited at Hurslton Hall Golf Club.
The discussion was at the beginning of the meeting and was done so that members of the public could also contribute.
I then stayed for most of the rest of the meeting, leaving when it looked like there would be a non-public session near the end. Having said that, I doubt that
Why was I there? Because I think that a prison at Scarisbrick would have a massive effect on Ormskirk as well as Scarisbrick. There is no doubt that the infrastucture in Scarisbrick wouldn’t support the services and staff that are needed by such an institution and that Ormskirk would be the obvious source of resources. So I wanted to know what the current situation is.
The Chair should be congratulated for trying to keep the meeting as non-political as possible. However, the main debate seemed to be around the nature of reassurances that have come from our MP.
A leaflet from Rosie Cooper had been distributed in the village earlier that day which included a letter from Jack Straw saying that yes, Scarisbrick had been considered for a prison but that it wasn’t suitable for the Titan prisons; and that there are now no plans for a prison in the village.
Cllr Andrew Fowler had a series of questions against this: basically that the letter referred to the Titan scheme of prisons which had been abandoned, that there was no guarantee that a future prison wouldn’t be built on the site and then regrettably some nit-picking about the golf club being on Hurlston Lane not Southport Road. I say regrettably, because he started to veer towards party politics which was completely unnecessary.
Between these two points there was an impasse. Rosie Cooper’s office manager attended the meeting to present the situation and to reassure those present that Rosie was doing all that she could to prevent it from happening. He used the analogy that we go to bed assuming that we’ll wake up in the morning, but that we can’t be 100% certain. However, Cllr Fowler wanted a copper-bottomed guarantee that it wouldn’t happen.
The difficulty is that there is now a fresh round to find sites for the smaller mini-Titans. No-one can honestly say that a site is or isn’t included. There is a process that will have to take place. The assurance that we got about the new process was that there would be a “massive breach of trust” between the Justice Department and Rosie should the prison go ahead. One member of the public agreed that Rosie would certainly have “egg on her face” if a prison did go ahead given the leaflet that had been distributed.
If I’m honest, I didn’t come away knowing anything more than when I went in. Indeed, I think that most of the interested members of the public will have felt the same way. The problem being that these arguments are usually carried out in terms of absolutes, which in these circumstances, they can’t.
The assurances about the prison not being built shifted from a near-absolute guarantee that it wouldn’t be built to one with questions regarding the correspondence presented and concerns about the forthcoming mini-Titan search.
Similarly, the position presented by Cllr Fowler was weak because he undermined some of the points he was trying to make by appearing to stray into party politics (and was stopped by the Chair).
In the end the Parish Council took a vote that it would continue to object to a prison being built in Scarisbrick and maintain a level of vigilance in the future.
For me there was a missed opportunity. The argument was around whether Jack Straw and Rosie Cooper were effectively mis-informing people, when really it should have been about what to do if it comes on the radar again.
The correspondence says that Scarisbrick was considered, but wasn’t suitable for the large Titan prisons. A notice regarding prospective prison sites will again be published in the Estates Gazette and I doubt it will say “no sites from Scarisbrick, please”. There remains the possibility that Scarisbrick will appear on a list somewhere.
The question has to be: if Scarisbrick was unsuitable for a full-on Titan, is it still unsuitable for a mini-Titan – because that will be the first test from the Justice department. Specifically, we need to know: by what criteria was Scarisbrick deemed to be unsuitable for a Titan? and then it follows that we should ask what criteria will used to judge the prospective mini-Titan sites?
At least that would give us all a better understanding of where we are, what might happen in the future and how to resist it.