Prison service bosses took home pay and bonuses worth more than £6m last year despite the crisis which has led to dangerous offenders being mistakenly released, The i Paper can reveal.
Former Director General Chief Executive Officer Amy Rees and Director General of Operations Phil Copple both took home bumper pay packets before quietly leaving their roles as the prison service went into meltdown this summer.
Justice Secretary David Lammy is holding an emergency meeting with prison governors today after it emerged two prisoners were accidentally released from HMP Wandsworth in London within a matter of days.
Manhunts were launched this week for both fraudster William “Billy” Smith and Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif. Smith, 35, handed himself back into Wandsworth prison voluntarily on Thursday morning.
Critics have said Lammy must also hold civil servants to account over the performance of the prison service following a series of failures which have put the public at risk.
Amy Rees Former Director General Chief Executive Officer at HMPPS (Photo: Gov.uk)According to the latest accounts published by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) last month there were 57 senior civil service staff on salaries of between £80,000 to £179,999 per year in the year ending March 2025 at a combined cost of around £6.4m in total.
They include two civil servants in the highest bracket.
Former CEO Rees received a pay package of up to £260,000 last year including a salary of at least £175,000, benefits of £40,200, pension payments of £25,000 and bonus payments of up to £20,000.
She stepped down in June to take over as chief executive officer at Homes England.
There were 57 Senior Civil Service staff earning more than £80,000 last yearCopple, who retired after 35 years working the civil service, received a pay package of up to £325,000 including a salary of at least £175,000, pension payments of £128,000 and bonus payments of up to £20,000.
The HMPPS report says bonus payments are “based on performance levels attained and are made as part of the appraisal process.”
Former prison governor and count-terrorism expert Ian Acheson said Lammy should “suspend senior officials” in HMPPS and send in specialist commissioners to take over running the service in the same way the government handles councils facing bankruptcy.
Phil Copple Director General of Operations at HMPPS (Photo: Gov.uk)Acheson said the focus needs to be on “restoring order” and that this requires “road tested experts who will tell you what needs to be done instead of careerist arse coverers.”
Speaking of the civil service managers leading HMPPS, he added: “I dread to think what the pay bill for this lot is. But we’re all paying for it and another layer of managers below that before we even get to prison Governors.
“Lammy should be asking, ‘what are you for if not to stop security breaches that are destroying public trust?'”
The Ministry of Justice has been contacted for comment.
Acheson co-authored a report in 2019 for The Centre for Social Justice on how to rescue the prison service in which he criticised a culture of “managerialism”.
Police are continuing their efforts to track down Kaddour-Cherif, 24, who was mistakenly released from Wandsworth prison on October 29.
Two men were released in error after being held in HMP Wandsworth last month (Photo: Ben Montgomery/Getty Images)Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said prison chiefs were being summoned for a meeting on Thursday and a team of digital experts had been tasked with overhauling the “archaic” paper-based system of prisoner records.
Ahead of a meeting with ministers, the Prison Governors Association (PGA) described releases in error as “neither rare nor hidden”, but said the scale of them was “deeply concerning” – with 262 prisoners released in error in the last full year of reporting.
In a statement, the PGA insisted only 0.5% of prisoners are not released on the correct date, but added: “While that may appear to be a small percentage, in a system managing tens of thousands of releases and transfers each quarter, it does represent a significant operational failure.”
The conditions to “reduce this figure to zero simply do not exist”, the association said, adding it “feels disingenuous to see politicians attempt to extract political gain from a prison system in crisis”.
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