A former prisons chief who wrote a glowing “independent” report about a controversial youth offender unit run by G4S had previously been paid thousands of pounds as a consultant for the private security firm, the Guardian has learned.

Sir Martin Narey, former director general of the prison service, published a report in July on Rainsbrook secure training centre in which he wrote that “very challenging children” were treated “overwhelmingly well”. He concluded: “My test in visiting places of custody for over 30 years is to reflect about how I’d feel if my son or daughter were incarcerated there. In Rainsbrook’s case, I would consider him or she to be safe and to be generally well treated.”

Narey’s verdict was delivered months after a joint report by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and the chief inspector of prisons in May into the centre condemned it for a series of failings . It pointed to the dismissal of six members of staff after a series of incidents of gross misconduct, staff who were on drugs on duty, and others who had behaved “extremely inappropriately” with young people, causing distress and humiliation.



Ofsted inspectors, who visited Rainsbrook in February, also revealed that a child who suffered a fracture, possibly as a result of being restrained, did not receive treatment for 15 hours because senior staff overruled clear clinical advice that he needed treatment.

The Ofsted report rated Rainsbrook “inadequate”– the lowest grading, prompting Frances Crook, the chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, to call it the “the worst report on a prison I have ever seen” and the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers to demand that the Youth Justice Board (YJB) cease placing children there.

Narey’s subsequent report, which appeared to show significant improvement at the unit, was referred to as an “independent report” on the YJB website despite Narey’s admission within the background notes that: “Since 2012, I have offered occasional advice to G4S on their care and custody of children.”

In fact, he has been a paid consultant for G4S for three years and in 2014 was paid more than £10,000 by the company. Narey was also paid to advise G4S on bidding for renewal of its contract to run Rainsbrook in 2016.

When approached by the Guardian, Narey confirmed he had been employed by G4S as a consultant until the end of the last financial year and that he agreed to offer an independent view of Rainsbrook as a one-off piece of work.

“My past financial relationship with G4S is made explicit in my report,” Narey said. “G4S will pay for that review although my report was written primarily for the YJB and the secretary of state.”

Asked if he had been part of the G4S bid team to run Rainsbrook for another seven years – a contract that is worth £92m –Narey said he advised the team on how their plans for Rainsbrook might be more child-friendly and how access to, and success in, education might be increased.

“I realised I would be criticised for defending G4S, as people have suggested my reputation is damaged,” Narey told the Guardian. “Life would have been easier if I had not agreed to do this report,” he said, but, he added, he saw a centre that “was not all perfect, but very good, very caring in fact” and that if he had found Rainsbrook to be unsafe, he would have said so “very loudly”. He also criticised the earlier Ofsted report into Rainsbrook, saying: “Ofsted are independent but not omniscient and their conclusions are misconceived.”

Narey’s history with G4S has at times been discordant. In 2011 Narey firmly rejected G4S’s approach to operate Cedars, an immigration detention centre for families in Sussex, though his successor, Anne Marie Carrie, overturned that decision. When he ran the prison service from 1993 to 2008, Narey re-nationalised three prisons from the private sector including one, Buckley Hall, from G4S.

But his impartiality has been called into question following his report on Rainsbrook. Labour MP Tom Watson told the Guardian: “If Narey is a paid consultant to G4S and advising that company on their bid for a new contract, the integrity of that bid must be in doubt. The justice secretary [Michael Gove] must intervene immediately to freeze the bid process until G4S has explained why it appointed a member of its bid team to carry out an ‘independent’ report into its own conduct at Rainsbrook.”

“Gove has either misled me, or been misled himself. I condemn the deplorable conduct of G4S, who seem more concerned with protecting their reputation than dealing with the record of abuse at Rainsbrook,” he told the Guardian.

Watson had previously expressed grave concerns about Rainsbrook as a result of Ofsted’s report and wrote to Gove in June about them.

In his reply to Watson, Gove said the YJB had improved its monitoring process at Rainsbrook and that he intended visit the centre with Narey who, he said, had “conducted his own independent assessment of Rainsbrook”.

Watson also expressed concern about the re-appointment of John Parker as director at Rainsbrook following the Ofsted report. Parker was in charge at Rainsbrook in 2004 when 15-year-old Gareth Myatt died of asphyxiation after being restrained by three custody officers. Gove did not respond to Watson’s concerns about Parker.

G4S declined to comment on allegations that Narey’s report was not independent. A spokesperson for the YJB said it considered the views Narey expressed in the report were his own, not those of any other party and it was common practice for consultants to be paid by those who commissioned them.

The Guardian asked the Ministry of Justice if the justice secretary had authorised Narey’s visit to Rainsbrook. A spokesman said the MoJ was “aware and content” with his inspection of the STC.



Ofsted told the Guardian: “We, the HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission fully stand by the findings and recommendations of our joint team of seven inspectors following the inspection of Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre over a 10-day period in February this year.”