Section four Appendices Appendix I Letter from NPM Chair John Wadham to Chair of Joint Committee on Human Rights, Harriet Harman UK National Preventive Mechanism c/o HM Inspectorate of Prisons Third Floor, 10 South Colonnade London E14 4PU Tel: 020 3334 0359 E-mail: Anna.Edmundson@hmiprisons.gov.uk 17 September 2018 Dear Harriet UK National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) I am writing as the independent Chair of the UK NPM following a recent conversation you had with my NPM colleague, Katie Kempen of the Independent Custody Visiting Association. I understand she shared details of some of the work that the NPM undertakes to prevent illtreatment of people in all forms of detention. There are clear shared interests and overlaps between the NPM’s work inspecting and monitoring all forms of detention across the UK and the Joint Committee’s current work (indeed we have submitted evidence, jointly with our NPM colleagues from the Children’s Commissioner for England’s office, to the Committee’s ongoing inquiry into restraint and solitary confinement of children and young people in detention settings). I would be delighted to meet with you to discuss our common areas of interest. I would also value the opportunity to discuss an important issue of the UK’s compliance with a UN treaty ratified by the UK and designed to protect human rights in the UK. The Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), requires states that ratify the treaty to create or designate National Preventive Mechanisms. The current members of the UK NPM were designated by the UK government in 2009, with additional designations in 2013 and 2017. All the organisations originally designated were already functioning, many of them from some years before OPCAT was agreed by the UN, and the government decided that they were already carrying out the functions necessary for OPCAT. Currently, only two of the 21 members of the NPM (both in Scotland) have any reference to their OPCAT mandate written into their legislation. 57