National Preventive Mechanism Fifth Annual Report 2013–14 HMI Prisons fulfils the role of NPM coordination and this function is performed with the purpose of: • promoting cohesion and a shared understanding of OPCAT among NPM members; • encouraging collaboration and the sharing of information and good practice between UK NPM members; • facilitating joint activities between members on issues of common concern; • liaising with the SPT, other NPMs and other relevant international human rights bodies; • sharing experience and expertise between the UK NPM and NPMs in other States; • representing the NPM as a whole to government and other stakeholders in the UK; and • preparing the annual report and other publications. The coordination function, activities and governance of the NPM are overseen by a Steering Group of five NPM members who meet regularly and are representative of members in all four nations of the UK and the different remits of organisations that make up the NPM (for terms of reference see Appendix Three). An NPM sub-group focused on children and young people in detention, chaired by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, serves as a mechanism for NPM members whose work includes visiting children in detention to exchange information and intelligence and to consider joint work on issues affecting detained children (see section 2, Thematic areas (iii)). Political and economic context Resource pressure continued to affect both the bodies that NPM members monitor, and the members themselves. For example, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), which is responsible for prisons across England and Wales and directly manages public sector prisons in these jurisdictions, delivered savings of £274 million which represented 7% of its resource budget. The savings were made by a range of measures, including reducing prison running costs and closing older prisons, in anticipation of cheaper places being made available elsewhere. In some areas of the UK NPM’s work, increases in the detained population and reductions in capacity put pressures on the systems for managing detainees. The total prison population in England and Wales rose from 84,083 at the end of April 2013 to 85,252 by 28 March 2014. This unplanned increase meant that at the end of this period the prison system as a whole was running at 99% of its usable operational capacity (85,972).3 In mental health detention, the 50,408 detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983 across the NHS and independent hospitals in England during 2012–13 marked a 4% increase on the total for the previous year.4 3 Prisons and Probations Statistics, Population Bulletin – Weekly 26 April 2013 and Population Bulletin – Weekly 28 March 2014, Ministry of Justice 4 http://www.hscic.gov.uk/searchcatalogue?productid=13209&q=title%3a%22Inpatients+formally+detained+in+hospitals+und er+the+Mental+Health+Act+1983+and+patients+subject+to+Supervised+Community+Treatment%22&sort=Relevance&size= 10&page=1#top 12