In a Birmingham jail, I found the point of Michael Gove

I went to prison last week, in Birmingham. Early start, off on a train from Euston. It was my kids’ first day back at school, as well, so I called them just before I went through the gates. ‘Daddy’s in prison?’ said my seven-year-old, incredulously. ‘Listen,’ I said to my wife. ‘She’s not allowed to turn up in her classroom and tell everybody that her daddy’s in prison.’ And then she laughed and I laughed, and I went inside and handed over my phone and went through a gate, and then another gate and then another gate and then so many more gates I rather lost count, and then I ended up in a room with 40 men of about my age who hadn’t seen their kids in ages, and I thought to myself, ‘Hmmm, well, maybe I’ll save that fun little anecdote until I get back out.’

I was there to judge a debating competition. Winson Green is run by G4S, and they’d brought in a group called Debating Matters, which normally runs debates in sixth-form colleges. Now, it had set up Beyond Bars, to do the same in prisons. My fellow judges were academics, think-tankers and media folk and the principal challenge for all of us, I think, was not to be horrendously patronising. ‘But aren’t you eloquent,’ you sometimes wanted to say, to one prisoner or other, ‘for somebody in a place like this?’ Except you nursed a nagging fear that if you did, they might roll their eyes at your presumption and then tell you about their PhD.

I don’t think there were many PhDs. Not that I’d know. Peculiar, really, the questions you’re comfortable asking with prisoners, and the ones you aren’t. Life inside, the food, the daily grind; all of that seems right and proper.