A FORMER Chief Inspector of Prisons mounts a fierce attack today on a culture of bullying and hypocrisy in the Prison Service under Jack Straw, the previous Home Secretary.

Sir David Ramsbotham says a “say nothing and pretend it did not happen” attitude prevailed among ministers and senior civil servants when things went wrong.

In a book being serialised in The Times he demands that a public apology be made to one “outstanding” prison governor who was bullied and humiliated during what Sir David calls a bogus raid on his prison.

The midnight raid in 2000 was designed to clamp down on a suspected drugs scandal at Blantyre House, a resettlement prison in Kent.

Nothing of significance was found yet three years later the governor, Eion McLennan-Murray, has neither been reinstated nor given a satisfactory explanation as to his treatment.

Sir David accuses Mr Straw, Paul Boateng, the prisons minister, and Martin Narey, director-general of the Prison Service, of failing to admit that a “ghastly mistake” had been made and of standing by while a model governor, whose prison had been praised for excellence, had his name tarnished.

He says that the raid boiled down to a personality clash between Mr McLennanMurray and his area manager, Tom Murtagh, whom the governor later officially accused of bullying.

In a statement Paul Maynard, Mr McLennan-Murray’s solicitor, claims there are parallels in his treatment and that of David Kelly, the government scientist who apparently committed suicide at the height of the row between the BBC and Downing Street.

Sir David says: “Something is surely very wrong with staff management procedures if senior employees take an organisation to court over their treatment as Mr McLennan- Murray has done.”

The former governor sought a judicial review of the Prison Service investigation into the claims of bullying. While the High Court judge expressed sympathy for him, he rejected the plea. An appeal also failed.

At an investigation, the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee did not accept that the search was proportionate and voiced irritation at what appeared to be deliberate attempts to mislead it and the public over the significance of what had been found.

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