It emerged that they had tried to steal a light aircraft hours after escaping.It is believed that one of the men, Keith Rose, was a qualified pilot and the three had planned to steal a small Cessna from the local airfield. That scheme failed and for five days the men are thought to have slept rough, mainly in the east of the island. They were caught only a few miles from the jail after being seen by an off-duty Parkhurst prison officer.Two of the trio, both convicted murderers, offered no real struggle. However Matthew Williams, convicted of mounting a bombing and arson campaign, tried to swim away at a river marina. He was caught and handcuffed in the water by PC Tony Woolcock. Williams later received medical attention, suffering from acute hypothermia.

The other two were said to be dishevelled with low morale.Williams was believed to be armed before his recapture. A police search for the weapon, unsuccessful yesterday, is likely to resume around the marina area today. A wallet belonging him containing £60 was recovered by police.In addition to the inquiries focusing on Parkhurst’s security and on how the men evaded detection, local government officials also want an assessment of police claims that they did everything possible during the search. More than 200 additional officers were drafted to the island for the five-day hunt. Despite latest detection technology, which included radar, heat sensitive equipment and helicopters, the escapers, some officers admitted yesterday, were caught through luck and chance.Today Mr Howard is expected to make a statement on the escape and recent riots at Everthorpe, but he will face fierce questions on what opponents are regarding as a crisis in the jails.The suicide of Frederick West is likely to be raised alongside overcrowding, ministerial and Prison Service responsibility, prison privatisation – seen as an added stress on the service – and security and the escapes.Yesterday relief at the recaptures was marred by news that three others were simultaneously escaping from Littlehey – a low security prison in Cambridgeshire.

One had been convicted of rape, although he is serving a sentence for burglary.Judge Tumim said of the Parkhurst breakout yesterday: “It is obvious that this was a worse incident than that at Whitemoor – three men of the most extreme danger getting out in circumstances where there appears to have been a great lack of security and agreat many warnings.”Judge Tumim had told Mr Howard and Derek Lewis, director general of the Prison Service on 7 October that basic procedures were not being carried out properly. Mr Howard says the warning was acted upon.Life on the run, page 2. Tom Sackville, the health minister, congratulated a health authority on its running of the London Ambulance Service less than three months before the death of an 11-year-old girl who waited almost an hour for an ambulance,it emerged yesterday. Nasima Begum died in June last year when the South West Thames Regional Health Authority, which no longer exists, was running the service.

A report to be published today blames the authority for taking “little action” to look at the broader context of the service after a 1993 inquiry into the collapse of a computer-aided despatch system. Had that happened, the report says, “a significant number of the deficiencies identified in this report would have been rectified earlier.”
But Labour yesterday accused health ministers of using the authority as “a scapegoat” to evade their responsiblity when it emreged that Mr Sackville had written to Marian Hicks, the authority’s chairman, in March last year to thank her “for the manner inwhich the RHA has carried out its management responsibility”. He congratulated management and staff on “working together to overcome problems that have beset the service”. The Department of Health has confirmed the letter followed one of the progress reports to ministers that Virginia Bottomley, the Health Secretary, said she would be seeking after a previous inquiry.Nick Raynsford, Labour’s London spokesman, said: “Ministers cannot have it both ways. If the RHA deserved congratulation in March 1994 it cannot now be made a scapegoat.”It was quite clear, he said, that ministers were “closely involved with and supportive of the actions of the South West Thames region, right up to the point when it was taken over by the South Thames Regional Health Authority in April 1994.” It might be “politically expedient” to blame an organisation which no longer existed, but: “Mrs Bottomley and her colleagues cannot evade responsibility in this way.”The Department of Health rejected the charge, saying it was proper for Mr Sackville to congratulate the authority when 72 per cent of ambulances reached 999 calls within 14 minutes.Phil Thompson, the London region spokesman for the Unison, the public service union, said: “Ministers seem to be blaming everyone except themselves.