Prison Capacity Strategy

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 12 December.

“With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a Statement on the 10-year prison capacity strategy and annual prison capacity statement that the Government published yesterday. As the House will be aware, publishing these documents makes good on a pledge made to this House by the Lord Chancellor in July when she came before the House to set out the emergency measures that we were forced to take to prevent our prisons filling up entirely.

Let me begin by setting out some context on prison places. As right honourable and honourable Members will be aware, on 4 December, the National Audit Office published a scathing report, Increasing the Capacity of the Prison Estate to Meet Demand. That report is unequivocal in its criticism of the previous Government’s approach to the criminal justice system, including their failure to deliver on their commitment to build 20,000 additional prison places by the mid-2020s. Only 500 additional cells were added to the overall stock of prison places. While the previous Government continued to promise prison places, there were significant delays to projects—in some cases, they ran years behind schedule—and a failure to address rising demand has left the system thousands of places short of the capacity it requires.

The expected cost of the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s prison expansion portfolio to build the 20,000 additional places is currently estimated to be £9.4 billion to £10.1 billion—at least £4.2 billion higher than the estimate in the 2021 spending review carried out by the previous Government. None of this was revealed by Ministers at the time; it came to light only when the Government were elected in July this year.

It is now clear that even the original mid-2020s commitment was not sufficient to keep pace with the expected demand on prison places, according to the last Government’s own projections. This put the viability of the entire system in jeopardy. Had we run out of prison places, police would not have been able to make arrests and courts could not have held trials. It could have led to a total breakdown of law and order in our country, with all the associated risks to public safety. That is why we were forced to take emergency action, releasing some prisoners earlier than they otherwise would have been—in most cases, by only a few weeks or months. That bought us precious breathing space but, if we do not act, our prisons will fill up again. We must therefore act, including by building more prison places as a matter of urgency.

Integral to our plan for change is ensuring that we have the prison places we need to lock up dangerous criminals and keep the public safe. The 10-year prison capacity strategy sets out how we will deliver that. The strategy is detailed, setting out our commitment to build the 14,000 places that the last Government failed to deliver as part of their 20,000 prison places programme, with the aim of getting that work completed by 2031. It further sets out what we will do: where, when and how we will build new prisons and expand existing ones through additional house blocks, refurbishments and temporary accommodation.

The strategy is also realistic. As the House knows, prison building is an extraordinarily complex and expensive undertaking. In particular, the planning process to get sites approved for development is complicated and time-consuming. That is why our delivery plans include contingency prison places, which will provide resilience in our building programme should a project become undeliverable or provide poor value for money and cannot be taken forward. We are also ambitious: the strategy sets out how we will work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to streamline the delivery of prison supply, including important reforms to the planning system and delivering on our commitment to recognise prisons as nationally important infrastructure. It is also this Government’s ambition to secure new land, so that we are always ready should further prison builds be required in the future.

We are committed to improving transparency, now and in the future. As such, when parliamentary time allows, we will legislate to make it a statutory requirement for the Government to publish an annual statement on prison capacity like the one we have published. That annual statement will set out prison population projections, the department’s plan for supply, and the current probation capacity position. It fulfils our transparency commitment for 2024 and, crucially, will hold us and future Governments to account on long-term planning, so that decisions on prison demand and supply are in balance and the public are no longer kept in the dark —as they have been—about the state of our nation’s prisons.

Finally, we are being honest with this House and the public about what must happen next. Building enough prison places is only one part of a much wider solution; as the Government have already made clear, we cannot simply build our way out of these problems. In the coming years, the prison population will continue to increase more quickly than we can build new prisons. That is why, in October, we launched the Independent Sentencing Review, chaired by the former Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, alongside a panel of experts including the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett. That review will take a bipartisan look at an issue that has been a political football for far too long, punted about by both sides.

The aim of the review is to ensure that we are never again left in a position where we have more prisoners than places available. It will help us to ensure that there is always a prison place for dangerous offenders; that prisons help offenders turn their lives around and bring down reoffending rates, meaning fewer victims; and that the range of punishments for use outside of prison is expanded. The review will make its recommendations in the spring. The Government look forward to responding as quickly as possible so that we can begin to implement any necessary policy changes urgently.

When this Government took office just five months ago, we inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse. Instead of dithering and delaying, we have taken the difficult decisions necessary to stop the criminal justice system from grinding to a halt altogether, which could have led to a total collapse of law and order in our country. However, this is not an overnight fix, and the journey ahead of us is long. This 10-year prison capacity strategy and annual statement, along with the Independent Sentencing Review, are critical steps on that journey. The last Government left our prisons in crisis, putting the public at risk of harm. We will fix our prisons for good, keeping the public safe and restoring their confidence in the criminal justice system. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, we are concerned here with the Statement made and also with the Written Statement delivered the day before by the Secretary of State for Justice. Both refer to the 10-year prison capacity strategy; indeed, it is described by the present Government as “their” 10-year prison capacity strategy.

What we have heard and what we have read might be described as good and original. Unfortunately, what is good is not original and what is original is not good. The first apparent innovation that we are referred to is the annual statement on prison capacity. In the Written Statement on 11 December, the Secretary of State for Justice referred to the

“first Annual Statement on prison capacity”,

describing it as fulfilling a “transparency commitment for 2024” and a necessary step in “our plan”.

The Oral Statement given by the Secretary of State’s junior Minister in the Commons repeated news of this innovation: that the Government were to publish an annual statement on prison capacity, which would be a “critical” step. It is all about transparency, clarity and public confidence. But let us wait: 16 October 2023 was before the election. We had a Conservative Government and a Conservative Secretary of State for Justice, the right honourable Alex Chalk. What had he to say in the other place? He said:

“To ensure public confidence, a new annual statement of prison capacity will be laid before both Houses. It will include a clear statement of current prison capacity, future demand, the range of system costs that will be incurred under different scenarios and our forward pipeline of prison build. That will bring greater transparency to the plans and will set out the progress that is being made”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/10/23; col. 59.]

My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord about the need to address the remand prisoner situation with more sitting days, but on other parts of what he said, I hope he is wrong. If there is that much continuity between the policies of the previous Government and this Government, we are not going to get out of the difficulties that we face.

There is no doubt about the appalling state of our prison system which the Government have inherited. They took over a system which was supposed to provide 20,000 extra prison places while coping with massive overcrowding, a shortage of experienced staff and a penal philosophy which called for even longer sentences. There is a desperate shortage of the resources needed to reduce reoffending, either by programmes during custody or by supporting ex-prisoners on the difficult route to leading a better life and keeping the law.

We do not want to see this Government repeat the failures of their predecessor. Given his practical and personal experience in resettling and employing ex-offenders, we believe that the Prisons Minister understands the problems and is personally committed to changing the way we address them. But the Statement does not really inspire confidence and nor does the strategy. It rests on two assumptions, the first of which is that the increase in prison places will be achieved. I have to say that I am doubtful about that on the basis of experience, and even if achieved, it is recognised that it is not enough. That will not solve the problem. We cannot build our way out of this situation.

The other key assumption is that the sentencing review—which we welcome—will reduce the pressure for yet more places to be provided, even on the numbers the Government have given. That depends on whether there is political leadership to implement the radical ideas the commission will have to come up with if it is going to change the situation. We want to know whether that leadership is there. The public and media debate has to be taken forward. Tough talk leads to bad decisions. Excessive use of custody, which is hugely expensive, ensures that neither the prisons nor the probation system can devote the effort to the rehabilitation needed to cut crime.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Lord, Lord Beith, for their comments. We are all aware that we have a problem. The problem is that the prison population increases by 4,500 people a year. In the summer, when I was six weeks into this job, we were 99.9% full: in fact, we had fewer than 100 spaces in our prisons. It was clear that this was not just a problem, it was a very dangerous problem. We are now running at 97% or 96% in the male estate and can already see the benefits of that. But we need to keep building new prisons, and we got planning permission for HMP Garth earlier this month. We do not just need new prisons; we need new house blocks and to ensure that we do not lose cells.

We cannot build our way out of the difficulties we have; we also need sentencing reform. As noble Lords are aware, David Gauke is leading a sentencing review, which will be concluded by the spring. We need to make sure that demand and supply are in balance, because we always need to have space for the police to arrest and charge people and put them in prison. Interestingly, last week I went to Spain to visit the prisons over there. It has 15,000 spare cells, which we can only dream of here. Unsurprisingly, when I went round the prisons there, things were much calmer than they are here.

How will we get more capacity? We have to create these 14,000 prison places. The cost is very high, and much higher because of the delays in the previous Government’s building. But the other real problem is that we have had a net increase of only 500 prison cells because so many have been lost and prisons have been sold. One of the things that is really important is to make sure that we do not lose prison places and prison wings. I am looking forward to visiting HMP Millsike before Christmas and seeing what a good, environmentally state-of-the-art prison looks like. But I have also been recently to HMP Manchester and HMP Winchester, both of which had urgent notifications, to see the other side of the coin, where prisons need serious investment. I am pleased that we have managed to find £500 million to invest.

My Lords, I believe that the reason we have a larger prison population than most comparable countries in Europe is not that more of our population are prone to become criminals; it is because of reoffending. Our rate of reoffending is much higher than in most comparable countries. Therefore, rehabilitation is essential.

It is very good to hear the Minister talking about the importance of spare capacity, because he will know, I suspect, from discussions with the Treasury, the tendency of the Treasury to hate any sense of spare capacity—that offends its deepest instincts and upbringing. Spare capacity, however, is essential to enable prisoners to be kept in prisons as close to their home as possible so they do not lose touch with their family and to enable the continuity of rehabilitation. Does he agree on how important it is that rehabilitation should start from the moment a prisoner goes through the prison gates to enter prison until long after he or she—and it is mostly a “he”—comes out of the prison gate at the end of the sentence? Is it not important that the Treasury should understand that the benefits that come from reducing reoffending—the financial benefits as well as the benefits in terms of human happiness versus human misery—are spread across an enormous range of public services? The savings are huge. It is important that the Treasury understands the need for holistic activity and for taking a longer-term view than that to which it is prone.

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. In respect of reoffending, the latest figure I have seen is £18 billion per year. Reoffending in our country is definitely higher than in Spain and in other countries as well. It is not just the level of reoffending; it is also the length of sentencing we have that makes a difference to the large prison population. As for spare capacity in prisons—yes, I agree. I can never see us at the levels of other countries. We need our prisons to be efficient. We need to make sure that our prisons are full but also effective.

It is important that the hard-working staff who run our prisons have the opportunity to deliver what they know works. I do not want to walk past any more classrooms in prisons where there are lots of computers and nobody is there. I want people to be in classrooms; I want people to be in workshops; I want people to be doing things that are helping them to get out and stay out.

One thing that has made a big difference is the employment advisory boards that I set up four years ago. When we started, 14% of people leaving prison had a job after six months. It is now over 35%. Things can be done, and I am really focused on that. I am also focused—and this is probably one of the conversations we may turn to in the new year—on this being not just about prisons but about probation. The whole thing needs to be working in tandem. There is an awful lot of pressure not just on prisons but on probation colleagues too.