The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
Integral to this Government’s plan for change is ensuring that we have the prison places we need to lock up dangerous criminals and keep the public safe. On 4 December, the National Audit Office published a scathing report, “Increasing the capacity of the prison estate to meet demand”. It is unequivocal in its criticism of the previous Government’s approach to the criminal justice system, including their commitment to delivering 20,000 additional prison places by the mid-2020s and failure to deliver, with only 500 additional cells being added to the overall prison places stock.
Significant delays to projects—in some cases running years behind schedule—and a failure to address rising demand have left the system thousands of places short of the capacity it requires. It is now clear that even the original mid-2020s commitment was not sufficient to keep pace with the expected demand for 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.
The expected cost of the Ministry of Justice’s and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s prison expansion portfolio, to build 20,000 additional places, is currently estimated to be £9.4 billion to £10.1 billion, which is at least £4.2 billion higher than estimated for the 2021 spending review. None of this was revealed by the last Government; it only came to light when I became Lord Chancellor in July of this year.
Today, we publish the 10-year prison capacity strategy and the first annual statement on prison capacity. The strategy is detailed, setting out our commitment to building the 14,000 places the last Government failed to deliver as part of their 20,000 prison place programme, and the aim of completing it by 2031. It further sets out where, when and how we will build new prisons, and expand existing prisons through additional house blocks, refurbishments and temporary accommodation.
This strategy is realistic. Prison building is complex, as is, notably, the planning process to get sites approved for development. It is also costly to the taxpayer. Our delivery plans include contingency places to give resilience to the programme if a project becomes undeliverable or provides poor value for money and cannot be taken forward.
We are ambitious. This strategy sets out our work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to streamline the delivery of prison supply, including reforming the planning system, and delivering on our commitment to ensure that prisons are recognised as nationally important infrastructure. This Government’s ambition is to secure new land, so that we are ready, should further prison builds be required in future.
And we are committed to improving transparency, now and in the future, so we will legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to make it a statutory requirement for the Government to publish an annual statement on prison capacity, like the one we are publishing today. The annual statement will set out prison population projections, the Department’s plan for supply, and the current probation capacity position. This statement fulfils that transparency commitment for 2024, and holds us, and future Governments, to account on long-term planning, so that decisions on prison demand and supply are in balance.
Finally, we are being honest. Building enough prison places is only one part of the prolonged solution. In the coming years, the prison population will continue to increase more quickly than we can build new prisons. This is why, in October, I launched the independent sentencing review. The review will make recommendations in spring 2025, which will help us ensure there is always a prison place for dangerous offenders, that prisons enable offenders to turn their back on crime, and that we expand the range and use of punishment outside of prison.
I consider this 10-year prison capacity strategy and the annual statement, along with the independent sentencing review, necessary steps in our plan to protect the public and restore their confidence in the criminal justice system.
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