Prison Capacity

Debate between John McDonnell and Alex Chalk

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

l pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend. I talked about tough decisions being made in the white heat of the pandemic, and he is the one who said that we will not get rid of the jury system on our watch. My goodness, he was right to say that. It was a tough call, but it was manifestly the right one.

Lest we forget, Five Wells and Fosse Way have opened and HMP Millsike is currently under construction, going alongside Garth, Gartree, Grendon/Spring Hill and other prisons. My right hon. and learned Friend is right that there has been an issue with planning. I have said that, with an additional £30 million, we will identify further sites in 2024 and get the planning permission well in advance, because we cannot have a situation in which these critical building programmes are held up by the planning process. We are changing to a new approach, and we are putting on the afterburners to make sure those prisons get built.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as an honorary life member of the Prison Officers Association.

In his statement, the Secretary of State celebrated the fact that the prison population has risen to 80,000. When I was elected in 1997, it was a scandal that we were at the 40,000 level. Part of the problem is the lack of crime prevention, but there is also a failure of rehabilitation. The statement mentioned probation, but there was no mention of prison staff. There is a desperate need for adequate prison staffing if we are to secure the rehabilitation of prisoners. What will be the staff-prisoner ratio in our prisons following these reforms?

[Alex Chalk]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising the issue of prison staff, as they are ultimately the most important factor, beyond the nature of the prison estate, in making the difference to whether prisoners are kept safe and rehabilitated. We are increasing the number of prison staff, and I think an additional 700 staff were recruited in the last period for which figures are available. The other important point is retention, and we are starting to see a positive trend in retention.

I also make the point that those prison officers who stuck by their duty during the pandemic and went into work when it was tough to do that—when their parents and friends would have been telling them not to do so—are the ones who ensured there was not a complete catastrophe in our prisons in terms of loss of life, and they should take enormous credit for that.