Prison Capacities

Lord Mann Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall make two quick points—or perhaps two and a half, if I am quick.

My first point is to ask the Minister why, with the prisoners released this week, the local authority where I live was given no notice of which prisoners would be released from the local prison or who had a previous address in the local area? That has been the case with other prison releases over the past decade, but why is it that somebody does not inform local authorities and did not do so this week? Is that going to happen again?

The Government have made a big announcement, and rightly so, about planning infrastructure and bureaucracy, and there has been a lot of talk of a 10-year plan. That gives me the opportunity to raise something that I raised in the House of Commons many times, without any success. We have old prisons, such as Armley, in Leeds, that clearly want knocking down and the land used for expensive capital development, such as housing or whatever else, but they will need replacing with new prisons. Near where I live, and once represented, is Ranby prison. It is a more modern prison and does not need knocking down, and has vast amounts of land. I have regularly proposed to Ministers in many Governments that it would be a suitable place. There is a suitable workforce, with plenty of people who would love to work there in that industry, as plenty have done and do. Why not get on and build a brand-new prison there, with one governor and one set of management managing the two prisons as a combined prison? On long-term planning, I do not understand why that has not happened.