Prison Capacity Strategy

Lord Timpson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

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.

It is time to be straight with the public. It is time to tell them that the Government are spending their taxes on a system which we know leads to prisoners reoffending. We know it leads to more prisoners and less rehabilitation, as well as to more reoffending, and it has got to change. When a crime is committed, victims and the public want the offender to be caught, tried, made to face the consequences of the hurt and damage they have caused and set up to lead a better life in the hope that they will not repeat their offences either towards the victims or towards anybody else.

In some cases, prison is essential for public protection; in others, there are more effective community sentences which, for many offenders, are more challenging than a spell in jail. It is not sensible to use the length of a custodial sentence, as we do these days, as the index of how seriously we take a crime. That way lies wasted money and more reoffending on release. Is the political leadership prepared to say that kind of thing? With a former DPP as the Prime Minister, it ought to be possible.

I put to the Minister a simple question: why does this country lock up more criminals for longer than most other west European countries?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

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.

We have many great prisons as well. We need to future-proof things and to keep buying land on top. In my old job, every day I was looking at the sales figures of our retail chain; now I am looking every day at the prison population and seeing how much capacity we have. I am pleased to say that, so far, our numbers are slightly under the projection we have been looking at.

I have seen a number of rapid deployment cells and the issue with them is that, even though we do not have a choice—we need to do them—the extra cost is not just in the cells but in the extra visitor centre space, extra kitchen space and so on. That is why it is not just a cheap temporary option; it is an expensive temporary option.

On Crown Court backlog days, I am very pleased that colleagues have found more headroom and we have managed to get 2,500 extra sitting days; and the magistrates’ courts going from six to 12 months will free up 2,000 extra days. It will help with the remand population—17,000 is a significant issue—but it is still not enough.

Yes, we need to build prisons. Yes, we need the sentencing review, and to wait and see what the conclusions are. We always need prison cells for dangerous people. We need to incentivise prisoners to turn their lives around. But we also need to punish people outside of prison as well. We need to work hard when we see the conclusions of that review.

We need to focus also on reducing reoffending, because 80% of offending is reoffending. As noble Lords challenged me to do, I need to focus on delivering these new prison places so we do not run out of space, but I also need to really focus on delivering reduced reoffending, so over time our prisons are less full because people are reoffending less.

As we all know, there is a very complex job to do. We are dealing with the most complex people in the country and a system that is the most complex. It is a privilege for me; it is my dream job to do this. I am looking forward in the new year to starting to deliver on my plans. We are now in a position where we have overcome the immediate capacity problems. We can use the headroom, even though we have only minuscule capacity space compared to the Spanish. It is important that we use that time to focus on education, purposeful activity, people addressing their drug and mental health problems, and helping them so that when they get out, they stay out.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

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.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

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.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the Front Bench on his very interesting Statement on prison capacity. While this issue relates to England, and prisons in Northern Ireland, along with justice issues, are very much a devolved matter, there are also capacity and reoffending issues there. Therefore, I ask the Minister, whenever he is next in Northern Ireland and in other devolved regions and nations, whether he will take an opportunity to talk to the Minister for Justice in Northern Ireland about measures to increase prison capacity and reduce reoffending. Back when recent statistics were revealed, the overall average daily prison population increased by 11.4% during 2023-24 to 1,877. The male population increased from 1,607 to 1,787, while the female population increased from 78 to 90. I realise those numbers are probably small compared to England, but when we consider the actual population of Northern Ireland, we see that they are very high. Therefore, I urge my noble friend to talk to the Minister for Justice and exchange his good ideas with her about such measures to do with prison capacity and reoffending.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. I am a big fan of the prisons in Northern Ireland—it is not because my wife is from Northern Ireland and I have been round the prisons many times. We can always learn from what they are doing. There is a prison there that noble Lords may not have heard of called HMP Hydebank Wood. It is a combination of a female prison and a young offender prison. It is one of the most impressive establishments I have seen—and I have seen lots of prisons over the years. I would be delighted to meet the Minister for Justice and to share ideas, as I would be with other colleagues as well.

The point my noble friend makes about the increasing size of the prison population in Northern Ireland is similar in theme to what is happening elsewhere. Even in Spain—I apologise for talking about Spain a lot; I just got back on Friday night—the prison population is also increasing. There will be similar themes around drugs, ageing population, mental health and purposeful activity. It is something we all need to be aware of, and it is a great way of exchanging ideas and learning things. As someone who has employed a number of people from prisons in Northern Ireland to work in the business that I used to be involved in, I know that there are many talented individuals there as well.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, a part of the criminal justice system’s problems is one word: money. That has been my experience for the past 20 or so years—seeing the justice system from the side of the judiciary and seeing it from here. I want to ask about money because it is the temptation of everyone to forget money. Build prisons, and how do you finance the result? As I understand it, the 14,000 additional prison places are going to cost between £9.4 billion and £10 billion—I assume, on current costs. The NAO report says that there is a £1.8 billion maintenance backlog, so there are huge sums of capital expenditure—assuming that the Treasury treats maintenance as capital expenditure, which it probably does not.

I want to know what it is going to cost every year to fund these 14,000 additional places, which, as the Minister has kindly pointed out, must be on the basis of rehabilitation—it must be much cheaper to lock people up and leave them in their cell for 23 hours, but that is bad. What is the realistic cost of these additional places, and if the Minister can help us, where is the money to come from? That is the terrible problem that we have never grappled with: value for money in relation to sentencing. I would be very grateful if the Minister could help on this.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his detailed question. In the wider scheme of things, the best way to get value for money, as he says, is to reduce reoffending. Maybe in 15 or 20 years we will not need the prison places we have now because our reoffending will be much lower and the success of what I am trying to do in this job will be bringing results. One of the main areas of being sensible with money is not to lose cells, so we are making sure that our existing stock is maintained.

Noble Lords may remember that I mentioned HMP Preston. It first welcomed prisoners in 1798 and is still going strong. It has some elements that need a bit of work, but we also need to maintain them. The cost of building new cells in new prisons is £500,000 each. The cost of running them will be significant, because it is not just running buildings but staffing them and all the associated healthcare costs that go with it. Unfortunately, we do not have a choice to spend £10.1 billion at the moment—it was going to be a lot less than that—because we are in a position where we need to have spare capacity for the courts to do their job.

I am also looking forward to David Gauke’s review of sentencing to see the conclusions it comes to and the evidence it has looked at. A number of noble Lords will be feeding information into the sentencing review, which is due before 9 January. Running prisons is an expensive business. Reoffending, at £18 billion a year, is an incredible amount of money and waste. My job here, as a commercially minded person, is to look at why we are spending this money, and to challenge when we are spending what look like eye-watering amounts. I am challenging it, and I like to think I am starting to get some results.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin with an expression of sympathy to the Minister. What we have heard in your Lordships’ House—the focus on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending—is very welcome. However, we are discussing the Statement from the other place and asking questions about that. The focus of that Statement is on having capacity to meet demand. It talks about bringing in an annual statement to

“set out prison population projections”

and

“the Department’s plan for supply”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/12/24; col. 1090.]

This sounds rather like Defra promising us a plan for the increases in rainfall that climate change predictions suggest will happen. It is as though it is something being done to the Government rather than a result of the choices of the criminal justice policy the Government have in their own hands. This is very much a passive approach. The Minister might say that this promises an Independent Sentencing Review, but that is handing over the responsibility to a group of independent people.

As the noble Lord, Lord Maude of Horsham, pointed out, we have the highest per capita prison population in western Europe by a long way. I am not sure whether this should be a milestone or a mission; maybe we could just call it a target. Surely the Government should be saying, “We are going to aim, by the end of this term, to have a reduction”. We are currently at 159 people in prison per 100,000. Perhaps we could aim to match the next big country, France, which has 104 people per 100,000—that is a reduction of a third. Finland has 51 per 100,000, which is a long way away indeed. Perhaps we could aim for an average. Should the Government not have a target, milestone or mission to reduce the prison population by the end of their period in office?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. I would love it if we could lock up fewer people, but we cannot: we need prison spaces to ensure that we punish people who have done very bad things. We also need to make sure we rehabilitate them. We need the capacity to cater for things such as the civil unrest we had in the summer. We are way off levels of prison population like those of the countries the noble Baroness mentioned.

This is going to take an awful long time to turn around, but the steps we are taking are very important. We need capacity, we need to have the sentencing review, we need to focus on reducing reoffending, and we need all the associated tools to do that. We know what needs to be done and what the evidence is. I see my job as delivering on that.

I also know that this is not a quick fix. If we go for a quick-fix solution, we will be in trouble. This needs to be very thoughtful and take time. The people we are dealing with in prisons and on probation are often very complex people. I want to make sure that what we do works.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I apologise for missing the very beginning of this as I rushed to the Chamber. I congratulate the Minister not just on his Statement but on a lifetime’s commitment to rehabilitating offenders. The example he has set to other businesses when he was running—