Wellingborough Prison Site

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I can tell my hon. Friend that there is very considerable enthusiasm among the local authorities in the Wrexham area to have a new prison, and that is one of the reasons why we considered that to be a sensible site for the building of a new prison. Again, if my hon. Friend will be a little patient I will come on to why we consider that Wellingborough would not be the right site for the development of what would in effect be a substantially new prison.

I was talking about the comments my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary made on 4 September. As I said, the intention is to deliver reduced reoffending rates in a way that delivers the best possible value for money for the taxpayer.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough said, we are replacing accommodation that is old, inefficient or has limited long-term strategic value. Reshaping the rest of the prison estate will enable us to release offenders closer to home, which we know improves their resettlement and helps prevent reoffending. Linked intrinsically to this, a nationwide through-the-prison-gate resettlement service will be put in place, meaning that most offenders are given continuous support by one provider from custody into the community. We will support this by ensuring that most offenders are held in a prison designated to their area for at least three months before release. To achieve that we must have the best fit between custodial capacity and demand.

We will open an additional 1,260 places in four new house blocks at HMPs Parc, Peterborough, the Mount and Thameside. The first of these at HMP the Mount is on track to accept prisoners in September 2014. The construction of the new prison in Wrexham, subject to planning approval, will offer 2,100 places when it is fully operational from late 2017. In addition, we are looking into replacing the existing Feltham young offenders site with a large new adult prison and a discrete new youth facility. It is our aim that we will have more adult male prison capacity in May 2015 than there was at the start of this Parliament. As a result of this new capacity coming on stream, we were able to announce the closure of a further four prisons, removing 1,400 uneconomic places from the prison estate, in addition to those closed earlier this year.

It remains the Government’s intention to ensure that the prison system retains sufficient capacity and resilience to manage all those who are committed to custody by the courts. It is equally clear that the Government have a duty to their citizens to ensure that we make the best use of public funds. As I said in the earlier debate, the prison system is necessarily complex and it must be able to meet a variety of needs. That includes being able to receive new prisoners direct from courts throughout England and Wales, providing health care and education, tackling deep-rooted, dangerous and harmful behaviour and providing specialist interventions for particular groups of prisoners.

Maintaining a wide geographical spread of prisons and a functional balance that meets the changing needs of the prison population is essential. By doing that, we remain able to carry out the punishments set by the courts, to maintain strong security to protect the public and to provide opportunities for different types of offenders in order to reduce the likelihood of their committing further crimes. Accordingly, individual prisons are robustly assessed to determine whether their closure is operationally viable before a recommendation is made. Such a recommendation was made in relation to Wellingborough, and the decision to close it was subsequently taken. That was because Wellingborough prison is located in a region with too many places and it did not perform a function that could not be replicated at other prisons. Furthermore, there were enough other prisons located nearby to allow us to avoid compulsory redundancies by redeploying staff.

I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough disagrees with much of that. We met today to discuss the matter in more detail, and he argued that I should have considered Wellingborough as a London prison rather than an east midlands one. He has made that point again tonight. He suggested that Wellingborough might provide a better solution to meeting the shortfall of London places than the other options we are considering, which include the redevelopment of Feltham that was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 4 September.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

The Government’s prison policy is quite radical, but does it extend to encouraging people in the private sector to design, build and operate prisons? If not, why not? Would not Wellingborough be an ideal site for that kind of project?

[Jeremy Wright]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that when making decisions on who should run new prisons, be they in Wrexham, London or anywhere else, we will consider private sector bids as well as public sector bids. We want to reach the best deal for the taxpayer in the provision of a quality service. I can at least assure him that there will be a competition, and I hope that we will consider all bids fairly.

[Mr Chope]

But that covers the contracts for the running of prisons once they have been built. I have in mind companies from the private sector designing, building and operating prisons in a way that allows us to develop the best rehabilitation for offenders, which is very much at the forefront of the Government’s policy.

[Jeremy Wright]

It is our conclusion that it is best to separate the building and the running of a prison. That gives us more options when we consider the contracts for the running of the prison. I can assure my hon. Friend, however, that private sector bids will certainly be actively considered for the building of the prison, which is the first decision that we will take. We will then mount a separate competition for the running of the prison and I can again assure him that we will consider carefully all the bids that we receive.

Let me return to the issue of Wellingborough as an alternative London prison. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough has said that large numbers of London prisoners find themselves in Wellingborough. Indeed, they also find themselves in Onley and in other prisons. That is due to the significant deficit of prison places in the London area for London prisoners. As he knows, I firmly believe that the best solution to the shortage of places in London is to build a new prison in London. That is why we are considering the development of the Feltham site.

My hon. Friend is correct, however, to say that we need alternatives to the Feltham site, and we have other potential locations that fall within the designated site search area. Unfortunately for Wellingborough, that designated area does not stretch into Northamptonshire. It is my expectation that we will find a suitable location for a new London prison on one of these sites.

My hon. Friend’s advocacy and passion, with which you are well familiar, Mr Speaker, command respect. He has asked me to look again specifically at the alternative sites that may be considered for a new London prison. He knows of my scepticism that Wellingborough could be the right candidate for that role, and I make absolutely no promises about the outcome of that further consideration, nor do I undertake to postpone the disposal of the site for as long as 12 months. However, in view of the fact that our conversation on this matter took place only this morning, I will take time to consider properly what he has said before making a final disposal of the Wellingborough site.

As my hon. Friend knows, however, we cannot hold on to the site indefinitely. The level of security, utilities and maintenance has been reduced to one appropriate for a site that has been closed, but it does not come cheap, none the less. We estimate that about £237,000 will be spent in this financial year on holding costs alone. It is therefore in the taxpayer’s best interest to avoid unnecessary holding costs and to seek to dispose of the site expeditiously, in accordance with central Government guidelines governing the disposal of surplus property assets.