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Prison Estate

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement updating the House on developments in the prison population over the summer recess, and setting out the steps that I am taking to ensure the necessary prison capacity now and in the future. The Government have kept and will continue to keep our commitment to tackling crime—reducing it by 35 per cent. in nine years—and tackling the causes of crime. We have 2.5 million more jobs, the lowest level of unemployment for decades, 1,000 Sure Start centres and a significant reduction in social deprivation—attention to the early years of life, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills has just outlined. We shall continue that commitment to tackling both crime and the causes of crime. Public protection has always been our first priority. We have consistently supported tougher sentences in the course of protecting the public. Even today, in another place, we are tabling an amendment to the Violent Crime Reduction Bill to increase sentences for those caught in possession of blades or sharp instruments. That has been a constant message over the past decade and has been reflected in the growth in the proportion of people sent to prison and in the increase in the length of time for which they have been imprisoned—in short, making the sentence and the punishment fit the crime more appropriately. To match that growth we have already built more than 16,000 prison places in nine years—approximately the same amount as the previous Conservative Government built in 18 years. Labour has built at twice the rate of the Conservatives. However, I have never hidden from the House our continuing need for more prison places to keep pace with the requirement. In July, I published the document ““Rebalancing the criminal justice system in favour of the law-abiding majority””, in which I said that"““we will now build an additional 8,000 places and will keep under close review whether more are needed””." That was set out in terms in the document. I said, too:"““We already have an additional 900 places under construction which are due to come onstream in Autumn 2007.””" I also said:"““We continue to imprison too many non-dangerous people with mental health problems who should be more effectively diverted into appropriate treatments at an early stage.””" I said:"““We will focus prison places for remand prisoners on those with the highest risk of re-offending. And we will work with the Lord Chief Justice and sentencers to ensure probation resources are targeted on those who most need them.””" Of course, hon. Members will have studied carefully and remembered those words. I remind the House of them in view of the Lord Chief Justice’s remarks at the weekend. That remains my framework for addressing these issues in the medium term. However, it is the case that in the short term the prison population has risen sharply over the summer period and today stands at 79,819. I want to highlight two factors among others that specifically contributed to that increase over the summer and during the year. First, the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is beginning to have a real effect. The House will know that the Act introduced tough new sentences—indeterminate sentences—to answer the public demand that life, where appropriate, should truly mean life for those judged to be a danger to the public. It also introduced more flexible community orders which would be a more effective alternative to prison for lower level offenders. The evidence so far is that our courts are making good use of indeterminate sentences so that dangerous people are staying in prison for longer, but they are not yet using community orders as fully as they might. That was the point emphasised this weekend by the Lord Chief Justice. That leads to increased pressure on prison places above that anticipated in the short term. Secondly, I made a commitment to the House to consider, find and detain as many of the previously unconsidered 1,013 foreign national prisoners as we could. In addition, I made a further commitment: I said that we would not release those foreign national prisoners who ought to be considered for deportation before such consideration had been completed and we would continue to detain them until that was done. Working through that process of dealing with the backlog while maintaining the deportation consideration for everyone who is released from prison will obviously contribute towards a higher prison population until the position is fully resolved. I shall return to details of that later in my statement. I want now to set out some of the actions that have been recommended to me since July to alleviate the pressure and my response. It has been proposed to me that I should agree to the early release of prisoners into the community. I have considered that carefully, but I do not believe that it is appropriate at this time and I have rejected it. My view is that it should be used only in the last resort. I have, however, accepted the recommendations of the prison authorities in a number of other ways: first, in the re-roling of two women’s prisons to take male prisoners, which is a sensible use of resources; secondly, in providing maximum flexibility within the prison estate to allow transfers to the open estate under severe restrictions in addition to those transferred as a matter of course. That measure was focused on lower risk offenders serving short sentences for non-sexual or non-violent offences. Prisoners have been transferred only after careful risk assessment. Thirdly, we will improve processes for dealing with foreign national prisoners. I hope that by the spring of 2007 we will reach the position where the consideration of deportation for all foreign nationals will begin six months before the end of their sentences. We are making steady progress towards that as we deal with the backlog. That would ensure a reduced requirement for detention after the normal release date and therefore a reduced pressure on the prison population. Fourthly, I have today accepted the recommendation to implement the formal use of police cells, known as Operation Safeguard. Implementation will be on Thursday 12 October. The use of Safeguard is not ideal, but it is tried and it is tested. I am extremely grateful for the support that we have received from the Association of Chief Police Officers and from individual chief constables, as well from the Metropolitan police. Those measures should help to alleviate the position in the short term. In addition to that, I can today tell the House that on top of the medium and long-term proposals that I set out in our July plans and to which I referred earlier, I am also developing further measures. Specifically, we are in negotiations and consultation to convert a former Army barracks into prisoner accommodation. Similarly, we are in negotiations to utilise a former secure hospital in Ashworth East near Liverpool. We are expanding our immigration estate by 300 places by March 2007 and by a further 400 places by 2008, and we are exploring further innovative ways of extending immigration detention capacity for those who are detained as a result of immigration considerations, thus releasing pressure on the prison estate. We will, of course, continue to work closely with the private sector to get the best of what it can offer us, and we are continuing to encourage the courts to make effective use of bail, taking advantage of electronic tagging and alternative accommodation. I have also agreed an additional package of measures to improve the processing of foreign national prisoners. The immigration and nationality directorate has been taking a robust approach to the deportation of European economic area nationals, which has been defeated consistently in the courts. We will be changing the law to strengthen the link between criminality and deportation, but in the meantime we are no longer taking unproductive cases to the courts at the taxpayers’ expense, with negative results. We are introducing an incentive scheme to persuade prisoners to return voluntarily to their own country. As we have always treated Irish citizens in a way which reflected the close historical, community and political ties between the United Kingdom and Ireland, and the existence of the common travel area, we are considering treating those citizens as a special case. In addition, the director general of the immigration and nationality directorate, Lin Homer, is writing to the Home Affairs Committee today to provide a further breakdown of the progress made on the 1,013 prisoners released without consideration of deportation, and I will arrange for a copy of that to go into the Library of the House. Finally, in the longer term, we have already outlined plans for a prisons building programme for 8,000 places by 2012, and what is required beyond that will be given further consideration. We have also outlined plans for the greater use of community sentences, a scheme for payback to the community, and the rehabilitation of prisoners. I hope the measures that I have taken will alleviate the pressure in the short term and will complement the measures that I outlined to the House in my statement in July. I commend the measures to the House.