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Prison Population

You kindly, but not for the first time, anticipate me, Mr. Speaker. I am just about to ask the question. But let me just set that question in context. The Minister says that the Government have built 20,000 new places, but several of these new prisons were contracted for prior to 1997, and does he really believe that the 20,000 new places will be sufficient to deal with the crisis of overcrowding? Will the Minister accept, not only that the current problem of prison overcrowding will continue, but that it has been both predictable and predicted by everyone who has thought about the issue for many years? His noble Friend Lord Carter, Anne Owers the prisons inspector, and even my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary and I have warned the Government about this time after time. Did not the Home Office itself predict in 2001 that there would not be enough places for the expected numbers of offenders by the end of this decade? Is it not clear that the only people who failed to react to what was happening and what was going to happen were the four Labour Home Secretaries and their Ministers, aided and abetted by the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, who on all the evidence, have done next to nothing? Why on earth did the Home Secretary claim last October in the House that my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary"““has been making a dreadful, dreadful fuss because we are a couple of hundred short of maximum capacity””—[Official Report, 9 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 38.]" instead of getting on with sorting out the mess? What sort of Government demand that the courts send more offenders to prison, and for longer, but fail to provide the places to put them in? What sort of Government, after 10 years in office, look and sound surprised that the prison population has risen under their watch from under 60,000 to over 81,000, and that offenders are now having to be housed overnight in court cells, and for several nights in police station cells, and even kept in prison vans outside court while they wait for their cases to come on? And, Mr. Speaker, did you not hear this Minister say that he was pleased to announce that he was going to invite the police to do that until the end of the year? There are prisons that have turned away prisoners because they have no more room. Why, if the Government thought it right to have 20,000 more inmates, did they not plan and build 20,000 more places? The Home Secretary said last year that he would provide 8,000 more places by 2012. On the Government’s own projections, that will not be enough. But the Chancellor, the next Prime Minister, has not signed the cheque. Where are these places going to be, what will they cost in terms of building and staffing costs and when will they be ready? To provide temporary accommodation, why have the Government not found the prison ship that they sold at a loss not so long ago? Why have they not made any use of redundant military camps, former secure hospitals and other available accommodation? Why did they not do these things last year or the year before that? Watching the Government’s handling of this growing crisis has been like watching a train crash. Why have the Government been hapless bystanders and not taken decisive action? Is it because the Chancellor, driven by political rivalry, has refused successive Home Secretaries the resources needed to address the chronic lack of prison spaces? Is not the crisis that we now face a failure of design, for which the Chancellor bears responsibility? We heard today from Manchester that he will ensure extra fast-build prison places to address the problem. But why—if the Labour Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), would stop chattering—why, if the resources are available, were they not made available in time to prevent this predictable chaos? How much is the Chancellor providing? How many places will be built, and when will they be available? Are these not likely to be fast-fill prisons that will soon demonstrate the short-term nature of this Government’s approach? The Government briefed the press this morning that they will release prisoners early. The Minister confirms that. Why then did the Lord Chancellor say quite the opposite over lunchtime on Sky television? The Government did that before, with tragic consequences for far too many innocent victims. In previous years, as they released inmates early from open prisons, they transferred unsuitable offenders from the secure to the open estate. Will the Minister undertake to the House in terms that he will do no such thing again? We know that the police and the probation service, which are already overstretched, cannot keep their eyes on more released offenders. Every probation officer is already supervising between 20 and 80 offenders. Are not the public entitled to conclude that the Government’s strategic and day-to-day management of our prisons has been not just stupid, reckless and incompetent, but shamefully irresponsible? Do they not see an exhausted Government, who, as a direct result of their failure to plan and act, have increased reoffending, reduced public safety and wasted huge sums of taxpayers’ money? What do the Government offer but yet another review? Are there no limits to the Government’s inadequacies—