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Prison Population

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) for raising some issues. May I put him straight on one thing? He said that I am reannouncing 1,500 prison places, but I am not: I am announcing new money—£80 million—from the Chancellor of the Exchequer for 1,500 prison places. That is over and above the 8,000 places we have already committed to for this period. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) can chunter all he likes, but that is money that the Government have voted for, raised taxes for and will spend. I challenge him and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough to say where that money would come from in the context of tax cuts for the future. The hon. and learned Gentleman is quite accurate to say that there are projections that show an increase in the prison population. I accept that. I have already indicated to him in questions that we intend to review the figure in August 2007. We have a building programme for 8,000 places already and 1,500 places have been announced today. We are committed to raising the number of prison places, but we are also committed to things that I know that—deep down, secretly—he supports, such as looking at better community sentences, ensuring that we get people out of prison by reducing reoffending, and looking at people who have under 12 months to serve to see whether we can make sure that they do not reoffend in the future. I know that he believes in that, although the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) takes a different view. I hope that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough will support us, not just in building the necessary prison places now, but in looking at the issues related to preventing reoffending in the long term. The hon. and learned Gentleman helpfully suggested we consider prison ships or redundant Army camps—as if they were things that the Government had never thought of, examined and tried to do. The issues are difficult. We have looked at the ideas and they are not practicable in the short or long term. What is practicable is building proper prison places, putting in, in effect, extra prison resources, and looking at sentencing and community-based sentences. The hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor has ruled out early release; he has ruled out Executive early release. Pressure has been put on us to take that step, but we are not undertaking Executive early release. Early release is letting people out. They are not under licence and we do not have control over them. For a small number of people, we have put in temporary transitional licence arrangements to bring them home in the last few days of their sentences. Those people do not include serious and dangerous offenders. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will support that. Can the hon. and learned Gentleman recall May 2005, when his party fought an election on a manifesto committed to the James review, which contained £35 billion of spending cuts? That was not a question of resources going to deal with issues in our communities. He needs to remember that.