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Penal System

Precisely so—there cannot be effective rehabilitation and overcrowding. However, let us consider the people who are in prison. Are they the right people? I listened carefully to the speech of the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and read the motion carefully. First, it does not deal properly with those with mental illness in our prison estate. The hon. Gentleman mentioned in passing that 90 per cent. of prisoners have some symptoms of mental illness, but simply went on to say that that means building more prisons. It does not. It means that we should have more treatment centres that are capable of dealing with mental illness. When one in 10 of our prisoners are functionally psychotic and in ordinary cells, it does not do them, the Prison Service or society any good. I hoped that the new Lord Chancellor would say today that he had reviewed the position on building more prisons and reached the sensible conclusion that we need to build more secure mental health provision in the Prison Service instead. That is the logical way in which to move people who should not be in prison out of the prison estate. That would deal with their needs and those of society. A sensible approach would be to use the money that the right hon. Gentleman has earmarked for prison expansion to increase the places in secure mental health provision. We have only 1,150 places in Ashworth, Broadmoor and Rampton. That is hugely insufficient to meet the needs of the current prison population. Why do we not tackle that scarcity rather than simply building more run-of-the-mill prison cells?