Prison Services: Insourcing

Lord Watts Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord raises a really important question on how the performance differs between public and private sector prisons. It is something I have been interested in for a long time. I can show you some excellent private sector prisons and some excellent public sector prisons, and I think we need to learn from each other where we have areas of excellence and of poor performance. One thing I look out for is the quality of leadership in a prison. It does not matter whether it is a public sector prison or a private sector prison. I believe that too much of the performance of a prison is dependent on one leader, and that is the situation in both types of prison.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister says that the Prison Service has not got the capacity at the present time. Will he take between now and when the new contract is due to go out again to build capacity in the Prison Service, so that it can actually compete with the private sector?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord will be well aware that we have lots of maintenance issues in our prisons, 25% of which are Victorian. In HMP Preston, the first governor was appointed in 1790, and in 1791 at HMP Lewes. Dealing with the maintenance on those is very complex and often requires a hybrid model, because we are dealing with lifts, fire systems and often very complicated things. In December last year, we published our 10-year capacity strategy, which aims to make sure we have enough prison places for the prisoners that we will hold.