Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

As an MP whose constituency has a category C prison for male sex offenders that is almost at capacity—HMP Littlehey—I welcome the clarity from the Minister regarding paedophiles in the prison estate.

We know that the Minister is on the hook to deliver thousands of new category C and D prison places. I want to ask him about the prison places he has made almost no progress on since the election because the contractor ISG went into administration in September 2024. I first highlighted the failure of that project last year. Can he confirm whether, since then, all those 12 prisons have had new contractors appointed? When will those prison places be delivered?

[Jake Richards]

This Government are undertaking the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era. We will be building 13,000 new places by 2031. We inherited a prison capacity crisis from the Conservatives, so it takes some chutzpah for them to start asking questions about prison building. We are committed to the prison building programme that we announced in 2024, and we are confident that we will match it. We are fixing the mess that they created.