Prison Overcrowding

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My Department and the Department of Health have jointly launched an integrated drug rehabilitation service in north-west England, which will ensure that rehab continues beyond the prison gate and is afterwards delivered by the same people. I am very much of the view that we have to tackle drug addiction, but we have to make the best use of the time in which we have people in custody, so that we ensure that they do not come back because of their addiction, that we get them off drugs, and that they do not reoffend.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I do not lie awake at night worrying about prisoners being in overcrowded conditions; if they did not want to be in overcrowded conditions, they should not have committed the crimes that got them sent to prison. Will the Secretary of State do more to encourage the Chancellor to find more money for prison building? If he is looking for suggestions as to where the money could be found, perhaps it could come from the £20 billion a year we give to the EU in membership fees, or from the overseas aid budget. When it comes to tackling any prison overcrowding issue, will he pledge not to do what the last Labour Government did in letting out prisoners before the end of their sentence?

[Chris Grayling]

This is what baffles me about the Opposition’s questions and challenges over this issue, because I am precisely not letting out people who should be in prison. I am simply taking sensible precautions to bring on additional capacity. I have to say that if prisoners have to share a cell, I do not regard it as a great problem. I think that the courts should be able to send people to prison if they want to, as does my hon. Friend.