Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his Department’s policy to build more prisons.

As set out in the December 2024 10-Year Prison Capacity Strategy, we are committed to delivering an additional 14,000 prison places across England and Wales and have already delivered around 3,200 places since July 2024. We remain on track to meet this commitment by 2031. In stark contrast, the previous government built only 500 additional net places over 14 years.

Our expansion programme includes the construction of four new prisons, including HMP Millsike which opened in spring 2025, alongside the expansion and refurbishment of the existing estate. We have committed a further investment of £4.7bn over the current spending review period (2026/27 to 2029/30) to support the delivery of these places, including breaking ground at the new HMP Welland Oaks site in Leicestershire in November 2025. We are building two further new prisons next to the existing HMP Garth in Lancashire and HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire, and we are committed to undertaking critical maintenance work across the prison estate.

We continue to explore options so the prison estate can move from crisis management to a more resilient and rehabilitative system. This will ensure the estate can meet future demand and improve conditions. Alongside our build programme, we have brought forward the Sentencing Act to place prison capacity on a sustainable footing and avoids the pressure seen in recent years.