Justice Secretary Alex Norris has said that the government will create new prison places in the “mid-hundreds” by converting laundry rooms and offices into cells.
He told GB News: “We’ve got the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era, 14,000 places, to bring some of it forward, and that’s what we’re announcing today. You know, I can’t give you the exact figure because we have to get into the estate on some of it. But you’re talking in the mid-hundreds places created this way by using our existing estate creatively.
“Think laundry rooms, think offices, and whatnot. Not easy things to do because those are valued spaces. But it means that we can keep more people in prison, which I think is what your viewers would want.”
Norris also said that he had got it wrong when he said that the government could not block the release of two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper: “I appreciate that for a lot of people they’ve lived with uncertainty through this. Whilst we’ve got it right, they pushed me. You pushed me, and indeed, lots of people, whether they’re victims’ advocates or other victims, survivors, and their families, to look again. So we did.
“I accept that I said that we couldn’t, but we’ve been able to go further. I actually think that’s good news. I think I’d hope you would agree it is because it means that those who have taken life, whether it’s manslaughter, death by dangerous driving, death by drunk driving, we’ve been able to take out of scope of an earlier removal. That is a good end state, but I do accept that that that is a process that has caused anxiety and concern.
“The way in which I’ve been able to do it is, as I’ve sort of said in opening, I was pressed by yourself and by others to say go further in terms of bringing your program forwards because you know a lot of the things I’m talking about come to fruition say by the end of this decade, or be more creative about the estate that you’ve got, and we’ve done those things, and you know that’s I think got us to the right end state.
“It’s meant that, as I said on the programme last time, we’ve been able to remove those who committed rape offences, child sex offences, and now those who’ve taken life on top of murderers, terrorists, and whatnot. That’s got us to the right place.”
He also confirmed that the government is to end IPP sentences: “IPP sentences are not in scope of the Sentencing Act. The Prime Minister and myself have both said that we intend to bring them to an end, but that will be done in an orderly [way]. It will require legislation in Parliament too.”
He added: “It has been a long-standing matter of consensus across the political spectrum about these sentences were wrong and that the impacts of them were wrong, and that we need to move to an end state. My invite is to all, to political actors across the spectrum, to anyone with an interest, to work with us to bring it to its end state. Because you know, I believe that that genuinely is what everybody wants to see too.”
