Home Secretary to announce new prisons

The Home Secretary John Reid is to announce plans for two new prisons, providing an extra 1,300 spaces.

The prisons, which will reportedly cost more than £160m, will be located near Ashworth high security mental hospital in Merseyside and next to Belmarsh prison in Woolwich, south east London.

Mr Reid was criticised last month for his requests to jail only serious offenders, as prisons were at “bursting point”.

More than 80,000 prisoners fill the cells throughout England and Wales, while more inmates are held in police stations and court cells in a bid to control the overcrowding.

The Home Secretary is expected to say: “We are working flat out to deliver additional capacity within the prison system. In July last year I announced plans for an extra 8,000 places to be delivered by 2012. The process starts now.

“We already own two potential sites for new prisons and I can announce today that one of them is here at Maghull, where we already have planning permission to provide up to 600 places by 2010.”

The prison next to Belmarsh still requires planning permission, however.

“In total, our building programme now amounts to about 10,000 new places over the next five years. In 2007 alone, I am planning to deliver about 2,500 new places, including about 1,500 by July, with new places at 13 different prisons,” Mr Reid said.

(JM)