Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has defended the government’s record on prisons and sentencing in England and Wales after criticism from senior security officials, but said “we can’t build our way out of” prison capacity pressures in the short term. Earlier today the Times newspaper reported that the heads of the Metropolitan police, MI5 and the National Crime Agency have told the government that plans to release prisoners early could be of “net detriment to public safety.” Speaking on Times Radio the minister said “The risk to public safety I’d highlight is the prospect of our prison system collapsing, which is what we face and why we’ve had to act.” He continued by saying: What we were handed by the previous government in terms of the state of our prison system was nothing short of criminal neglect. They added just 500 places to the prison estate in their time in office, while at the same time, sentence lengths rose, and as a result, we got the prison population rising by approximately 3,000 people each year. And we’re heading back to zero capacity. If we run out of capacity, courts will be forced to suspend trials, the police will have to halt arrests, crimes will go unpunished. We’ll essentially be in a breakdown of law and order, so while we’re trying to add prison places as fast as we can as a Government – and we’ve already created 2,400 since taking office, allocated an additional £4.7bn to prison building, putting us on track to hit 14,000 places by 2031, we can’t build our way out of this particular crisis we’ve inherited because demand for places will outstrip supply. So sentencing reform is necessary. In a letter to the Times, six police chiefs have warned that without “serious investment” they will be unable to deliver on the prime minister’s flagship pledges. The warning comes ahead of the government spending review, and they cautioned that cuts will lead to the “retrenchment we saw under austerity”. Welcome to our rolling coverage of UK politics for Wednesday. Here are the headlines … Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has defended the government’s record on prisons and sentencing in England and Wales after police chiefs warned that sentencing reforms could put pressure on frontline services The government has announced a package of measures it says is designed to streamline the planning system for small and medium sized housebuilders The Treasury is reported to be in a standoff with some ministers over proposed cuts to public services including policing and social housing Nigel Farage has been accused of leaving a multibillion-pound black hole at the heart of Reform UK’s spending plans after unveiling a series of expensive policy pledges to be paid for by cutting nonexistent items of government spending The national water regulator Ofwat has fined Thames Water nearly £123m after two investigations into the company London mayor Sadiq Khan has called for partial decriminalisation of cannabis possession It is Martin Belam with you here. You can reach me at martin.belam@theguardian.com if you spot typos, errors or omissions, or have a question.
Author: Martin Belam