Question Time crowd scoffs as Tory Minister blames Covid for crowded prisons
A Tory Minister has insisted the Covid pandemic is the first trigger for crowded prisons.
Lee Rowley, MP for North East Derbyshire, instructed a Question Time viewers that the pandemic had swelled jail numbers because of the backlog of individuals ready for his or her courtroom instances to be heard, in addition to delays in constructing extra prisons or create extra capability in present ones.
Presenter Fiona Bruce identified that the Conservative Party had pledged in its 2019 manifesto to create 10,000 extra jail locations, and in 2021, the occasion promised 20,000 further slots by the mid 2020s. Only round 5,500 have to this point been added.
But Housing Minister Mr Rowley mentioned the pandemic was responsible for failing to hit both goal – which was met by derision from the viewers in Liverpool. He mentioned: “We talk about what the problem is. The problem is a hangover from Covid. Sometimes politicians have to be clear… You can laugh or scoff, but the reality is that during Covid, when you take out a substantial proportion of your of your capacity in your courts for a while, there’s a backlog building up.
“So a backlog of people have built up within the system, including within jail. We were building 20,000 new places but then the spike happened after Covid, and we’re going to work through that. We’re trying to work through that, and that’s happening. It’s going to take time, and what politicians need to do is to say, ‘we’ve got a problem. Let’s work through it. Let’s put a plan in place to do that.'”
The debate got here after it emerged that burglars and shoplifters are amongst prisoners who can be launched two months early because the nation runs out of spare jail cells. Ms Bruce alluded to this and known as out the Tories for failing to succeed in targets set in manifestos, going again to 2019.
Mr Rowley mentioned: “I mean, it takes a long time to build a prison. I’ve been involved, as you said, we want 20,000 and we’re doing that and we need to move forward. We’re making sure that more prison places come on.
“But while we have got a problem of attempting to work by way of this backlog, now we have a difficulty, and what now we have to do after we say we have got a difficulty, whether or not it is on this a part of public service or one other, is have a plan, which is what we’re doing, constructing 20,000 locations, and ensuring that we implement that by the Government going again to sq. one.”
The MP had earlier come underneath fireplace on the topical present when a question was asked about his party’s stance on racism, following the Diane Abbott scandal. No one in the audience in Liverpool raised their hand when Ms Bruce asked who agreed with Michael Gove’s response to criticism around extremism. Mr Gove, 56, had said, under new definitions, extremists will be classed as those who destroy the freedom of others, try to replace parliamentary democracy and intentionally create a ‘permissive’ environment for others to do this.
