Exclusive
UK prisons crisis 'totally unacceptable', minister says as he warns 'whole system could break down' if spaces run out
14 May 2025, 19:57 | Updated: 15 May 2025, 10:33
The crisis in Britain's jails in "totally unacceptable", Prisons Minister Lord James Timpson has told LBC, after the government announced a "record expansion" as it scrambles to reduce overcrowding.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Watch Again: Andrew Marr speaks to Lord Timpson, Minister of State for Prisons
The MoJ warned on Wednesday it "will run out of prison places in just five months time” if nothing is done due to significant overcrowding in jails across the country.
Shabana Mahmood confirmed the government will build three new prisons starting this year as part of a "record prison expansion" in a bid to tackle the crisis. Speaking on Tonight with Andrew Marr, Lord Timpson raised the alarm over the lack of places, warning the whole system could break down if they run out.
He said: "The crisis that we've inherited in our prison system is one we need to tackle now. And what that means is if the police can't arrest anybody because there's no prison places, the courts can't potentially convict anybody, and then the whole system breaks down.
Read more: Jails to run out of space in five months as government announces 'record prison expansion'
"So we always need prison places and that's why we're taking these actions. Our predictions are by November, if we don't do anything, we will run out of spaces in the male prison estate, and that is totally unacceptable."
The new prisons will be built at Grendon in Buckinghamshire, the Market Harborough area in Leicestershire, and Leyland in Lancashire.
'We've got to take other action'
But Lord Timpson warned that more must be done to tackle the scale of the crisis, with new laws needed to shift the dial.
"We've also got to take other action because building prisons alone is not enough," he said.
He added that the last Tory government only opened 500 prison places during its 14-year rule, which is "nowhere near enough."
"We've already got 2,400 open over the last nine months," Lord Timpson said.
He added: "We need to get the extra prisons open... A lot of the prisons we've got, we're going to expand those as well.
"Our plan is to introduce legislation to change the way recalls work, because we need that to get us through."
It comes as the Justice Secretary announced that "those serving sentences of between one and four years can only be returned to prison for a fixed 28-day period" in a shake-up to prison recall measures.
'We will end the crisis for good'
She said some offenders will be excluded from this measure, including recalling those for committing a serious further offences.
"We also will exclude those who are subject to higher levels of risk management by multiple agencies where the police, prisons and probation services work together," she added.
Ms Mahmood said the move "buys us the time we need to introduce the sentencing reforms that, alongside our record prison building plans, will end the crisis in our prisons for good".
Meanwhile, the government has also tasked David Gauke, former Conservative justice secretary, with carrying out a review of sentencing to solve the overcrowding problem in prisons.
"When the Gauke Report comes through, imminently, then what we'll be able to do is go through legislation, because we've got to deal with the crisis. It has to be sustainable because you cannot have prisons potentially running out of places and the police can't do their job," Lord Timpson said.
Mr Guake has already issued proposals, including that prisoners should be released early if they behave well and take part in rehabilitation programmes.
The Government began freeing thousands of inmates early in September to curb jail overcrowding, by temporarily reducing the proportion of sentences which some prisoners must serve behind bars from 50% to 40%.
More than 4,000 prisoners serving a sentence of longer than five years have already been released.
But according to the MoJ, these measures have “only bought the service time”.
The chairman of the Prison Officers Association (POA) has said building new prisons will “not improve the current population crisis”.
“The Government would be better off spending billions of taxpayers’ money on modernising the prison estate, funding an under-resourced probation service, providing more secure mental health beds and ensuring we have robust community sentences that the public have confidence in,” Mark Fairhurst said.
“Building new prisons will take years and will not improve the current population crisis.“If new prisons are to be built, I hope the Labour Party’s commitment to the biggest insourcing in a generation is applied and the new build prisons remain in the public sector.”
