The Government has been urged to allow more Crown Court sitting days in order to decrease the number of people jailed on remand in the prison population.
Shadow justice minister Kieran Mullan said if the request had been made of the previous Conservative government they would have “not told them no, which is what this Labour Government has done.”
On Wednesday, the Government published a 10-year Prison Capacity Strategy that will aim to deliver 14,000 prison places to create a “resilient prison estate”.
Some 6,400 of these will be at newly built prisons, with £2.3 billion towards the cost over the next two years.
The remaining places will be found by measures including building new wings at existing jails, or by refurbishing cells currently out of action, and an extra £500 million will go towards “vital building maintenance”.
In a statement to the Commons on Thursday, justice minister Alex Davies-Jones referred to the Government’s early releases upon taking office which she said was necessary due a lack of prison spaces inherited from the previous Conservative government.
She said: “That brought us precious breathing space. However, if we do not act, our prisons will fill up again, and we must therefore act, including by building more prison places as a matter of urgency.”
Responding to the statement, Dr Mullan said: “Let’s be absolutely clear about the root cause of the problem we are facing now. The fundamental issue is one of a spike in the remand population.
“We have approximately 7,000 more people in prison on remand than we normally would. The unprecedented spike has occurred directly as a result of Covid. Directly. They know that.
“In fact, prior to Covid, we had got the Crown Court backlog down lower than it had been under the last Labour government, another record we can be proud of.
“To try and tackle that we increased sitting days and introduced Nightingale courts and, contrary to what the Government has said, we were clear that we would carry on doing everything possible to bring that number down.
“We did not and would not have refused extra sitting days to the judiciary, as this Government has done, we had agreed a floor on sitting days, not a cap, and negotiations were ongoing.
“If the judiciary had come to us and asked for more sitting days, we would have responded to that, not told them no, which is what this Labour Government has done.
“This is not a bold new strategy. It’s a continuation of work started under the Conservative government. So of course, there are some important questions for the minister. Given that we had not done so, why have they now refused additional Crown Court sitting days to the judiciary?”
Ms Davies-Jones said: “Yet again, zero humility from the people who put us in this crisis. Absolutely staggering to think that that is what you want to tell the British people: no apology for the crisis you left us.
“When we took office in July, we were just days away from a complete collapse of our criminal justice system because of the inheritance that we received from that previous government.
“The fact of the matter is this Government is taking action. We have increased Crown Court sitting days, 500 more Crown Court sitting days to ensure that we have the capacity within the system, magistrate sentencing powers increased from six to 12 months, freeing up 2,000 more in the Crown Court.”
Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani noted that the announcement was published on Wednesday, the day after Justice Questions.
She said: “This timing was unfortunate, as a publication a day or two earlier would have given members an opportunity to put topical questions to ministers on the new strategy.”
Dr Mullan also noted the timing of the publication which he described as “quite an obvious attempt to avoid scrutiny”, as did Liberal Democrat justice spokesman Josh Babarinde, who thanked the chairman of the Justice Select Committee, Labour MP Andy Slaughter, for “putting in that point of order that I think helped to bring this to this House”.
