First they send migrants to Rwanda - now Tories want to send British prisoners abroad

Tory figures cited similar measures introduced in European countries including Norway and Belgium which saw hundreds of prisoners sent to the Netherlands

Alex Chalk said the plans would help the government ‘lock up the most dangerous offenders for longer’ but provided no details on how it would work (Getty/The Independent)

Rishi Sunak’s government plans to send criminals abroad in a desperate bid to solve Britain’s prisons crisis as overcrowding reaches breaking point.

As figures uncovered by The Independent showed inmate numbers are reaching “dangerous” levels, justice secretary Alex Chalk said he would look to introduce laws to allow the UK to rent prison space abroad.

Tory figures cited similar measures introduced in European countries including Norway and Belgium which saw hundreds of prisoners sent to the Netherlands.

Mr Chalk told the Conservative Party conference in Manchester the plans would help the government “lock up the most dangerous offenders for longer where that is necessary to protect the public”.

But a source close to the justice secretary said the proposals were at an “early stage” and there were no details of how much the plans would cost, where prisoners would be sent or how many inmates would be jailed abroad.

The proposal comes after the Tories’ failed bid to send migrants seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda, which the Court of Appeal judged to be “unlawful”.

Campaigners slammed the fresh plans as “half-baked”, while Labour said the announcement was proof the Tories had “run our criminal justice system into the ground”.

It comes on a day of desperate attempts to win over Tories on the right of the party that saw extraordinary statements and pledges including:

• Suella Braverman’s claim a “hurricane” of migrants are on their way to the UK as she vowed to close asylum hotels
• Health secretary Steve Barclay outlining plans to ban trans women from female NHS wards, claiming “Tories know what a woman is”
• Michael Gove’s claim the infamous Brexit campaign promise that leaving EU would boost NHS by £350m a week had been “delivered” – despite providing any evidence

Announcing his prison plans, Mr Chalk told the conference: “This government is doing more than any since the Victorian era to expand prison capacity.

“I can tell you today that we also intend to look at the Norwegian example and explore renting overseas capacity.

Norway has previously rented prison cells from the Netherlands under a “Norgerhaven” agreement which saw 650 prisoners sent to the country between 2015 and 2018. Belgium sent as many as 650 prisoners to the Netherlands between 2010 and 2016 under a similar scheme.

Justice secretary Alex Chalk said the plans would keep dangerous inmates behind bars for longer (PA)

In September, Britain’s prison population grew by 665 – more than the number of prisoners who were sent from Belgium to the Netherlands over six years.

Labour’s shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said the move showed the UK’s justice system was “broken”.

“There’s no greater symbol of the way in which the Tories have run our criminal justice system into the ground than the fact they are ‘exploring’ putting prisoners in foreign jails because they are incapable of building the prison places this country needs to keep our people safe,” she said.

“After 10 justice secretaries in 10 years, we saw no acknowledgement of their failings across the criminal justice system – from the crumbling prison estate to the courts backlog, and sky-high reoffending rates.”

She said Labour would deliver 20,000 prison places needed to tackle the backlog and would drive down the court backlog by increasing the number of crown prosecutors and by open specialist rape courts.

Labour MP Karl Turner, a former shadow justice secretary, said the announcement was a “damning indictment of this tired-out, dishonest and utterly incompetent Tory government”.

“This government has broken our criminal justice system, I’m only surprised they haven’t rented hotel rooms,” he said, adding: “It’s time for them to call it a day.”

‘Red light’ on prison overcrowding been flashing for years, say campaigners (Getty Images)

The head of the Prison Reform Trust, Pia Sinha, said the government’s response to dangerous and growing levels of overcrowding in our prisons is a half-baked idea to rent foreign prison places.

“Prison leaders will be in despair at such a superficial response to their very real and urgent concerns. The red warning light of a looming capacity crisis has been flashing on the prison service dashboard for a number of months. Ministers can’t say they haven’t been warned.”

Andrea Albutt, president of the Prison Governor’s Association, told The Independent the plans were “utter nonsense”. She added: “It’s just further evidence that this government’s policy of locking up more people, and locking people up for longer, has failed miserably.”

Ms Albutt said prisons were very close to being full and that the proposals would have no impact on the immediate problem of overcrowding.

Mentioning the money already spent by the Home Office on the failed Rwanda scheme, she added: “Is this just going to be another policy that they spend millions on that never gets off the ground?”

Andrew Coomber KC, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “This is a national embarassment and one that should come to symbolise the misguidance and misdirection characterising prisons policy in England and Wales for decades.”

The Independent revealed earlier this week that the majority of prisons are now dangerously full, with some – including Wandsworth, where ex-soldier Daniel Khalife is accused of escaping – holding 70 per cent more inmates than they should.

The shortfall prompted warnings from the chief of prison governors, former home secretary Jack Straw and former Tory prisons minister Rory Stewart, who all warned that early release may have to be considered to tackle the crisis.

And prison governors’ chief Ms Albutt warned the “nuclear button could be pressed very soon”, as the system runs dangerously close to capacity.

Mr Chalk said on Tuesday that Mr Sunak’s government has added more than 5,000 prison places, including in new prisons such as HMP Fosse Way. But he said prisons cost around £46,000 a year for each adult male, which he said is “a lot of money” and highlights the need to “break the cycle of reoffending”.

Elsewhere at the conference, Ms Braverman warned that Britain faces a “hurricane” of migrants as she dialled up her anti-immigration rhetoric. She also took aim at domestic rights legislation – saying she was surprised Labour’s Human Rights Act “was not called the Criminal Rights Act”.

Meanwhile, the health secretary revealed that transgender women are to be banned from female NHS wards – insisting that the Tories “know what a woman is”.

Unison said it was “deflection politics at its very worst”, while he LGBT+ charity Stonewall described it as “cynical”. Britain’s first openly transgender MP, Tory Jamie Wallis, also lashed out – saying there was “no evidence of even a single complaint about the presence of trans women in particular spaces”.

And Mr Gove claimed that the Brexit campaign promise that leaving the EU would boost the NHS by £350m a week had already been “delivered”. Even Nigel Farage said he would “never have made that claim”.