His gotcha question spectacularly backfires...
A senior Tory has accidentally exposed his own party’s poor record on prison spaces, as he revealed that the Conservatives increased jail spaces by just 455 places in fourteen years, which is fewer spaces than the current government has created in its seven months in office.
Tory MP Richard Holden tried to embarrass the Labour government with his written question, which asked how many new prison places were built under the previous Labour administration, between May 1997 and May 2010, and the previous Tory administration, between May 2010 and July 2024, however his attempt spectacularly backfired.
The data revealed that under the last Tory government the capacity of the prison estate increased by just 455 spaces in their fourteen years in power. Meanwhile the previous Labour government boosted spaces by 27,830 new prison places, the data shows.
To make matters worse for Holden, who asked a further written question, data showed that between 2010 and 2024, the Tories closed the doors of more than 7,500 prison cells.
He should now go away and reflect on his party’s poor performance.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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