Greg Hands (Hammersmith & Fulham, Conservative)

What his most recent assessment is of progress on the prison building programme. [This section has been corrected on 18 March 2008, column 6MC — read correction]

Jack Straw (Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Blackburn, Labour)

The Government have announced a programme to provide an additional 20,000 prison places and increase overall capacity to just over 96,000 by 2014. As I explained, the programme has already provided 1,746 places, and it will provide about another 2,500 places this year.

Greg Hands (Hammersmith & Fulham, Conservative)

Why are the Government pressing ahead with titan prisons? All my experience as a former prison visitor at Her Majesty's Prison Wormwood Scrubs, which is an enormous establishment, suggests that local and smaller prisons are far more likely to reduce reoffending and increase rehabilitation.

Jack Straw (Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Blackburn, Labour)

What we also know, from the Carter report and much other experience both in the UK and in the United States, is that we must balance the issue of smaller prisons—I understand that they are desired, but they are not desired in the communities in which we may wish to put them—and the practicalities of being able to find fewer but larger sites for large prisons. What we are also determined to do, as we are doing with the cluster on the Isle of Sheppey and we will do with that in the Bromsgrove-Redditch area, is to ensure that within the perimeters we improve efficiency by merging back office functions and ensuring that there are different regimes for different categories of prisoner.

Chris Bryant (PPS (Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC (Leader of the House of Commons)), Leader of the House of Commons; Rhondda, Labour)

One of the problems we face in south Wales is the lack of capacity in Welsh prisons, which means that many prisoners end up going to prisons further afield—in England—and it is very difficult for families and friends to visit. Can the Justice Secretary say what plans he has to increase the capacity of prisons in Wales? Does he find that many local authorities tend towards nimbyism and very much fight against having local prisons?

Jack Straw (Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Blackburn, Labour)

The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend Mr. Hanson, has both responsibility for prisons and the privilege of representing a Welsh constituency. He is on the case, consulting widely with a view to ensuring that additional prison capacity is available in Wales.

Tony Baldry (Banbury, Conservative)

A not insignificant number of prison places are taken up by foreign prisoners who have completed their sentences. When I tabled a number of questions to the Secretary of State on the number of such prisoners in, for example, Bullingdon prison, the questions were transferred to the Home Office. Surely the Secretary of State for Justice has a real interest in ensuring that foreign prisoners who have completed their sentences are removed from prison and deported. The fewer places they take up, the less pressure there will be to build new prisons.

Jack Straw (Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Blackburn, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman is right that I have a very real interest in that. There are many spirited conversations between my officials and those at the Home Office, and between the Home Secretary and me, about ensuring that time-sentenced foreign national prisoners are removed from the country as quickly as possible by deportation or administrative means. That said, it happens that since they then become the responsibility of the Border and Immigration Agency, it falls to the Home Office to answer detailed statistical questions.