Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

Where I live in Central London during the week – Pimlico – is a pretty quiet area. More recently, I have been surprised to see two police officers together patrolling from time to time. It is reassuring. They talk to people. Most usual contact with the police is having to get out of the way of a police car at high speed with flashing blue lights.

Nothing is more irritating than continuous minor crime – like scratching a car or deflating a tyre. That is what Police Community Support Officers help to prevent, and have the power to issue fixed penalty notices. However, what I discovered at the weekend is that the planned increase in PCSOs has had to be scaled back because the money is being directed to the prisons crisis.

The Home Office – not fit for purpose? I couldn’t agree more. 

When I visited Romania, I was housed, much to the astonishment of the British Ambassador, in the suburban villa of the country’s late dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. Semi-disappointingly, we did not however see the ghosts of either Ceauşescu or his terrifying wife.

Yesterday, we had an announcement from our dysfunctional Home Office that gives both that Department and politicians in general a bad name (For now, let us put aside whether immigration is a good or bad thing). The simple truth is that in practice we shall not be able to stop Romanians and Bulgarians from coming to Britain. There are to be £1000 fines for illegally working here. We must revisit this in January 2008, a year on, to see how many have actually been fined! It will be impossible to deport transgressors.

The Home Office know all of this, but try to spin something different. And for those of us who observe the nuances of Parliamentary protocol, this announcement was sneaked out in a written statement and not on the floor of the Commons, where it could have been challenged.

It says it all. 

Nearly two weeks ago, Mark Ryder, from Highpoint Prison (Suffolk) in my constituency escaped — sorry, it is now called ‘licence failure’ by the Prison Service. When he last absconded in 1991, it took two years to recapture him and meanwhile he committed a murder.

Unhandcuffed, he apparently escaped from two female wardens whilst in Cambridge, allegedly with £150 in his pocket. Needless to say the family of the man he murdered in Sussex are terrified of a visit by him. This morning, I spoke to the Deputy Chief Constable of Suffolk, and he in turn spoke to the Acting Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire.

Is it really true that he absconded when he was allowed, unescorted, to go into a male lavatory in Cambridge?

I cannot get answers from anybody – I have been in constant touch with the office of the Prisons Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe MP, but no replies are forthcoming.

Licence failure could better be applied to a Home Office that would find it difficult to run a whelk — (sorry, crustacean) — stall. 

If the old saying about lightning never striking twice is true, then someone forgot to tell John Reid and the rest of the Home Office. After the media storm last week regarding the escaped murderer from HMP Highpoint, in my constituency, I was interested to read today that two terror suspects, classed in the high-risk category, have also managed to escape from custody. 

That this breach could occur is even more unbelievable considering that they were on high restrictions including curfews, tagging and surveillance. 

It begs the question, “How widespread is the incompetence within the Home Office?” What hope is there for keeping lesser-risk prisoners safely behind bars, if more serious offenders can evade the security designed for detaining prisoners in connection with terrorism. 

Furthermore, and crucially, why was there a shabby cover-up which was only exposed when the family of one of the men expressed concerns for his welfare. 

John Reid, when he took on the role, said he would shake up the Home Office and rid it of its image as a Department where mismanagement and calamity reigned supreme. 

Now that the curtain has rudely been pulled up on this pantomime farce, it is clear for all to see that he still a very long way to go…   

When Highpoint Prison in my constituency was an open prison, the word “open” was famously appropriate When it began to house more serious criminals, that changed. One of its more infamous residents was Myra Hindley. 

Mark Ryder, serving a 15 year sentence, was allowed to visit Cambridge on Thursday with two escorts, but was not handcuffed. He escaped, serving only to prove that history has a tendency to repeat itself. In 1991, he escaped from guards – being recaptured only in 1993 – and whilst on the run committed a murder. Ironically, it was for this murder that he was serving a life sentence at Highpoint. 

Guess what the Prison Service said – “This is not an escape or an abscond, it is deemed a licence failure”. 

What do you think? Would you have another description? 

What really worries me is that with our Prison Service under such pressure because of the Government’s unwillingness to build new prisons and with the increased future use of open prisons, we may get even more misjudgements. 

The Home Secretary talks of his department not being “fit for purpose”! I think shambles would be a better way of describing his empire. Do you agree?   

On the first day of the new Parliamentary session we were treated to the unedifying spectacle of the Home Secretary, John Reid, addressing our prisons crisis. 

It is symptomatic of this Government and their reliance on spin that John Reid could begin by saying, with a completely straight face, that “public protection has always been our first priority”. 

The cold hard fact is that the prison population now stands at 79,819; prisons are desperately overcrowded and they are considering moving some prisoners into open jails simply to free up space for new criminals. The Government even accepts that “in a last resort” they would consider the early release of prisoners to help the crisis in prison capacity. What confidence can the public have in their safety and security when offenders are let out because there isn’t space to hold them. 

In many respects, the Home Secretary appeared before Parliament like the naughty schoolboy who after returns to school after the summer holiday to try to valiantly explain to the class why he hasn’t finished the project he was set. 

We had the full list of excuses, ready and prepared the night before – “I’ll stay behind after school to fix it”, “it probably isn’t as bad as it seems”, “I’m sure it will all be ok in the end”. 

Well, when we are contemplating using cells in police stations to detain convicted criminals because of a chronic shortage of space in actual prisons, then it is as bad as it seems and it probably won’t be ok in the end, especially when it costs £365 per night to keep a prisoner detained in a cell. 

All this is even more unbelievable when we consider that a string of Home Secretaries, over the past nine years, have known that the prison population was rising inexorably and sooner or later, this would have to be resolved. 

Instead the Government decided it would be better to squander millions of pounds trying to restructure the entire police service of England and Wales because it was “not fit for purpose”.  The Suffolk Constabulary, which polices my constituency, were tied up in endless red tape and confusion trying to comply with the various targets for reform, even though they are one of the best performing constabularies in England. 

A year later, John Reid came in and dropped the whole regionalisation/merger scheme. When they could see a prison crisis looming, why were more time and resources not diverted to urgently finding additional prison places. Why are we now searching around for more and more obscure solutions such as bribing foreign prisoners with education and training packages worth £2,500 to leave Britain. It is the politics of despair. 

Alas, if it all comes crashing down around John Reid’s head at the Home Office, at least he can resort to blaming the bigger boy who was sitting at the desk before him.