Prisoners to be held in police cells because jails are getting full, justice minister tells MPs
Prisoners could be held in police cells in an attempt to reduce “acute and sudden” overcrowding in jails, MPs have been told.
In a statement to the Commons, Damian Hinds, the justice minister, said:
In recent months we have experienced an acute and sudden increase in the prison population, in part due to the aftermath of the Criminal Bar Association strike action over the summer, which led to a significantly higher number of offenders on remand.
With court hearings resuming, we are seeing a surge in offenders coming through the criminal justice system, placing capacity pressure on adult male prisons in particular.
I’m announcing today that we’ve written to the National Police Chiefs’ Council to request the temporary use of up to 400 police cells through an established protocol known as Operation Safeguard.
This will provide the immediate additional capacity we need in the coming weeks to ensure the smooth running of the prison estate and to continue taking dangerous criminals off the streets.
Hinds said that using police cells to house prisoners was not unprecedented, and last happened in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
Responding for Labour, Ellie Reeves, a shadow justice minister, said:
This is yet another crisis created by this shambolic Tory government. It is hard to think of a more damning indictment of this government’s failure on law and order than the fact they have now run out of cells to lock up criminals. But it is hardly surprising when under the Tories 10,000 prison places have been lost.
UPDATE: I have amended the headine to say prisons are “getting full”, because they original wording said they were full now. The Ministry of Justice says they’re not. It says about 1,000 places are still available, but that these could soon run out.
Brexit is 'for the long term', and 'change is difficult', says Badenoch when asked about Brexit's impact on economy
Giving evidence to the Commons international trade committee, Kemi Badenoch insisted Brexit should be seen as a long-term project when asked about its economic impact.
In response to a question about its impact on GDP, she said:
This is something that we have done for the long term. We haven’t said that there are not going to be any changes in the interim. What we are doing is creating an independent trade policy that is going to work for the future.
Will there be difficulties because of changes? Yes. All change is difficult.
She said that alongside Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, it was not “helpful” to try to disentangle Brexit from other factors impacting on the British economy.
Badenoch also refused to say what exact impact post-Brexit trade deals might have on GDP. When this was put to her, she replied:
Asking for a number for something that is not a number question is not going to work. If that was the case, you wouldn’t need to have me here. You could just have a computer program and press a button and then get the number.
There is a whole world out there. Looking inward and saying there is nothing else happening except the EU, I’m afraid, is just not realistic.
Brexit has contributed to Britain's current economic decline, Bank of England's chief economist says
Brexit has contributed to Britain’s current economic decline, the Bank of England’s chief economist has said.
Huw Pill also said that Brexit had probably helped to drive up inflation, and that it had contributed to labour shortages.
At an economic summit run by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), Pill was asked to what extent he thought Brexit was to blame for the UK’s current economic decline. He replied:
I think Brexit plays a part, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the whole story, probably only part of the story. It is difficult to give a percentage measure, but to my mind it has had an effect.
Pill said that in 2016, at the time of the referendum, the Bank of England took the view that reduced trade following Brexit would have a negative impact on productivity across the country. He said:
The Bank took the view, and still retains that view … that Brexit would knock about three percentage points off the level of the potential of the economy.
UK growth has been relatively slow by historical standards since 2016, and shrunk by 0.2% between July and September, meaning that the country may enter a recession if it continues to decline over the last three months of the year.
On the subject of inflation, Pill said:
Brexit has probably reduced some of the competitive pressure in the goods market, because it just is harder to import things into the UK from Europe. Some of that loss of competitive pressure probably means there is greater pricing power at some points in value chains in the UK, and that has probably proved to be somewhat inflationary.
And on skills, Pill said the labour shortage may have been heightened by Brexit, because EU workers are no longer free to come to the UK. He said:
It’s not that migration has fallen, in fact, we have more migration from non-EU sources than we have had in the past. But whether those people are as immediately productive and fungible in the labour market is at least open to question.
Downing Street has rejected Dame Kate Bingham’s claim that the UK is “going backwards” when it come to pandemic preparedness. (See 3.55pm.) Asked about her claim, the prime minister’s spokesperson told journalists that he did not accept it. He went on:
I think you can see just from today we are opening the medicines manufacturing innovation centre.
That’s a £13m site which did not exist pre-pandemic which we have rightly spotted is something we need to have better preparation for and we have acted on.
That sits alongside the creation of the UK Health Security Agency - a body that was set up to spot future pandemics. That is backed by £2.4bn.
We have the wider £20bn of research and development.
We have the new MRNA Information and Technology Centre, the Covid vaccine unit. So we have significantly changed our approach to looking for future pandemics and to responding to them when they should arise.
Rebecca Pow, an environment minister, has refused to deny that EU-derived laws which restrict and ban the use of thousands of toxic chemicals are at risk of being dropped from the statute book at the end of next year.
The REACH programme is derived from EU law, and controls the use of chemicals by businesses and manufacturers.
For example, the use of lead paint, which is toxic and causes health problems if used, is restricted under REACH.
When asked if these laws were at risk of being “sunset”, Pow told the environment audit committee:
We are going through all the EU retained law with a view to how we will deal with it and what we will bona fide retain, what we would like to improve and potentially things that have been superseded by other things. That large process is underway right now.
Gabrielle Edwards, deputy director for chemicals, pesticides and hazardous waste at Defra, added:
We are in the process across government of analysing all the pieces of retained EU law and decisions will be made.
But she said the government would “maintain environmental standards”.
Pow said Defra was “working really hard” on deciding which environmental laws to retain.
UK 'going backwards' on pandemc preparedness, and falling behind Europe, Kate Bingham tells MPs
The UK is “going backwards” when it come to pandemic preparedness, the former chair of the vaccines taskforce, Dame Kate Bingham, has suggested to MPs.
Giving evidence to the Commons science committee this morning, she said Britain was “not in a much better place to deal with a new pandemic” because capabilities put in place during the Covid pandemic were dismantled.
She said:
When I left [the vaccine taskforce] in December 2020 we gave some very specific recommendations as to what we thought should happen – ‘an independent industrial experience chairman and board established to bring together the various strands of vaccine activities that will define UK as a global leader in vaccine development and manufacturing’. That’s not happened.
To begin with I thought it was lack of experience of officials – because we don’t have a lot of people within Whitehall that understand vaccines and relationships with industry, all of that.
But actually, I’m beginning to think that this is deliberate government policy, just not to invest and not to support the sector. Because I cannot explain why we haven’t appointed somebody that can actually bring this all together because we’ve got the capabilities and yet systematically, things have been dismantled that we’ve put in place.
Asked about being prepared for future pandemics, Bingham said:
I don’t think we are in a much better place to deal with a new pandemic … I think we’re marginally better.
She also said that other European countries were making better progress in this area.
[European countries] were slow to get off the blocks to begin with, but they’ve now done what needs to be done which is to recognise this is not going to be the last pandemic and we need to have a better and quicker approach to identifying potential pathogens, and maybe being able to build vaccines very rapidly against new variants or new pathogens.
They are doing exactly what we’ve recommended for the UK, but our approach seems to have been to go backwards rather than to continue the momentum.
Giving evidence to the work and pensions committee this morning, he said:
I think there are various moving parts in assessing where we should go with the state pension age.
One of them is life expectancy and more precisely, what proportion of your life should we expect people to have in retirement as opposed to not in retirement?
Another is the cost, and if you look at the consequences of us living longer, and you look at that, for example, as expressed in the financial stability report that the OBR produces every year, where it casts out 50 years and says ‘what are the public finances likely to look like given the demographic change that’s going on?’, the cost of pensions being an element within that, it all gets pretty hairy.
So there is also certainly this other element of ‘what’s the cost going to be’?
I think there are other issues - intergenerational fairness, when you look at the split between how long somebody works to support those that are not working.
As PA Media reports, a previous review of the state pension age in 2017, led by John Cridland, established that people should expect to spend on average up to one third of their adult life in retirement.
Asked if the government is “seriously thinking” of reducing that proportion, Stride said that this was “a factor to consider but I can’t really be drawn on what my thoughts are at this stage as to whether Cridland is about the right figure or not”.
The state pension age is currently 66 for men and women, and is due to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028.
It is also due to rise to 68 between 2044 and 2046, but there has been speculation that this date could be brought forward.
George Eustice wrong to say trade deal with Australia bad for UK, says Badenoch
Peter Walker
Kemi Badenoch, the trade secretary, has robustly defended the UK’s post-Brexit trade with Australia against criticism from George Eustice, rejecting the former agriculture secretary’s claim that it was badly negotiated under the pressure of an arbitrary deadline.
Giving evidence to the Commons international trade committee, she said:
I would like to put on record that I disagree with George’s view, almost all of it.
I disagree with what he said about it not being a good deal for the country. That’s absolutely not true.
Eustice told the Commons earlier this month that the decision of Liz Truss as trade secretary to seek a conclusion before the 2021 G7 summit in Cornwall meant the UK in effect asked the Australians what they would need in terms of concessions to agree, which largely shaped the deal.
Eustice also personally criticised Crawford Falconer, who was the government’s chief trade negotiation adviser and is now interim permanent secretary at Badenoch’s department, saying he repeatedly gave way on issues and ignored expert advice.
Badenoch said she would “strongly disagree” with this, and denied that the UK team had in effect asked Australia what they needed to reach a rapid deal. She said:
I am not aware of any such question being asked. That sounds like a standard negotiating question, where we ask, what is it that you want, and the other team asks the same.
Badenoch did say, however, that he agreed with the general idea that timescale on trade deals could be a problem.
I do think deadlines can be incredibly unhelpful in negotiations. We saw this with Brexit.
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