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The Conservative leader, David Cameron, said today he would introduce league tables for prisons to cut reoffending rates with an increased emphasis on rehabilitation and follow-up care after release.
The Tory leader also indicated that he was against Titan prisons which he thought were a "bad idea".
"The idea that big is beautiful with prisons is wrong," he told the participants, 20 handpicked members of the public in Manchester, in a session led by Channel M television presenter Andy Crane.
"I have spent some time in prison – purely in a professional capacity at Wandsworth prison and was profoundly depressed by the size and impersonality," Cameron said. "I asked the governor what percentage offend when they leave prison and he couldn't tell me.
"The system is not designed that way it is just designed to put them in prison and hold them there locked in cells for up to 23 hours a day and then let them out. Every other public service is paid for by result."
Cameron then declared the need to incentivise prisons. "Are you saying league tables for prisons?" asked Crane, who sounded incredulous. "Yes," *Cameron replied.
Edward Garnier, the shadow minister for justice said: "Prisons should be places where people can be contained humanely, rehabilitated and taught to read and write, and get off drugs. This is most unlikely to be achieved in enormous Titan prisons.
"Jack Straw insisted that the design for three Titan prisons was predominantly based on cheapness rather than value for money and also that they should be designed to accommodate more than 2,500 prisoners. They are designed for overcrowding before they dig the first foundations – that to us is ridiculous.
"Experience suggests to us these large prisons are dangerous and inefficient. We suggest prisons become part of prison rehabilitation trusts similar to hospital trusts. In charge of each trust will be a highly skilled and experienced person and his job is not simply to lock up prisoners but take real and active interest of rehabilitation of offenders and promote reduction in reoffending."
Such a duty will continue for period and he will be rewarded on the basis of the lowest reoffending rate, Garnier added.
Earlier, at a meeting at the Lowry arts centre in nearby Salford, 60 business people gathered with Cameron at his inaugural Get Britain Working Forum, which will tour the country.
A chartered surveyor told him that the government's VAT cut was a "damp squib" and suggested the housing market needed to get going as the engine of the economy. Mortgages were being advertised – but only available to first-time buyers with a 35% deposit and he suggested emulating an Australian scheme in which taxpayers fund first-time buyers' deposit.
"It seems to me the most important thing is to get banks lending again to businesses," Cameron said. "Businesses large, medium and small are all writing to me saying effectively the same thing, my credit line has been withdrawn, my overdraft facility has been taken away … I'm having to lay people off."
The Tory leader said government borrowing was a reason why sterling had fallen and he was a firm believer in floating exchange rates as he was in the Treasury during the exchange rate mechanism debacle of the 1990s.
"I see no circumstances in which joining the Euro would be a good thing because I want us to set our own interest rates. We just need a government that puts fiscal responsibility at the heart of what it does." He made it clear that when he is prime minister "we will keep the pound".
Yesterday, Cameron offered tax breaks worth a total of £5bn to millions of pensioners and savers. The Tories have also promised a £50bn loan guarantee scheme with government "standing behind" loans to firms.
At the later session in Manchester, the Tory leader contradicted Eric Pickles, the shadow minister for communities and local government, over the abolition of regional development agencies, saying that councils in the north-west "may come together and keep the Northwest Development Agency but in other parts of the country, like the south-east, the councils may say no".
There was only one sour note struck at the forum, when a retired man asked a question on the basis that "every immigrant who comes to this country gets benefits and the benefit system is totally abused". An audible intake of breath could be heard from other members of the audience who clearly disagreed with his view. Cameron answered a different question and said immigrants come here to work and that he would target instead the 2.6 million people claiming incapacity benefit.
- David Cameron
- Conservatives
- Economic policy
- Recession
- Housing market
- Banking
- Banks and building societies
- Interest rates
- House prices
- Prisons and probation
- Criminal justice
- US economy
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