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Prisons (Expenditure)

Volume 918: debated on Monday 1 November 1976

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asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what amount of public expenditure cuts recently announced affects prison services; and where the economies are to be made.

The White Paper on "Public Expenditure to 1979–80" (Cmnd. 6393) foreshadows a reduction of some £40 million in capital expenditure on prisons over the period from 1975–76 to 1978–79. Building schemes in progress will not be affected, but starts for nine out of 10 planned major place-producing projects have been indefinitely deferred. The prison service has been required to reduce overtime costs in the current financial year by approximately £2 million.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what amount was spent in increasing the security of dispersal prisons since the publication of the Mountbatten Report.

The estimated total cost of improvements to the security at Albany, Gartree, Hull, Long Lartin, Parkhurst, Wakefield and Wormwood Scrubs, since they became dispersal prisons, is of the order of £6 million.