(2) how many additional prison places his Department plans to provide in each of the next 10 years; and whether those figures include places in the proposed three Titan prisons;

(3) what the expected (a) total and (b) annual capital costs of his Department's plan for additional prison capacity are over the period of the plans.

(4) what estimate he has made of the running costs of the capacity added by his Department’s prison capacity building programme in each of the next 10 years.

Mr. Hanson: The prison capacity programme is expected to be complete by 2014. Once completed, the estimated annual running cost of new capacity is around £490 million.

The following table shows the number of places, including those in prison clusters, to be delivered in each year of the programme to 2014. The number of places delivered per year may be subject to change due to a number of factors, for example the planning process and environmental issues. Prison clusters will provide up to 7,500 prison places (2,500 in each complex); 2,500 places will be additional capacity and 5,000 places will replace some of the most inefficient places in the prison estate.

No decisions have been made on the provision of further capacity after the prison capacity programme is complete.

The following table shows the current estimated capital cost of the capacity programme in each financial year to 2012. This does not include capital costs for the three prison clusters, but does include an allowance for the purchase of land for the first prison cluster.