Fact check: 1970s prison building programme was more ambitious than today’s plan

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said the Government is implementing “the largest prison building programme since the Victorian era”.The ambition is that an extra 14,000 prison places will be added by 2031.EvaluationThere is no publicly available data which could either prove or disprove this statement. Some public information does appear to contradict it.In part, the claim appears to be contradicted by statements from current ministers and Labour MPs that cite an apparently larger prison-expansion programme under the last Labour Government.The Government’s plan is also an ambition rather than a delivered programme. Governments in both the 1970s and the 1980s appear to have had more ambitious plans than the current Government.The factsThe Ministry of Justice’s positionThe current Government’s ambition is to build 14,000 prison places in seven years by 2031 – the equivalent of around 2,000 per year.When asked for the basis of the claim that this is the largest programme since the Victorian era ended in 1914, the MoJ said the description is reasonable. But it added that this is not meant to indicate the programme has a faster rate of annual delivery than previous governments’ efforts.It said the claim is based on the current plan’s scale, taking into account a mix of the places being delivered, the breadth of construction across the prison estate and the level of investment.The MoJ pointed towards statements made to Parliament in 1990 that said a little under 6,000 additional places had been provided in existing and in new prisons since 1984. It noted another statement from 1994 that said 7,743 places had been provided in 13 new prisons opened since 1991. Both these figures are smaller than the current programme’s target, but the latter is equivalent to a faster programme on an annual basis.The MoJ also pointed towards a Parliamentary statement from 1995 that said 19,000 new prison places had been added since 1979. That is a larger total, but a slower annual rate. A minister at the time described this as the “largest prison building programme since Victorian times”.Defining the start and end points of a prison-building building programme is often difficult as Governments do not set them out precisely.Additionally, there is no single public database that tracks prison capacity since the Victorian era.But there are two potential concerns that the Press Association has identified about the claim. Firstly, the last Labour government seems to have added more places overall and per year than the current plan aims to. Secondly, prison-building programmes from the 1980s and 1970s both appeared to be even more ambitious than today’s plans, even though they were not delivered in full.The biggest concern about the claim that 14,000 in seven years is the biggest prison-building programme since the Victorians is the record of the last Labour Government.Read MoreCurrent Labour Government ministers and MPs as well as the party’s representatives have repeatedly claimed the previous Labour Government added 28,000 prison places during its 13 years in charge from 1997 to 2010. That is both larger overall and a higher annual average than the current target.The exact source for the 28,000 figure is not entirely clear. A House of Commons Library report from 2016 claimed it was 27,000 in 13 years, which would be an average of 2,077 per year and would still be higher than the current ambition.In 2025, a minister said “available records do not provide a breakdown for these figures” by categories such as those added through new prisons, extensions, or rapid deployment. This means it is difficult to draw a direct comparison to today’s programme.The ambition for what was eventually called the “largest prison building programme since Victorian times” in 1995 originally aimed to deliver more prison spaces than the current Government.In November 1988, Home Office minister Earl Ferrers claimed 6,000 new prison places had been delivered since 1979, adding it would grow to 25,000 places by 1995.That would mean in the seven years between 1988 and 1995, the Government expected to build 19,000 new places – more than the current ambition to build 14,000 in the same number of years.This ambition does not appear to have been fully delivered, as seen by the Government’s statement in 1995 which claimed around 19,000 new prison places were created since 1979, rather than 25,000.In December 1972, the Government had an ambition to start work on 17,000 new prison places over a five-year period, or “an average of about 3,400 new places a year”. The Government hoped in that same period to actually deliver 14,000 places.But later on, this ambition was significantly reduced. By December 1973, after an international oil price shock, the Government had slashed the target of starting work on 17,000 new prison places over five years to just 9,700. This was later cut even further.A paper from the London School of Economics lays out how the prison building programme “was halved from a projected 17,000 additional places over a five-year period” after a meeting with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.LinksNote: The Government expenditure reports from December 1973 and a year later (referenced in the section on the 1970s) were sourced from the National Library of Scotland. They cannot be linked to.