Prison places: Tories pledge 50,000 new cells for England and Wales

How the last Tory early release scheme compared

The pledge comes as the Conservatives gather in Birmingham for their party conference, which opens on Sunday.

The party forecasts £2bn a year to build and run the proposed new prison, with the money coming from spending cuts including a reduction in the foreign aid budget.

Currently running at 98% capacity, prisons in England and Wales are a strong talking point for Kemi Badenoch's party.

Under a scheme introduced this week, eligible prisoners can be freed on licence after serving a third of their sentence, with roughly 4,500 due for release by next summer.

Why the prison places row matters now

The early release scheme excludes prisoners convicted of murder, manslaughter, sexual or grooming offences, and driving offences that caused a death.

Ministers have also effectively scrapped jail terms of one year or less, with Tories saying extra capacity would let them reverse both changes.

Kemi Badenoch said: “A violent criminal doesn’t become less dangerous just because the government has run out of prison cells.”

She added that Labour’s “answer is to let dangerous offenders out even earlier instead of building the prison spaces we need.”

Labour rejects the figures, as party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said: “The Tories are taking the public for fools.

"Across 14 years in government, they added just 500 prison places and closed 23 prisons.”

“Now Kemi Badenoch expects the British people to believe they’ll build 50,000," she added.

A similar early release programme under the previous Conservative government freed more than 10,000 prisoners between October 2023 and September 2024.

Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy told BBC Breakfast the new 50,000 places would take six to seven years to build, “and the vast majority of them will be built in the first parliament.”

The Prison Governors’ Association said “long-term investment” in the prison estate was needed.

Nick Timothy said the 50,000 places would take six to seven years, with most delivered within the first parliament of a Conservative government.