Former Tory Prisons Minister Ann Widdecombe has suggested prisoners should be placed in disused holiday camps to prevent overcrowding behind bars.
Widdecombe, who served as a Brexit Party MEP, delivered a speech to 4,000 Reform UK members and used her speech to criticise Labour’s decision to release convicts early to curb overcrowding.
Labour’s Justice Secretary pushed ahead with plans to release prisoners early, including 1,750 earlier this month.
Sir Keir Starmer revealed he was “angry” after seeing a number of ex-convicts celebrating outside of prisons across the country.
However, Widdecombe identified an alternative plan to deal with overcrowding.
“You take temporary measures to supply those new places,” she said. “It isn’t rocket science.
“I brought in prison ships from the United States. The Labour Party derided it at the time as the hulks but they then kept it for another nine years.
“I also used disused portacabins from decommissioned or disused oil rigs and put them down in the grounds of the lower security prisons. More spaces.
“I even proposed, but the election got in the way, to take over a disused holiday camp.
Prison officer
PA
“All you have to do, because the accommodation is already there, you put up a security perimeter, and lo, you’ve got a low security prison.
“Of course, you do take away the cinema and the swimming pool before that.”
Widdecombe’s comments come as Reform UK looks posed to turn its attention to tackling Labour.
A number of Brexit-backing Labour held seats remain vulnerable to the populist party, including Llanelli and Sittingbourne & Sheppey.
During her speech, Widdecombe voiced support for towing boats back to France.
She said: “We will turn the boats around and send them back.
“Before you say that’s impossible, the Australians did it, the Belgians did it. The only reason we haven’t done it is that we haven’t had a Government with the will to do it.”
The early release of prisoners became an extremely controversial policy idea introduced by Starmer after a freed convict was charged with sexual assault.
Amari Ward, 31, is alleged to have “intentionally touched” a woman who did not consent in Sittingbourne, Kent.
However, the Ministry of Justice said the early release scheme was necessary because it had “inherited prisons in crisis and on the brink of collapse”.
