Kemi Badenoch pledges to end early release scheme by building 50,000 new cells

This would be funded by cutting foreign aid to £1billion, a further £1billion from reducing the Department for Culture, Media and Sport budget, and £500million from Cabinet Office communications, Ms Badenoch said.

The first 700 prisoners were released early from prisons on Thursday, as part of a scheme that will eventually see 4,500 freed early from their sentences by June 2027.

The number of those to be released earlier had been closer to 6,000, though it now excludes those convicted of murder, manslaughter, a sexual or grooming-related offence, or a driving offence that led to a death.

One-year jail terms have also been effectively scrapped under the Labour Government.

The Tories had first begun releasing offenders early in 2023 to ease prison overcrowding, with population figures now sitting at around 98 per cent full.

While Ms Badenoch accused the previous Conservative Government of doing "nowhere near enough", she also blamed Labour for "papering over the cracks".

Kemi Badenoch has vowed to build 50,000 new prison cells and end the early release scheme

PA

"We now have a plan to solve this issue," she declared.

Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy will announce an expert advisory group in the coming weeks, with a full and detailed plan to be devised in time for the next election, she said.

Mr Timothy told the BBC that, should the Conservatives get back into power, the additional spaces would be built within six to seven years, and the "vast majority of them will be built in the first parliament".

Speaking to GB News on Saturday, he said: "It's a radical policy. It will be the biggest increase in our prison capacity in the country's modern history. But it's necessary because the next government is going to need to reverse Labor's early release schemes.

"It's going to need to reverse Labour's changes to short term sentences, which effectively abolish them, which means that crimes like shoplifting and various knife crimes go unpunished.

"But it also means that we'll be able to say if you commit a violent crime, or if you're a repeat burglar or a repeat shoplifter, you are definitely going to go to prison because we need to return consequences to the criminal justice system."

Ministers have insisted the release of criminals is needed to prevent the collapse of the justice system, with a prison population of 87,499 on Monday, according to weekly data published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

Maximum capacity in UK prisons sits at 89,055. Labour's pledge of 14,000 additional spaces by 2031 would increase that by around 15 per cent, to more than 103,000.

The Tories' proposals would see a 50 per cent increase in capacity to more than 150,000.

Ms Badenoch said: "Full prisons are a reason to build more cells, not release more criminals onto our streets.

"A violent criminal doesn’t become less dangerous just because the government has run out of prison cells.

"Labour cancelled our plans to rent spaces abroad and now they are stuck. Their answer is to let dangerous offenders out even earlier instead of building the prison spaces we need.

"If someone keeps burgling homes, assaulting people, stealing or offending again and again, they should have to face the consequences for doing so in prison."

Labour Party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said the Tories were taking the British public "for fools".

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

"Now Kemi Badenoch expects the British people to believe they'll build 50,000."