Labour launches war on green belt but minister admits new prisons plan is already doomed | Politics | News

Prisons will be able to be built on the green belt, bypassing the local council planning process, under reforms brought in by Angela Rayner.

However, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has already admitted Labour’s jail-building plan will fail to beat Britain’s prison space backlog.

Even with 14,000 extra prison places under Labour’s plans, Ms Mahmood told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We will run out because even all of that new supply, with the increase in prison population that we will see as a result of that new supply, doesn’t help you with the rise in demand, because demand is still rising faster than any supply could catch up with.”

She also appeared to confirm reports that the Deputy Prime Minister was planning to “fast-track applications and overrule the objections of local people and local councils”, to build prisons and other “Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects” on the green belt.

“Yes, so our manifesto commitment was that we consider prisons to be of national importance,” Ms Mahmood said.

Under Ms Rayner’s plans, the Ministry of Justice will submit development plans directly to the planning inspectorate, an agency of Ms Rayner’s housing ministry, rather than going through the usual council process.

Besides prisons, on Thursday Ms Rayner is expected to announce plans to make it easier to build data centres on the green belt on the justification that they too are critical national infrastructure.

Previously, she’s said that Nimbys will “no longer have the upper hand” and that her plans will end their “chokehold” on housebuilding.

Co-founder of the Community Planning Alliance, Rosie Pearson, said: “The green belt will not be safe, whatever caveats the Government say they have put in place.”

“It’s the biggest risk to the countryside since the 1930s. Nothing is safe. It’s tearing up the rule book and putting nature, countryside and communities at huge risk, to chase relentless growth.

“It’s housing, data centres, solar farms, prisons… soon it’ll be pylons. It is literally bulldozing through red tape and bulldozing through nature and democracy.”