Starmer backs radical reform as overcrowding crisis in jails deepens

Increasingly long sentences have left the service on its knees. Now a raft of solutions will be unveiled to ease pressure on the system

- Rachel Sylvester

When Ken Clarke was appointed justice secretary in 2010, he set out to reform a sentencing regime that had caused the prison population to spiral.

He wanted to scrap most of the minimum tariffs that had been introduced over the previous 20 years, but his plans were vetoed by the then prime minister David Cameron.

During one particularly tense argument, Clarke says he asked Cameron: "Don't you want a liberal justice secretary in your government?" Cameron replied: "Of course I want a liberal justice secretary. But I don't want people to see that I've got a liberal justice secretary."

For decades successive justice secretaries, confronted with overcrowded and dysfunctional jails, have tried to reduce the number of people being locked up. They have repeatedly been blocked by No 10 because the prime minister of the day feared that any reform would make the government look "soft on crime". That is about to change.

This week David Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, will publish radical proposals to transform sentencing policy. The plans are supported not just by Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, but also by Keir Starmer, the prime minister. "Shabana is a pragmatic reformer and so is Keir," one Ministry of Justice source says. "As a former director of public prosecutions, he understands the criminal justice system very well."

This is about numbers rather than ideology. Despite the controversial early release scheme that saw prisoners popping champagne corks as they walked free last year, jails in England and Wales are again at 99% capacity. There are fewer than 500 places available in men's jails, and the Ministry of Justice projects that, if nothing is done, the prisons will run out of space entirely by November.