Davis: Largest re-offending increase 'ever'

David Davis has accused the government of presiding over the largest ever increase in the re-offending rate among prisoners.

At Home Office questions, ministers repeatedly rejected criticisms by accusing the opposition of "voting soft" on crime.

But the shadow home secretary said that since 1997 re-offending by prisoners had gone up from 58 per cent to 67 per cent.

He said: "That's the largest increase ever since records began. Why is this?"

Home office minister Gerry Sutcliffe replied: "What we need to do is to make sure that dangerous and persistent people are in prison, that's why we raised the prison capacity, 19,000 since 1997, 8,000 places announced in July.

"We are serious about tackling offending, that's why we're going to introduce national offender management, and it will be interesting to see whether the shadow home secretary will supporting us when we introduce the National Offender Management Bill."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg referred to Home Office figures showing that violence in prisons had risen six-fold since 1997, meaning a violent incident occurs in a prison every 30 minutes.

He asked if the minister agreed "that violence inside our prisons begets violence outside our prisons, committed by those who re-offend upon release?"

Sutcliffe said the government was concerned about violence in prisons, adding: "What we're keen to do is make sure we tackle re-offending through the variety of means that we do, that we protect the public from dangerous and persistent offenders and we'll continue to do that."

Sutcliffe and other ministers repeatedly accused the Conservatives of being a party that prefers to "act tough but talk soft".

Referring to a Tory and Lib Dem council which had reduced the number of neighbourhood wardens, home secretary John Reid said: "That's what we've come to expect from the opposition, who talk tough but then vote soft and back down on every major decision when it comes to fighting crime."

Sutcliffe later said: "When it comes down to the reality of doing something it's clear on this side of the house we want to do that, while on the other side of the house they're not bothered."