00:00Well, we faced an absolutely dire inheritance from the previous Conservative government when
00:04it comes to prisons. I'd say it was nothing short of criminal neglect, if I'm honest,
00:10a situation where capacity is a breaking point, where if we don't act, and that's why sentencing
00:16reform is so essential, we are heading back to a situation of zero capacity. And if there
00:21is zero capacity in the prison system, that means that courts will have to suspend trials,
00:26police will have to stop making arrests. It is the breakdown of law and order. So we're
00:30building prisons at a far greater pace than the previous government. They only added 500
00:35prison places into the system over their time in office. We've already added 2,400 since
00:41we came to power last July. Of course, we've got to monitor how this reform is implemented
00:46to ensure it achieves what it does. But I suppose the point I would really drive home to your
00:51viewers is, essentially, we had no choice but to reform sentencing. Because if we didn't,
00:57we are heading back to, as a result of the previous government's failure to build enough
01:01prison places while sentence is lengthened, a situation where we're adding 3,000 people
01:05a year into the prison population, we're heading back to zero capacity. And when that means potentially
01:10the collapse of the prison system, and a very real risk posed by that collapse to the public
01:16in terms of allowing the most dangerous offenders to remain on our streets, not in prison where
01:20they should be. We had to act, but we're doing so in a responsible way.
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