Labour spends £1.7m a year hunting racism claims in packed prisons

Labour is pouring close to £2million a year into a Ministry of Justice “disparities unit” tasked with finding diversity and inclusion angles inside prisons and probation while the estate remains overcrowded and early releases continue.

Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy has torn into the scheme after internal documents showed the unit employs 20 full-time staff and was renamed and expanded in October 2024. It is advertising a “HMPPS disparities analyst” post paying up to £53,081. GB News reported the Conservatives’ attack on the spending as the early-release programme rolls on.

The unit’s stated job is to “provide support and guidance to those responsible for oversight of Diversity and Inclusion in prisons and probation services”. That work continues even as ministers free inmates to ease pressure on the system.

Mr Timothy said: “At a time when Labour are releasing thousands of serious criminals back onto the streets, this money would be far better spent on increasing space within the prison estate and improving conditions for prison officers. Taxpayers should not be forking out millions so that equality and diversity analysts can spend their time finding ways to claim that our prisons are racist. Prison is for punishment, deterrence, and keeping criminals off our streets, not for promoting DEI ideology.”

The latest early-release tranche has already put at least 700 inmates back outside since the start of October. The scheme has widened to cover more serious offences. Up to 50,000 prisoners are expected to leave each year on top of the 70,000 freed under the earlier arrangement begun two years ago. Officials call overcrowding an acute threat to public safety; the cash still flows to the disparities team.

Therapy, music and foreign inmates

Days earlier it emerged foreign prisoners at HMP Maidstone, home to around 600 offenders from almost 100 countries, receive breathing exercises, cold-water therapy and sessions likened to yoga retreats. An Independent Monitoring Board review praised pre-release support, criminal-records workshops, relaxation, breathwork, soup-and-bread classes and noted violent incidents had “reduced significantly”. One prison insider told The Telegraph the men must be “wondering what the hell is going on”.

At HMP Manchester, chiefs spent thousands on music lessons for inmates even after an unannounced 2024 inspection branded the Category A jail “an appalling state”. A Prison Service spokesman replied that the disparities figure is “less than 0.1 per cent of HMPPS’ overall budget and supports all our hardworking staff”.

Britain’s prisons exist to lock up those who break the law, protect the public and give officers a safe place to work. Pouring seven-figure sums into a unit whose purpose is to frame the system through diversity paperwork while cells overflow and serious offenders walk free is a choice that puts ideology ahead of order. Taxpayers fund punishment and capacity, not endless analysis of supposed racism inside the walls.

Labour expanded the unit after taking office and pressed ahead with early releases to manage the numbers. The Conservatives want the cash switched to extra places and better conditions for staff. The disparities analyst vacancy remains live, the early-release total keeps climbing, and the public is left with fewer spaces, more freed prisoners and a bill for diversity work that does nothing to build a single new cell.

What happens next is simple: either the money is redirected to the estate and the officers who run it, or the unit carries on while the overcrowding crisis and the release numbers grow. The choice sits with the government that expanded the team and opened the gates.

Original source: GB News