Britain will spend £25m on building a prison... in Jamaica! Foreign aid payout to let us deport more criminals

BRITISH taxpayers are to fork out £25million to build a more comfortable jail in Jamaica to take convicts whose crimes were committed in the UK.

The cash, from Britain’s aid budget, will help to build a prison that meets human rights standards.

Jails on the Caribbean island are considered so bad that hundreds of Jamaican prisoners are stuck behind bars in this country. The courts have ruled that sending them back to jails in their homeland would amount to torture or cruel and inhuman treatment.

David Cameron defended the project last night, saying it would allow hundreds more inmates to be kicked out of Britain.

It was agreed as part of a new prisoner transfer deal which officials insist will save millions of pounds. But critics said it was ‘ridiculous’ that Britain had to subsidise foreign prisons in order to deport dangerous felons.

It comes as Britain’s own prison budget faces swingeing cuts which senior Tories fear could see thousands more criminals returning to Jamaica once the prison opens in 2020.

Britain will pay around 40 per cent of the cost of the project.

Officials say it will save taxpayers around £10million a year because of it costs £25,000 a year to keep an inmate in prison.

Nearly two-thirds of Jamaican prisoners in the UK are serving sentences of four years or more for violence and drug offences.

Tory MP Philip Hollobone welcomed the move. He said: ‘Using overseas aid to build prisons in Jamaica enables us to send back prisoners who would otherwise have to be housed at taxpayers’ expense in this country.’

Mr Cameron said: ‘It is absolutely right that foreign criminals who break our laws are properly punished but this shouldn’t be at the expense of the hard-working British taxpayer.’

As he began a two-day visit to Jamaica and Grenada, the Prime Minister announced hundreds of millions more in foreign aid.

It includes £300million on Caribbean roads, bridges and ports, £30million for hospitals to help the islands cope with natural disasters and £30million to help Caribbean governments ‘improve the management of their public finances so that they can improve public services’.