Private jails cost £4.5m a month

Public purse will repay ten times the original sum

SCOTLAND’S private prisons are costing the taxpayer £4.5 million a month.

Treasury figures show the two jails will eventually cost the public purse ten times what they took to build.

The firms that built Addiewell and Kilmarnock prisons also get an additional premium when they are filled beyond capacity – currently costing the taxpayer an extra £200,000 a month.

Addiewell Prison in West Lothian will ultimately cost the taxpayer more than £1 billion – despite costing only £80 million to build.

Kilmarnock Prison cost £32 million to build – but will cost the taxpayer £357 million.

Sodexo Justice Services, the consortium behind the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deal for Addiewell, will get an average payout of £40 million a year over the next 22 years for building and maintaining it.

It was paid £30 million last year, but this figure is due to rise to £55 million in 2033, the year before the deal ends and the jail is transferred into public ownership.

At Kilmarnock Prison, which opened in 1999, the annual figure is £14.4 million.

Scotland has £28 billion of debt under PFI schemes for hundreds of schools, hospitals, roads and prisons.

Total annual PFI repayments are set to top £1 billion by 2016. In 2006-07, the figure was only £439 million.

Last night, critics claimed the new figures were proof that the previous Labour government had negotiated an appalling deal with the private sector.

Willie Coffey, Nationalist MSP for Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley, said: ‘Think of a number and multiply it by ten – that’s the true cost of Scottish Labour’s love affair with PFI. The people of Scotland are paying the price, a high price, for Labour’s mistakes.

‘Labour have shown they are totally incompetent when it comes to spending public money – by building prisons using a credit card approach.’

Scottish Prison Service (SPS)

‘A high price for Labour’s mistakes’

figures show Addiewell was paid £1.3 million for providing extra prisoner places on top of its original 700 capacity between May 2011 and February this year.

Kilmarnock operator Serco was paid £1.8 million between October 2010 and February this year for taking extra prisoners.

Dave Watson, the Scottish organiser of trade union Unison, said: ‘These deals are depressingly good examples of PFI at its worst.

‘One of the biggest problems inherent in these rigid deals, which last decades, is you have no flexibility. Nothing stands still for 25 years, yet any variation that is needed ends up costing the taxpayer.

‘On top of the monthly payments, which creep up every year, you have to pay for more prison places if required and this shows the inflexibility with which the public sector is faced by these deals.’

Scotland’s prisons are at bursting point. Last week, they were housing 8,198 inmates against a design capacity of 7,848.

An SPS spokesman said: ‘We have been dealing with record numbers of prisoners in custody.

‘It therefore requires that we manage the population carefully across the entire estate.’