Diolch. Since the announcement of a new major Titan or superprison was announced back in March of this year, it has alarmed people across the communities I represent in Port Talbot and the wider area too. It’s galvanised a wide cross section of the community and led to a genuine cross-party effort in Port Talbot to say ‘no’ to this prison. It’s led to people getting involved in democracy who have never done so before, and I’m pleased to be able to have this debate today so we can outline why I think all Members of this Assembly should join those of us campaigning against this prison by saying ‘no’—not just here, but anywhere in Wales.

There are a multitude of reasons why we should reject this plan. They range from the problems with the site itself through to wider concerns about what we want our criminal system to look like. What do we want from Government spending in our communities? Just because we have an offer from Government of ‘investment’, is it the right kind of investment for our community? The site itself, proposed on Baglan Moors in Port Talbot, is deeply problematic. It sits in a flood-risk zone, and according to Welsh Government’s own technical advice note 15 development policies, there should be no building of the scale of this prison on the land in question. It will do nothing to aid the sustainable development and improvement of the area, and so should be avoided. I understand that the designation of this land was changed from a C2 flood-risk designation to a C1 zone, so perhaps the Cabinet Secretary could clarify what the reasons for these changes are.

The site is in the middle of the Baglan industrial park, part of the enterprise zone, clearly earmarked for development of enterprise. This prison will not build on the entrepreneurial potential of the area, and one major local employer in advanced manufacturing has said they will seriously consider leaving the area if the prison goes ahead.

We need to have answers to questions about what we are supposed to do about prisoners who are released on probation and into the community. As far as I could see from a letter that was sent to the MP for the area, it was particularly why Port Talbot was chosen for this site, as opposed to other sites in Wales.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Welsh Government passed the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Bill to ensure sustainable development, which, at its heart, is supposed to emphasise developments that are beneficial for the long-term well-being of local communities. I fail to see how building this prison doesn’t fly in the face of that legislation. We are talking, amongst other things, of building a prison in the flood-risk zone in a ward in which 42 per cent of homes are at risk already.

This prison has also, at least for my party, become a symptom of the failures of the UK criminal justice policy: the failure to change course and focus on proper rehabilitation with a goal of keeping those who don’t need to go to prison out of prison. Instead, the superprison programme is intended to deal with as many offenders as possible in the cheapest possible way: prisons outsourced to private contractors where, then, there is a financial incentive for those companies to work against reducing the prison population. The UK Government is starting down the road of the United States and potentially igniting a problem that will be extremely difficult to eradicate in future: the beginnings of the UK’s very own mini prison industrial complex.

I have been encouraged by the cross-party nature of the opposition to the prison in Port Talbot, but—and there is a ‘but’—the Welsh Government needs to own up to what its angle is on the prison, because what’s truly perplexing is that a Labour Welsh Government, supposedly committed to the ideals of social justice, is backing this at all.

We also need to consider what kind of economic message this sends. The Welsh Government is content for Wales, is it, to import prisoners from other parts of the UK when we don’t need those extra places here in Wales. The Minister, the Cabinet Secretary, is shaking his head, and, if he wishes to intervene, then I will, of course, be happy to take that intervention.

The suggested site for the prison is part of the Port Talbot enterprise zone, which is owned by the Welsh Government and was created at the height of the steel crisis as an attempt to encourage business activity in the area. Boosting business, encouraging exports, and strengthening Wales’s heavy industry should be the Welsh Government’s priority for the area, but instead it has thrown its weight in support of the superprison, and, if it has not, then I would like to see clarification of that today. A prison—