Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:30 pm on 20 September 2017.
I thank the Cabinet Secretary for allowing me the intervention. I appreciate that the prison estate is the responsibility of the MOJ, but in this particular case the land is owned by the Welsh Government and, therefore, it’s a decision for the Welsh Government on the social needs as well as anything else. And particularly as we have the possibility of Swansea and Cardiff closing because they’ve been claimed to be Victorian prisons, and the UK Government’s policy is clearly to shut them, we could end up with a situation where there are two major prisons within 10 miles of each other and, therefore, it’s not actually serving the social needs of the inmates and their families in other parts of south Wales.