In My View: Rosena Allin-Khan, MP for Tooting

This month saw one of the highest-profile prison escapes in this country in many decades.

Daniel Khalife, although apprehended quickly by Metropolitan Police officers, escaped from Wandsworth.

Prison, in my patch, on September 6 by strapping himself to the bottom of a delivery lorry while on work duty in the prison’s kitchens.

It would be easy to dismiss this escape as a one-off abhorrence, but the truth is that this was the culmination of over a decade of mismanagement and under-funding of the country’s prison system by this Conservative government.

This escape did not come as a total shock to me.

As early as last December, I raised concerns with the Government about staffing levels at Wandsworth Prison after I obtained data showing that just seven prison officers were left supervising 1,500 inmates on a particular night shift.

On the day of the escape, the Ministry of Justice told me that 80 officers did not show up for their allotted shifts – this represents 40 per cent of the total intended staffing levels for the day.

Having spoken to the Prison Officers Association, which represents the interests of prison officers at Wandsworth, I was told that prisons account for a non-effective level of 20 per cent of prison officers.

This means the prison regime allows for one-fifth of prison officers to be unable to work on any given day in order to run safely and efficiently.

At the staffing levels operating on the day of Khalife’s escape, I understand that prison officers should have only been carrying out the most basic of duties – washing, feeding and exercise of the inmates – and no prisoner should have been in work or education.

Serious questions must be asked of the Government and how it allowed this to occur.

These issues are not unique to Wandsworth.

Prisons across Britain are struggling with staff retention, experience, and officers’ mental health.

Almost 15 per cent of operational prison officers left their jobs last year across the country, which is over double the leaving rates of other front-line key workers such as police officers and firefighters, who had rates of six per cent and 6.6 per cent respectively.

Half of these officers who left the prison service last year had been in the role for less than three years.

Across the prison system, more than 86,000 mental health sick days were taken by staff, equating to around four days per officer.

This is even higher at Wandsworth, where officers took an average of six mental health sick days per year.

The same story is unfolding across our public services from prisons, as in this case, to our schools and our National Health Service.

Government cuts over the last 13 years have resulted in chronic understaffing, decimated staff morale and left facilities crumbling and outdated.

Without the proper investment, reform, and the Government listening to key workers and their unions, things are not going to get better and disastrous events such as Khalife’s escape will only become more common.

It is clear that now more than ever, while the Tories lurch from one crisis to the next, we need a Labour Government.