The UK will seek to rent prison space from foreign countries to combat the shortage of domestic jail places, under plans announced at the Conservative party conference. The Tories said that they have already begun exploratory discussions with possible partners in Europe, with plans that would be introduced when parliamentary time permits. The Conservatives cited the example of Norway and Belgium, which both struck similar deals with the Netherlands. But the announcement was described by prison reformers and Labour as indicative of a failure to find an alternative solution to the problem. Under any agreement struck, inmates could be moved to another country provided the facilities, regime and rehabilitation met British standards. Those standards were recently deemed to be so poor that a German court refused to extradite a prisoner to the UK. The lord chancellor and justice secretary, Alex Chalk, told the conference: “This government is doing more than any since the Victorian era to expand prison capacity. “Alongside our extra 20,000 prison places programme, refurbishment of old prisons and rapid deployment cells, renting prison places in other countries will ensure that we always have the space to keep the public safe from the most dangerous offenders.” Announcing the measure, the Conservatives said the average custodial sentence has increased by 57% since they entered power in the coalition government in 2010. While prison reformers argue that more should be done to keep people out of jail, the Tories said they were “committed to protecting the public by taking the most dangerous offenders off our streets for longer, by clamping down on crime, toughening sentences for the worst offenders, and increasing their time behind bars”. Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at the Howard League for penal reform, described the move as “desperation” on X, formerly known as Twitter. Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “The government’s response to dangerous and growing levels of overcrowding in our prisons is a half-baked idea to rent foreign prison places. Prison leaders will be in despair at such a superficial response to their very real and urgent concerns. “The red warning light of a looming capacity crisis has been flashing on the Prison Service dashboard for a number of months. Ministers can’t say they haven’t been warned. They urgently need to bring forward practical plans to reduce pressure on the system, including the executive release of some prisoners. The risks of not doing so are too perilous to ignore.” England and Wales has the third highest prison population in Europe after Russia and Turkey, with 87,793 prisoners as of 29 September. That figure is projected to rise to 94,400 by March 2025 and to 106,300 by March 2027. The capacity of the entire prison estate on 29 September stood at 88,561. Shabana Mahmood MP, the shadow justice secretary, said: “There’s no greater symbol of the way in which the Tories have run our criminal justice system into the ground than the fact they are ‘exploring’ putting prisoners in foreign jails because they are incapable of building the prisons places this country needs to keep our people safe. “After 10 justice secretaries in 10 years, we saw no acknowledgment of their failings across the criminal justice system – from the crumbling prison estate, to the courts backlog and sky-high reoffending rates. “Labour will get on top of the prison crisis by delivering all 20,000 prison places we need, driving down the courts backlog by increasing the number of crown prosecutors to put criminals behind bars and by opening specialist rape courts.”