PLANS to free long-term prisoners up to six months earlier than normal on a tagging order were thrown out yesterday, after a crucial parliamentary vote became mired in confusion.
The SNP proposal, designed to help relieve overcrowding in Scotland's jails, was expected to be passed at Holyrood with the support of the Liberal Democrats and Greens.
But four Lib Dems – Alison McInnes, John Farquhar Munro, Ross Finnie and Jamie
Stone – accidentally voted against, tipping the balance against the Scottish Government.
The party last night blamed an "administrative error" for the mix-up, which happened after several of the party's MSPs were wrongly briefed before the vote.
However, the justice secretary Kenny MacAskill's main proposal – to increase the length of time short-term prisoners can be released early on home detention curfew (HDC) from four and a half months to six months – was backed by 65 votes to 60.
It followed a debate in which the parties traded accusations of playing politics with prisons. They are suffering record overcrowding and, according to governors, are nearing meltdown.
The reforms were rejected by Holyrood's justice committee last week, but Mr MacAskill told MSPs yesterday: "There is a crisis in our prisons. We cannot have narrow, sectarian party politics played by the Tories or, indeed, Labour that jeopardise the good order in our prisons estate."
He said the prison population stood at 8,067, against a design capacity of 6,626. Extending HDC should free up about 50 places.
Pauline McNeill, Labour's shadow justice secretary, said:
"Failure to work with the members of the justice committee, who had real concerns about this, does not bode well for the future. He has asked us to sign a blank cheque – to extend this scheme with no powers at all to ensure that we could pull this statutory instrument back if we did not like what we see."
A spokesman for the Lib Dems said: "Due to an administrative mix-up four Liberal Democrats voted for an instrument which we did not support. Although this is unfortunate, it does not compare to the Tories and Labour Party, who deliberately set out to wreck proposals which would have improved the Scottish criminal justice system."
Following the vote, Mr MacAskill, said he was "pleased" that parliament had agreed to allow low-risk offenders to spend more time on HDC.
He added: "In relation to our proposal to increase the flexibility of the HDC provisions to allow us to set standard conditions for longer-term prisoners, Parliament did not back those plans today.
"That seems to be an issue of parliamentary procedure rather than principle. We will reflect on how best to quickly address that in a way that balances the needs of our prisons with appropriate parliamentary scrutiny."
