The number of terrorist prisoners held in jails in England and Wales is estimated to rise more than tenfold in the next nine years, it was disclosed yesterday.

An internal Whitehall document says the number of terrorist prisoners is projected to soar to 1,600 by 2016-17.

The document, based on figures and analysis provided by a number of Whitehall departments and agencies, said that 1,300 of the 1,600 would be classed as maximum security Category A prisoners. Currently there are 131 terrorist prisoners in jails in England and Wales, of which 113 are classifed as Category A.

The latest estimates on the potential number of terrorist prisoners that the jail service will have to deal with emerged in evidence given to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

They were given to MPs in a Prison Service memorandum but the figure had been deleted from a later version that was distributed at the committee hearing.

Prison Service sources admitted later that the figure was from an internal document being used in the Home Office and Ministry of Justice.

Phil Wheatley, the Director-Gener-al of the Prison Service, told the committee that if there were a very large increase that took the service beyond its Category A capacity, additional accommodation would be found. “We would have to make more Category A prisons or convert existing prisons, giving them additional security”, he said.

There are eight high security jails in England and Wales, with convicted terrorists likely to be held in five of them and terror suspects mainly in Belmarsh, southeast London.

Mr Wheatley said that the service still favoured dispersing terrorist prisoners around high security jails. He said that holding all terrorists in one jail could be dangerous and pointed to what had happened in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland with paramilitaries.

“They can form a very tight cell structure and be much more dangerous with what they can do in prison and sometimes what they plan to do outside”, Mr Wheatley said.

In a written submission to the committee Steve Wagstaffe, director of the High Security estate, said the prison service was concerned that without additional cash it would have difficulty properly managing risks in jails.

The serious risks include the threat of disruption and disorder in jails, radicalisation of other Muslims and nonMuslims, terrorist or criminal activity plotted from within jails and other serious crime being carried out in jails.

Mr Wagstaffe said that although the Government assessed al-Qaeda inspired extremism to be the greatest risk, the Prison Service was concerned with risks from dissident Irish republicans, Ulster loyalists, anarchists, anti globalisation and anticapitalist groups, animal rights activists and members of the far Right.

Later the committee heard from two men arrested during a bungled antiterror raid in Forest Gate, East London, last year.

Mohammed Abdul Kahar, who was shot during the raid, urged MPs not to support the Government’s plan to extend the maximum time police can hold terror suspects for questioning. He compared extended questioning to a “more modern form of torture”.

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