Successive Labour home secretaries are to blame for the overcrowding crisis in jails in England and Wales, the Chief Inspector of Prisons says.

Anne Owers describes the Government’s emergency prison-building programme, which has been drawn up to cope with the record numbers, as an “insubstantial and rather expensive liferaft”. With prisoners again being held in police cells, Ms Owers is scathing in her annual report, out today, about Labour’s policies, which have led to a big rise in the prison population.

The “crisis was predicted and predictable, fuelled by legislation and policies which ignored consequences, cost or effectiveness, together with an absence of coherent strategic direction,” she says. She criticises the plans of the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, to build up to three “Titan” prisons. “All the evidence coming out of my reports is that smaller prisons do better than larger ones,” she says. There is a risk that the prison-building programme will simply lead to “large-scale penal containment, spending more to accomplish less”. The plan to lock down prisons from Friday lunchtime until Monday morning is “fraught with risk”.

Amid restricted public spending, the system could deteriorate, Ms Owers says. “Emergency proposals to increase capacity may see the return of the prison ship, and conversion of unsuitable army camps, as well as no end to overcrowding and the use of police cells. None of this will enhance safety, decency or the reduction of offending.”

The Ministry of Justice has announced that the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is to be overhauled. Phil Wheatley, Director-General of the Prison Service, is to run both the prison and probation services as part of the revamp. Opposition MPs said that the announcement spelt the end of NOMS, four years after it was set up. One Whitehall source said: “It is game, set and match to Phil Wheatley. He is a proven manager. NOMS never got a grip on anything.”

Urgent counter-terrorism checks are to be made on volunteers with access to jails in England and Wales after it emerged that their three-year security clearance had expired. A review began two months ago into the clearance of members of the Independent Monitoring Boards. According to a letter leaked to the Conservatives, people were security-checked on being appointed but “thereafter, no further security checks were carried out”. The letter, sent to all boards, said: “In these days when we must be even more careful about national security, that policy cannot be permitted to continue.”

The Justice Ministry said: “Our security measures are reviewed regularly.”

Times Recommends

• Everyone will get vaccine against swine flu
• Artificial sperm and the race to build a baby
• BBC jets out stars to tout for prizes