Prisoners working, serving meals in their canteen. Top of page: Barlinnie Prison.Prisoners in the SNP’s new Community Custody Units – low-supervision centres for women and young people – enjoy the most expensive meals.
The average at the Lilias Centre CCU in Glasgow’s Maryhill is £5.30 and at the Bella Centre CCU in Dundee’s Hilltown is £5.26.
For hospital patients, the average daily cost of meals across Scotland is £6.23.
The cost varies hugely from the lowest (NHS Highland) to the highest, NHS Borders, where meals cost a pricey £17.55 per day. more to feed prisoners than the equivalent spending in England and Wales, where prison meals cost approximately £2.70 per day.
With a food budget of almost £10.5 million, prisoners in Scotland can have three meals per day plus a dessert. The Scottish Prison Service’s food budget for 2023-24 is £10,474,444. The menu shows that prisoners can have things like roast turkey, chicken leg, steak and sausage pie, chocolate brownie with custard, and ice cream.
The figures were obtained by the Scots Tories and Rachel Hamilton, left, said: “It is completely outrageous that many prisoners in Scotland seem to be better fed than some hospital patients. Scots will be wondering why more money is being spent per prisoner here compared to what is being spent in England and Wales.
“Complaints about the food served up in Scotland’s hospitals is sadly all too common so it is appalling that prisoners seem to be getting better treatment. It is common sense that more should be spent serving up healthy and nutritional dishes to poorly patients.
“The public and victims of crime will rightly question why criminals behind bars receive better quality meals than patients stuck in Scotland’s hospitals. SNP ministers should urgently look into this spending disparity and ensure patients are prioritised over prisoners.”
Sources at the Scottish Prison Service pointed out that the two CCUs hold 16-24 people, so the comparison with prisons such as Barlinnie, which holds 1400, was “not reasonable”.
Nothing like getting the priorities right. That of course begs the question of what the priorities are
Some of Scotland’s prisons are in fact private prisons, owned and operated by private companies. But who pays the private prisons?
So, could it be any surprise that the figures reported suggest that prison food costs are greater than the publicly owned NHS.
Shades of the huge £60m profit made by Michelle Mone supplying defective plastic gowns at huge expense to the public purse.
So maybe we should look behind the headlines of this article and see it as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the NHS as opposed to corporate profit making private interests. And Sir Keir wants to introduce part privatisation of the NHS?