Boris Johnson’s Radon Gas Filled Prison Deal to Cost Taxpayers £100 Million

Boris Johnson’s Government acted in “blind panic” in signing a deal with the Duchy of Cornwall to lease an unusable radon gas filled prison in Dartmoor, which will needlessly cost taxpayers over £100m, a new Parliamentary report has found.

An investigation by the Commons Public Accounts Committee reveals for the first time the full scale of the contract to lease HMP Dartmoor and the repercussions for the taxpayer, before any remedial work to remove the radon gas can be undertaken. Radon gas is highly dangerous and can cause cancer.

In 2022 under Dominic Rabb, the justice secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, signed a deal with Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall, who own the prison.

Byline Times revealed in 2024 the existence of the deal which would bring in £1.5 million a year for the Prince.

But now MPs show the costs to the taxpayer are far higher. The contract from 2023 is for 10 years, bringing in a total of £15m for William plus another £25 million to cover security and rates. In addition, the ministry agreed to pay £68m from taxpayer funds for structural improvements to the prison. All this is before any remedial work to deal with the radon gas. The ministry had commissioned a report on the extent of the gas but signed the deal before it received its findings. The 10 year contract cannot be broken until 2033.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Conservative chair of the committee, said:

“The issue of HMP Dartmoor is an absolute disgrace, from top to bottom. We heard claims that the leasing of this unusable building, known for years by HM Prison and Probation Service to be choked with radon gas with all the health risks that entailed, was sensible, driven by the need for prison places. Our Committee rejects this excuse outright. 

“Dartmoor appears to the Committee a perfect example of a department reaching for a solution, any solution, in a blind panic and under pressure. This is, obviously, not how policy should be delivered. Government must now respond to us on what it has learned from this catastrophic failure, and how nothing like it will ever be allowed to happen again.” 

The report reveals that all remedial work to remove radon gas has been abandoned awaiting a report from the Health and Safety Executive. The ministry has still not decided what to do with the prison.

The report is also critical of another issue involving the ministry of justice dating back to previous successive Conservative governments– the reform and administration of the legal aid system made over a decade ago.

This restricted access to legal aid and at the same time previous governments failed to raise legal aid fees. As a result the legal aid became inaccessible for many of the most vulnerable – among the 24%of people who have no digital access including disabled people and people in housing debt.

Clifton-Brown said: “On legal aid, the reforms of a decade ago are now at serious risk of going down in history as an extinction event for the entitlement to access to legal advice in large parts of the country.

“Our report finds government remaining stubbornly uninterested in whether this is the case, but it must now wake up on this subject. If it refuses to, the Ministry of Justice should, frankly, consider changing its name to the Ministry of Justice (for Certain People). This might be more appropriate for a nation without a sustainable solution in the long-term to provide legal aid to the digitally-excluded quarter of the population who need it most.”

The report also warns that the Legal Aid Agency has been subject to cyber hacking which was not discovered for four months and despite more money to update systems the MPs are sceptical that it is still being adequately protected.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “This decision was taken in 2022. This Government inherited a crisis in our prisons system, where prisons were on the brink of collapse, threatening a total collapse in law and order.

“This Government is addressing the prisons crisis through building 14,000 new prison places and the Sentencing Bill which will deliver punishment that works.”