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A choice by the Ministry of Justice to enter into a 10-year rental agreement for a prison where elevated levels of a poisonous gas had been identified is expected to cost the UK taxpayer more than £100 million, a parliamentary spending watchdog has found.

An Agreement Signed ''Rashly'

The 2022 agreement to lease HMP Dartmoor was agreed "under severe pressure" by senior civil servants who were aiming to guarantee prison places, the committee said.

This medium-security prison, which held many sex offenders, was closed in 2024 after the radioactive gas levels reaching 10 times the acceptable limit were found in parts of the facility. The government has since admitted it was cognisant that "high readings" of the gas were found in 2020.

Radon, a invisible and scentless naturally occurring gas, is linked to about 1,100 lung cancer-related deaths in the UK each year, according to health security agencies.

Failure to Negotiate a 'Good Deal'

A report published by the committee concluded that officials from the prison service did not manage to secure "a good deal" and executed the lease in 2022 before performing additional radon tests.

"Under the terms of the deal, the department cannot end the lease until at least December 2033. In total, the prison service is currently spending around £4 million per year for an empty prison. This encompasses lease payments, business rates and security costs," the report said.

"Furthermore, the government must pay extra costs – around £68 million – on fabric improvements to the Dartmoor site over the duration of the lease," the report added.

An Absolute Disgrace ''At Every Level'

The committee's Tory chair said the MoJ's handling of HMP Dartmoor as "a complete failure, from top to bottom".

He commented: "We heard claims that the leasing of this unusable building, understood for years by the prison service to be choked with radon gas with all the dangers that carried, was prudent, driven by the need for prison places."

"We dismisses this justification completely. Dartmoor seems to the committee [to be] a perfect example of a department grasping at a answer, any solution, in a state of crisis," he added.

"Government must now respond to us on what it has understood from this catastrophic failure."

Evacuation and Relocation of Inmates

The decision to close the jail, leading to the movement of 682 inmates, followed years of testing and measures to mitigate the radon levels. Prison officers at the prison began monitoring levels in 2010, but the final inmates and staff were not moved out until July 2024.

Questions have since been asked about whether the prison service could have taken action earlier.

In a official statement in July last year, the MoJ confirmed: "High radon readings were first found at Dartmoor in 2020." Other reports suggest that radon gas levels exceeding the safe limit were also found as far back as 2007.

Lawsuits and Continuing Investigation

Over 500 ex- prisoners and prison officers are pursuing legal claims against the state, arguing their health was endangered.

An inquiry into radon levels at the prison launched by the workplace safety regulator in 2023 is still continuing.

The national chair of the Prison Officers Association applauded the committee's findings. "It is abhorrent that such a debacle has not led to accountability for the high-ranking officials that not only placed everyone within Dartmoor prison at danger but also wasted millions of pounds of public money," he commented.

Justification of the Decision

Appearing before MPs in October, the MoJ's permanent secretary supported the decision to sign the 10-year Dartmoor lease in 2022.

"At the moment, the prison system was at risk of facing a shortage of prison spaces, and Dartmoor offered over 600 places," she explained. "A reasonable and practical judgement was taken in March, when all the information that we have now was not available, that it was required, given the issues the government were dealing with, to execute the lease and keep Dartmoor open."

A Ministry of Justice representative stated: "This decision was made in 2022. This government took over a critical situation in our prisons system, where prisons were on the brink of failure, threatening a complete collapse in law and order."