Scrapping the ID card scheme will save £255 million in the first three years. £162 million of this will be used to support an extra 1,200 prison places.
Harriett Baldwin said, "At the Blackpool party conference this week, we heard from Ian Duncan-Smith's Social Justice Policy Group, who have made 192 policy recommendations to tackle the issue of poverty and social breakdown in Britain. These include measures like drug abstinence and rehabilition programmes to tackle some of the causes of crime. But in the short term, we urgently need to build more prison places. Since Gordon Brown came to power over six thousand prisoners have been released before their scheduled release date - including over a thousand who were in jail for violent crimes. At least a hundred crimes have been committed since Gordon Brown came to power by criminals who he had released early."