BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm Susan Hume and this is the Yesterday in Parliament podcast.

On Thursday, the 23rd of October, MPs on the Common Spending Watchdog

wanted to know why Dartmoor Prison is standing empty,

not long after the signing of a new lease.

All inmates were moved out of Dartmoor Prison in the summer of 2024 because levels of the radioactive gas radon were 10 times higher

than the recommended safe health limit. The gas occurs naturally in rocks like granite and causes

more than a thousand lung cancer deaths in the UK each year.

Unfortunately, the particularly high levels at the jail were not detected until after the government

agreed a new lease with the Duchy of Cornwall, Prince William's private estate.

The lease can't be broken for 10 years. MPs on the public accounts watchdog thought someone in Whitehall

really should have checked before they signed. Labour's Clive Betts had a question for the most senior

civil servant at the Ministry of Justice. Is the issue that keeps you awake most, the idea that

you're paying lots of empty cells in a prison that you're not believing.

Joe Farrah, who wasn't in the top job when the lease was signed in 2022,

answered in her own way.

What I'm focused on is not having sleepless nights about having empty cells.

It's about how do we move forward with this situation.

Clive Betts stopped her right there.

It's always helpful, I think, when people ask the questions to say,

oh, let's move on and look at the future. But the reality is here. We've got to look at

how public money is being spent. And the reality is you entered as a department into a new

...