IN this week’s column, Warrington North Labour MP Charlotte Nichols highlights the cost of living crisis.

With the continuing Conservative chaos in Westminster, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Tories think that there are no bigger issues facing the country than their ongoing squabbles and power games with each other.

Sadly this is not the case. More and more people are struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living crisis continues to get worse, on top of all of the other problems that we need to address.

This week I met with members of the Prison Officers Association to hear their calls to improve our prison service. As they say from their expert vantage point, far from being places of support and rehabilitation, prisons have instead become engines of criminality and have yet to recover from the damaging impact of austerity.

They highlight the huge problem of prisoners with mental health issues that staff are not equipped to deal with properly, and the ongoing threat of violence towards prison officers that has only increased.  Our prisons are not currently succeeding either as deterrents from crime or as places where we turn offenders away from future lawlessness.

The POA has called for a Royal Commission on prisons and the wider criminal justice system to consider all of these issues. The government included this in its manifesto, but has since watered down this promise and now seems unlikely to fulfil it by the election.

As prison officers deal with violence and overcrowding, it is no surprise that the service struggles with recruitment and retention. Their difficult jobs have not been made more attractive by the Tory government’s decision a decade ago to decouple their terms and conditions from police officers and increase their pension age to 68.

It seems wrong to me to expect people of that age, both men and women, to maintain a physical, risky job with increasing confrontations with much younger prisoners. This is not right in itself, it is demoralising to hardworking officers currently grappling in an underfunded service, and it is a turnoff for young people considering the profession. I agree with the POA when they argue that “68 is too late!”

Prison officers are barred from striking, and so they cannot use their membership to demand change.

They rely on making the strength of their case to MPs, as they have done to me. I fear that as the government looks to restrict the right to strike elsewhere, more workers will see their terms and conditions downgraded, so I will always oppose these restrictions and support people doing these difficult and vital jobs.