If there is one thing this Labour Government excels at, it is spending vast sums of taxpayers’ money treating the symptoms of problems rather than addressing their causes.
The latest example comes in the form of a £35 million scheme to fit up to 13,000 prison cell windows with steel grilles in an attempt to stop drones delivering drugs, mobile phones and weapons into Britain’s prisons.
At first glance it sounds decisive. Ministers can pose for photographs, issue tough sounding press releases and declare that action is being taken. Yet scratch beneath the surface and the flaws become obvious.
Criminals are not stupid. If they cannot drop contraband through a cell window, what is to stop them dropping it onto a prison roof, into an exercise yard, onto a walkway or any one of dozens of other locations inside a prison perimeter? Organised crime groups have shown remarkable ingenuity in exploiting weaknesses in prison security. Blocking one route simply encourages them to find another.
This is the fundamental problem with so much of modern government. Ministers see a headline, announce a spending package and hope nobody asks whether it will actually solve the problem.
The number of drone incidents around prisons has surged in recent years because technology has changed. Criminal gangs are using increasingly sophisticated equipment. The logical response would be to invest in technology that detects, tracks and disrupts drones before they reach their targets. It would mean identifying the pilots, locating launch sites, gathering evidence and securing prosecutions.
Ukraine has demonstrated just how effective modern counter-drone technology can be. On today’s battlefield, both sides routinely use systems capable of detecting drones miles away, identifying the radio frequencies they are operating on and, in many cases, disrupting their ability to navigate or communicate with their operators. Entire industries have emerged around tracking, jamming and defeating drones because commanders quickly realised that simply trying to protect every potential target was neither practical nor affordable.
The lesson is straightforward. The most effective defence is often not protecting every window, door or rooftop. It is stopping the drone from reaching its destination in the first place.
In Britain’s prisons, that could mean very simple radar systems designed specifically to spot small drones, radio-frequency sensors that can detect the signal between a drone and its pilot, thermal cameras to identify launch sites and advanced software capable of tracking where a drone came from. Combined with covert surveillance and automatic number plate recognition around prisons, authorities could potentially identify and arrest operators long before they become repeat offenders.
Electronic countermeasures could also play a role. Some systems can interfere with a drone’s navigation signals, forcing it to land or return to its point of launch. Others can identify the location of the operator, allowing police to intervene. While such technologies must be carefully regulated to avoid interference with legitimate communications, they offer a far more proactive solution than waiting for a drone to arrive before hoping a metal grille stops it.
Instead, the Government’s answer appears to be attaching metal grilles to thousands of windows.
One has to wonder whether anyone in Whitehall stopped to ask the most basic question: what happens when the criminals simply change tactics?
A more intelligent approach would involve a combination of drone detection systems, surveillance of launch sites, stronger penalties for drone smuggling, electronic counter-drone technology and better intelligence gathering. Rather than merely hardening one part of a prison, the aim should be to make drone smuggling itself so difficult and so risky that criminal gangs decide it is no longer worth attempting.
This is not a radical idea. It is how security professionals think. You identify the threat, understand how it adapts and then build multiple layers of defence. Yet too often this Government appears content with expensive gestures that look good in a press release but fail to tackle the underlying problem.
The public is entitled to ask why £35 million is being spent on a measure that criminals may be able to circumvent almost immediately. At a time when taxes are high, public services are under pressure and prisons themselves are struggling with overcrowding, taxpayers deserve more than symbolic solutions.
Unfortunately, symbolic solutions have become something of a hallmark of this administration. Whether it is immigration, crime, energy policy or prison reform, the pattern is increasingly familiar. Ministers announce a scheme, spend a fortune, declare victory and move on. The underlying problem remains.
Government should be about solving problems, not creating headlines. Britain needs ministers capable of thinking several steps ahead, anticipating how criminals will respond and designing policies that address root causes rather than symptoms.
The prison drone problem is real and serious. The question is whether spending £35 million on steel grilles is a solution, or simply another expensive sticking plaster applied by a Government that too often mistakes activity for achievement.
