It’s the sort of shocking detail that can bring out the worst instincts in even the most liberal among us.
Revelations that less is spent on food for hospital patients than for prisoners serving time in Inverness prison have provoked a perfectly understandable backlash. And the temptation to join in is strong.
It is, according to the Scottish Conservatives, “outrageous” that cons are better fed than prisoners. The party’s deputy leader – Rachel Hamilton – says both the public and victims of crime will “rightly question” why criminals receive higher quality meals than patients do.
This attack maintains the long-standing political tradition of trying to foment outrage at the treatment of those behind bars. For as long as I can remember, the suggestion that jail is nothing more than a holiday camp has endured among politicians of the right.
We are regularly invited to feel aggrieved about the supposedly luxurious lifestyles of those doing time. Jail’s supposed to be a punishment and we let these animals watch television and play computer games, don’t you know?
But Scotland’s prisons aren’t boutique hotels. The prison estate is crumbling and, in many cases, thanks to overcrowding and under-staffing, the treatment of those behind bars is barely humane.
Prison meals are not the problem, it’s the state of the NHS
It is an outrage that NHS Highland spends just £3.01-a-day on food for each patient while the Scottish Prison Service shells out £4.05 on prisoners but the question we should be asking is subtly different to the one posed by Hamilton. The issue, here, is not that more is spent on prisoners but that less is spent on patients.
Rather than being angry that criminals receive better food than people in hospital, we should direct our fury towards the Scottish Government’s appalling stewardship of the NHS, a prolonged period of mismanagement that means we’ve now reached the point where the amount spent on patients’ food is embarrassingly meagre.
Conventional wisdom says that, as we get older, we get more right-wing on a range of issues. Populist politicians, trying to drum up a backlash against the five-star treatment of prisoners, are banking on that.
The Scottish Conservatives have approached this issue in the way they have because their core supporters respond energetically – and furiously – to stories about the “kid-gloves” treatment of wrong ‘uns.
But not all old geezers become right-wing reactionaries. As I stumble towards 55, I find myself more liberal than ever on law and order issues. As I recognise and accept my own frailties, I find it increasingly difficult to condemn others for their own.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still very much in favour of the harshest possible sentences for murderers and rapists – let life mean life in many cases – but one of the reasons Scotland’s prisons are so terribly overcrowded is that we jail too many people for non-violent crimes.
There exists a caricature of a debate on law and order and the way in which we treat prisoners. The participants in this phoney argument are right-wing authoritarians who’d lock ‘em up and throw away the key and hand-wringing liberals who think we need to be kinder to the toerag who mugged your Grandmother.
It is not the states business to torture criminals
I think the reality is rather different. Most of us accept that the humane treatment of prisoners is essential. Their punishment is the loss of their liberty. Beyond that, it is not the state’s business to then torture them. Of course they should be allowed access to televisions and books, of course, they should be encouraged to vote, of course they should be adequately fed.
We should expect Tory leader Russell Findlay – a former crime reporter – to continue to make law and order a key issue. It is not only an issue about which he has knowledge and insight but it exercises the kind of right-wing voters who might be tempted to abandon the Conservatives for Nigel Farage’s Reform party at the 2026 Holyrood election.
The truth exposed by this story is not that politicians need to address the amount spent on feeding prisoners but that they must focus on the parlous state of Scotland’s NHS.
The pitiful amount spent on feeding patients is emblematic of a service in crisis. Barely a week goes by without a senior medical figure warning that the NHS is no longer fit-for-purpose.
But predictions that the service will collapse without major investment and reform are routinely ignored by ministers who, instead, offer up bromides about waiting time promises and deflect with talk of free prescriptions.
We should be angry that more is spent feeding prisoners than patients. But that anger shouldn’t be over the treatment of cons but over the damage wrought on the NHS by the SNP.
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
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