IT would appear that it took today’s mass walk-out of prison officers for the Ministry of Justice to finally accept it must take action over the state of the country’s jails.

Staff and unions have been issuing warnings for years that conditions are dangerous for workers and inmates.

Their claims were backed by Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke earlier this year. In his annual report for 2017/18, he said staff and prisoners have become “inured” to conditions unacceptable in 21st-century Britain. He highlighted how thousands of inmates are living in squalid and overcrowded cells, locked up for nearly 24 hours a day.

And official figures published in July revealed that assault and self-harm incidents are continuing to rise, both reaching new record highs. Overcrowding remains a key issue, with the prison population forecast by the MoJ to “steadily” rise by more than 3,000 over the next five years.

In the North-East, there have been repeated revelations about the scale of the drug problem at Stockton’s Holme House. The Prison Service has pledged extra funding and support for Holme House, and to his credit, Prisons Minister Rory Stewart has promised to resign if violence and drugs problems in jails are not tackled in the next 12 months.

However it is a shame it took a walk-out for Mr Stewart to agree to what the Prison Officers’ Association described as “meaningful engagement”. Such conversations are a long, long time overdue.