We were told this week that the cost of the replacement for Barlinnie will now be £998.4m, but we’re not fooled. We know supermarkets price things at £9.98 or £9.99 instead of £10 because they think it sounds cheaper and it’s the same for prisons. It’ll be £998.4m, they say. No it won’t, it’ll be one billion pounds, probably more. Ten years ago it was £100m. Now it’s a billion. And we must, I suppose, put up with it.

The next logical question then is who is responsible for the increase. John Swinney blamed Liz Truss and I’m OK with that (you should see what she did to my mortgage). Brexit also played a part, and the pandemic, and we know too that some companies see a rise in inflation as a chance to increase their profit margins, which fuels inflation and price rises even more. That’s the bit that makes me most angry. But we must, I suppose, put up with it.

We then need to ask whether the £998.4m is worth it, a fair price to pay, and we certainly know Barlinnie is a problem that needs fixed. Natalie Logan McLean, who runs the prisoners’ charity Sisco, described the place to me as a boiling kettle ready to blow any minute, and pretty much everyone else says the same thing: the prison is tense, dirty, decrepit, overcrowded, full of drugs, and the conditions mean it’s actively working against the chances of rehabilitation or recovery that might exist for some prisoners. It needs to go, and a replacement costs money.

The accusation from the Scottish Tories is that the money being spent on the replacement is being spent unwisely and that the new prison should be built “at minimum cost to taxpayers, not maximum benefit to prisoners”. At First Minister’s Questions, the Tory leader Russell Findlay criticised the fact the site will include landscaped gardens, planting beds, polytunnels and boxes for owls and bats. He said it meant that, instead of the new prison being a high-security place to lock up rapists and........

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