Earlier this year in the publicity surrounding Heston Blumenthal's new TV programme, Mission Impossible, where he sought to rejuvenate institutional menus - like BA's inflight catering and the food on offer at Alder Hey Children's Hospital - we learnt that the Royal Navy spends less feeding its submariners than the Ministry of Justice spends feeding prisoners. It was a fact that Heston himself condemned as "disgusting", according to a report in the Daily Mail.
Maybe it was this kind of thing that led Katie Wallace to lodge one of the first epetitions, calling for a prisoner's diet to be restricted to just bread and water.
The only problem with this shocking revelation is that a little bit of research only finds evidence to suggest the complete opposite is true. I would have shared Heston's reaction, quite frankly, if the men with the silent, round-the-clock job of standing by to fire our independent nuclear deterrent were fed worse than prisoners locked up in the clink for violence and thieving. I want the guys with their fingers on the big, red, nuclear button to be happy, well-fed individuals, not hungry curmudgeons resentful of the tight-fisted society they are tasked with defending.
Thankfully the facts prove that in the politics of dinnertime, prisoners are not only fed more cheaply than submariners, but also more cheaply than troops out in Afghanistan, old people in care homes, and inpatients in hospital. Prisoners are right down there, at the bottom of the heap. I know because I didn't take as gospel the assertion of some publicist trying to get us all to watch a TV programme (a thoroughly enjoyable TV programme, I should add). I checked, using the Freedom of Information Act.
According to official figures from the Ministry of Defence, £2.78 is spent per person per day on feeding personnel on submarines that are out on patrol. For prisoners generally the daily cost of food, all condiments and drinks comes to around £2.20 - 21% less than for a submariner. I asked what the figure was at HMP Dartmoor (near my home city of Plymouth), and was told that they spent just £1.92 - 31% less.
I asked around a little more. Plymouth City Council, which runs two of the city's care homes for elderly people, budgets £3.55 per resident per day. Meanwhile the city's local hospital trust spent a generous average of £4.59 (2.4 times as much as is spent on a prisoner locked up in Dartmoor). For troops in Afghanistan, it is £3.89. In all cases, this figure is just for the ingredients on the plate, not the cost of transporting, preparing, cooking or serving, which for Afghanistan comes to tens of millions of pounds.
I don't object to the differential. I may be a liberal who believes there should be more to prison than punishment, but punishment is a big part of what a prison is there to do, and that includes giving prisoners nutritious yet unextravagant and inexpensive grub. Hopefully however I have thoroughly debunked the notion that prisoners are filling their tummies with caviar whilst our servicemen get by on scraps from the table.
There is too much disinformation on topics like the treatment of prisoners or teenage pregnancy (will someone please tell the tabloids that the number of births to teens was actually at its lowest last year than in any year since 1956?). It is high time that those of us who don't think we're going to hell in a handcart became a lot more energetic about challenging the many half-truths there are out there.