CHRISTMAS can be a tough time for anyone living or working in our prisons. While others eat, drink and make merry with loved ones in brightly decorated homes and pubs across the country, festive cheer in jail is much harder to find.

Of course, staff do their very best to lift the spirits of those in their care, but the increasingly squalid state of our prisons makes this practically impossible.

From vermin and disease to broken heating systems and overflowing sewage, disgusting conditions drown any spirit of peace or goodwill.

The prison service itself admits it would cost £2.8 billion over the next five years to bring the whole estate into a “fair” condition, double its current maintenance budget. In such an environment, rehabilitation remains no more than a hopeless pipe dream.

Something has gone horribly wrong here — and as is so common in our public services, privatisation lies at the heart of the problem.

In 2014, the then justice secretary, Chris “Failing” Grayling, announced the outsourcing of all prison maintenance. Two private contractors were awarded these extremely lucrative contracts — Amey in the north of the country and Carillion in the south.

The contracts started in June 2015 and, according to the government, offered value for money for the taxpayer and efficiency savings for the prison service.

What actually happened remains a national scandal to this day. Some three short years later, Carillion spiralled into liquidation, leaving tens of millions of pounds worth of outstanding repairs.

Amey fared no better due to a workforce cull to boost profits. Repairs that had previously been undertaken as a matter of course were now deemed “out of scope” of the contract, which led to eye-watering quotes for basic work.

After Carillion’s collapse, the Ministry of Justice formed a part-private “GovCo” called Government Facilities Services Ltd, which it had more control over but was still not an “in-house” service.

Gone were the days when staff and governors could call a friendly face in the works department and ask them to fix a leaking sink or blocked toilet or to refit glass in a window.

Instead, staff had to navigate a complicated online reporting tool, then revisit it several weeks or months later when the tap in a prison cell had still not been fixed.

This was a sign of what was to come — and a decade later, our prisons are in real danger of turning into pre-Victorian dungeons.

Put yourself in the position of a prisoner who reports to an officer that their toilet is not working — sharing a cell and being unable to use the toilet. Staff reported the fault immediately, but three weeks later, the toilet was still not repaired.

Handing prisoners buckets to defecate in because an unfit-for-purpose private contractor does not fulfil its responsibilities is inhumane. Is it any wonder violence against staff rises? Does this sound like progress and value for money?

Now consider an officer who has no control at all over when that repair gets carried out and has to bear the brunt of prisoners’ frustrations. Prior to privatisation, that officer would call a tradesperson in the works department, and the job was completed that day.

But a decade after these vital services were outsourced, we now have a backlog of essential maintenance totalling £1.8 billion, according to the National Audit Office, double what it was just four years ago.

This is where privatisation has taken us — and despite a pre-election pledge to oversee “the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation,” the new government seem to be sleepwalking into more of the same.

Last month in Parliament, Labour’s Kim Johnson highlighted how “privatisation leads to higher costs and increased squalor.” And she asked ministers to “call time on this failed experiment and bring prison maintenance back in-house where it belongs.”

But junior justice minister Sir Nic Dakin insisted: “Under the previous government, a process was already underway to put in place new contracts for prison maintenance.”

After being pressed by Johnson on the merits of insourcing, he claimed that “all options need to be looked at to ensure we get the best possible value for money for the public purse from any new contracts or arrangements.”

But less than a week later, Prisons Minister Lord Timpson revealed: “The government has a programme of work under way that will put in place new contracts for the provision of maintenance services for prison,” admitting that “these will be competitively tendered.”

This is worrying news, and if the public sector is blocked from bidding for these contracts, it will make a mockery of Labour’s insourcing promises.

The new minister is widely respected within both Parliament and the prison service, but could his former role as head of the Timpson cobbling empire — which has a decent track record of employing ex-prisoners — be tainting his perspective on private-sector involvement in our justice system? I sincerely hope not.

The Prison Officers Association and other prison unions wholeheartedly support Johnson’s campaign for prison maintenance renationalisation, and we’re grateful for her early day motion 571, which “notes with alarm recent reports by the independent monitoring boards highlighting how broken and outdated windows make it easy for drones to deliver drugs and weapons, while prisoners are bitten by rats and venomous false widow spiders.”

The motion, which has so far been signed by 30 MPs, “recognises that outsourcing of prison maintenance has proved to be a false economy, with the taxpayer picking up the tab for contractors’ costly failures,” calling on ministers to cancel plans for retendering and instead “bring all prison maintenance back in-house at the earliest opportunity.”

Will the minister listen to this simple logic — not to mention the desperation from his workers on the front line — and stand up to the ministry top brass who are no doubt telling him insourcing is too complicated to consider? Or do we risk ending up with “Tainted Timpson” to join “Failing Grayling”?

Again, I really hope I’m wrong. Minister Timpson certainly has the credibility and the clout to fix our broken prison service, but he needs to stop listening to the people who drove our jails into a ditch and instead to the brave men and women who break their backs to keep the show on the road, each and every day — including Christmas. Please ask your MP to sign early day motion 571 on prison maintenance insourcing.

Mark Fairhurst is the national chair of the Prison Officers Association.