Nigel Farage's new prisons tsar opens door to trans women being placed in female prisons

Speaking at Reform UK's major crime announcement in Westminster, Frake said: "We all know what the law is, I'm not going to go back over that yet again.

"But, to my mind, everybody who is in prison deserves to be treated with humanity and decency: that includes female prisoners and it includes trans prisoners.

"Everything in the prison service is risk assessed and I am sure that the prison service will tie itself up in knots over the trans issue, just like many other public sectors have, and as Nigel said earlier we are at the beginning, and that is something we will need to speak about, clearly."

Farage interjected to point out that the issue of trans women being put in female prisons remains a "small one", with 83 per cent of the 295 transgender prisoners reporting their legal gender as male and just 50 inmates as female.

However, figures released last year showed that two-thirds of trans women prisoners are convicted sex offenders.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood had also reassured the public that "no trans women convicted of a rape or serious violence offence who retains birth genitalia would ever be considered for being placed in the women’s estate".

The Reform UK leader also appeared to open the door to allowing trans inmates to serve their sentence in women's prisons, delegating his response to Frake after pointing out the need for "risk assessment".

“I personally never worked in a prison, so I can’t answer [that]," Farage said.

"But I think you’ll find that the answer that you’ll get from somebody who has worked in prisons at the highest possible level is, I think basically it’s about risk assessment."

However, a Reform UK spokesman rejected the suggestion that Frake's view reflected party policy, simply replying: "No."

Following the Supreme Court gender ruling earlier this year, Sir Keir Starmer's Government vowed to update its policy on trans inmates "in due course".

Meanwhile, Tory MP Rebecca Paul voiced her disappointment about Frake's position.

Paul, who campaigned to remove seven trans inmates from HMP Downview, said that she "disagrees [with Frake] and so does the law".

Frake, who also oversaw the detention of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, later discussed the rise of Islamism in prisons.

She said: "Without a doubt there is a rise of Islamist gangs in prisons. It is very difficult to manage them.

"At Wormwood Scrubs, as head of security, I had to make the decision to split our Friday afternoon service for Muslims in two because we had about 400 prisoners who wanted to attend their service.

"It's a constant battle because we all know that prisons have no spaces, so when once it was easy to transfer prisons out to different prisons, it's not so easy now.

"We have to be mindful that there has been a rise of Islamist gangs in our jails and we have to deal with that short and sharp."

Serial killer Levi Bellfield, who was tracked down by Reform UK's crime tsar Colin Sutton during his time in Scotland Yard, is among the convicts to convert to Islam, now being referred to as Yusuf Rahim.

During Farage's press conference, Reform UK added another major defection to its overall Conservative coup list.

Leicestershire Police & Crime Commissioner Rupert Matthews confirmed his decision to ditch the Tories describing Farage as a "better option" than Kemi Badenoch.

He also accused Badenoch of "cowardly capitulating to establishment orthodoxies".