TONBRIDGE MP Sir John Stanley was thrown in jail last Friday – but the Tory member's time behind bars was not linked to any kind of scandal.

Sir John and his wife Elizabeth were put away while taking a tour of Tonbridge's new £640,000 police cells.

A 10-month refit of the town's custody facilities has increased the number of cells from 14 to 19, and Sir John was invited to officially open them and experience what it's like to do bird.

And the MP thought they were pretty plush compared to others he had visited.

"I have been in many a prison in my political career. I see they would compare very favourably to remand cells that were constructed in a previous period.

"There's good light, it's reasonably spacious and reasonably airy," he said.

During the tour he joked with the Courier photographer it was too close to a general election to "criminalise" him by posing for some mocked-up handcuffed pictures, but thought he could manage a short stint in jail if he had a good book to read.

While unveiling a plaque marking their opening, he stressed the need for an increase in cell capacity was not due to a "moral decline" in Tonbridge residents, but a boost in the number of suspects being brought in through a re-jig of Kent's policing borders.

Because of the reshuffle, the workload of the West Kent area, which uses Tonbridge as its headquarters, has increased by 50 per cent and the custody department has had to deal with 6,500 people a year.

But accommodating them has been a struggle and some suspects have had to share cells or be moved to empty ones around the county.

Gary Beautridge, assistant chief constable, told the Courier: "We needed to ensure that there was sufficient space to manage the throughput of prisoners we had. Sometimes we had to move prisoners to other police stations where there's a custody facility, and that meant we have got to get investigating officers to travel all round the county."

Sir John was joined on the tour by members of the borough council and West Kent's policing team who explained the cells were mainly used for short-term detentions.

As part of the building project two new detention rooms were also built and improvements were made to the station's medical area.