More spent on police cell dinners than on hospital food

They receive three meals a day, at a cost of £12 - compared to £8.90 spent feeding a patient.

Prison overcrowding means hundreds of criminals are being held in police cells as there is not enough room for them in jails.

An elderly woman in hospital eats her food - cheaper than a meal in a police cell

But meals cost six times as much in police cells as they do in prisons, where they are mass produced by the convicts themselves.

Critics said it was appalling that so much is spent on convicts' meals when one in five patients is leaving hospital under-nourished either because nurses do not help them to eat or because hospital food is too unappetising.

Conservative police reform spokesman David Ruffley said: 'Once again money that should be spent fighting and reducing crime is being wasted.

'What is worse, this problem has only arisen in the first place because of the complete mismanagement of our prison system, resulting in severe overcrowding.'

The figures, uncovered by the Tories, show that last year there were 61,000 occasions on which police cells were used instead of prisons.

Operation Safeguard, as the contingency plan for prisoner accommodation is named, costs almost £5million a month.