At a recent parliamentary debate on ending child custody, Argar said "there will always be a need for a form of custodial setting".
He had been responding to an impassioned speech by former shadow children's minister Emma Lewell-Buck MP, who claimed that prison is no place for children and suggested that secure schools would be rebranded secure training centres (STC).
Argar said he "respectfully disagreed" with Lewell-Buck, adding that secure schools "are the right way to proceed to ensure we move away from the concept of a prison with education to that of a school with a degree of security".
However, some keen social policy experts told Ferret that his comments should come as "no surprise" considering he was once employed to provide public relations for a company that ran prisons.
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