Prisons: Education

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate. Styal is my local female prison that I have been going to for probably most of my life, so I am well aware of the challenges but also the opportunities there. The partnership model is something that I have been doing for 25 years, encouraging businesses, volunteers and charities to go into prisons, work with prisoners and give them skills. I am pleased that a number of companies are opening up workshops—Iceland, for example, has recently set up establishments—but, unfortunately, we have 72 workshops that are vacant at the moment. One of my priorities is to fill those workshops, not just with organisations coming in but with internal prison industries. We manage to make everything in a prison cell apart from the TV, the duvet and the pillow, so there are more things that we can make. We are trying to do more work across government to make things, give people skills and help the economy.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that neurodivergent people are disproportionately represented in prisons; a 2021 review found that the figure was up to 50%. So educational needs are higher but, unlike in mainstream education, there is no incremental budget to deal with this. What are the Minister’s Government doing to empower tutors to meet the special educational needs of prisoners with neurodivergence, so that they can come out of prison equipped to live a life without crime? Will the Government commit to solving the complexities of data collection? Without understanding the scale and nature of the problem, it will be very difficult to address it.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I shall address those two separate points. Data collection is something that challenges me every day, along with vetting. As someone who has run a business where I had all the information at my fingertips, I find it frustrating, as I know other colleagues do, that we do not get all the information we need to manage—but that is something that I am working on.

On neurodivergent prisoners, we have made big strides in appointing neurodiversity managers in prisons, but also in focusing not just on classrooms but on the environment where prisoners are. Some of the most inspiring work that I have seen in prisons recently is on autism wings, where staff are heavily trained to support these often vulnerable and challenging prisoners. When they do, the prisoners’ behaviour completely turns around and they go from being challenging, often violent prisoners to being those who really engage with the regime and get the skills they need.