Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. One of my principal concerns is that far too often the courses that have been offered and the qualifications that have been available to women in prison have not reflected the genuine needs—the circumstances that led them into offending in the first place or the needs that they have when they leave custody. One thing that Dame Sally will be looking at is exactly what needs to change, and there are no options off the table.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

In the days of the coalition I discovered as prisons Minister that the budget for prison education was held in a Department led by our coalition ally. The result was that it became very difficult to achieve the objective of getting the commissioning of education in prisons into the hands of prison governors. Does the Secretary of State now have sufficient control to achieve that objective?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend was an excellent prisons Minister, and he is absolutely right that we need to give the governors greater control. The response that I have received both from the Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Minister for Skills, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), has been hugely encouraging. Obviously, we have Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service contracts—the contracts that govern spending in prisons at the moment—which need to be honoured, but I hope that we might be able to move at pace to devolving responsibility to individual governors.