Prisons: Education

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

Staffing levels are a continuing problem, but full-time equivalent prison officers have increased by 3,677 between 2016 and December 2022; it now stands at 21,632. In the Government’s view, there is no problem with the quality of our existing providers. The challenges of prison education are evident to all, and the Government are doing their best to tackle them.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, when I conducted the review into self-inflicted deaths in prison some years ago, a very substantial issue arose about the cancellation of education sessions simply because there were insufficient staff to transport prisoners to education venues within prisons or, alternatively, because prisons were locked down. What proportion of education sessions do not go ahead for the reasons I have described? If those statistics are not collected, could the Minister explain why this rather important performance indicator is not looked at?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the information he rightly seeks, but I will see if I can. Attendance at classes is an ongoing issue. It is sometimes due to staff shortages. We have introduced new KPIs for prison governors which include attendance, among other things, so I hope to see improvement in this area.