Prisons: Careers Guidance

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we do not consider that this will contribute to reoffending rates. One of the issues we wish to address with regard to future education contracts is the development of greater autonomy and governor empowerment, which will lead to local commissioning of these services and which we believe will lead to an improvement in them.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, will the internal review that the Minister has just mentioned include looking at organisations which offer the ability to search for jobs online? There is an organisation called Prosper 4, which at the moment has 3,000 jobs on offer to ex-prisoners but only 200 prisoner takers, because the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS seem to refuse to use online job-seeking.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, perhaps I should clarify. I referred to an internal review that had been carried out to determine the standard of service being provided under the National Careers Service in-custody contract, and it was that which led to the decision to let the contract terminate at its natural point in March 2018. On the provision of alternative services, and indeed online services, we are of course open to submissions about such a matter, and it will be an aspect of the governor empowerment proposals that we are taking forward.