Lord Storey
Main Page: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Storey's debates with the Ministry of Justice
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Lord Storey
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the provision of education in prisons.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
The provision of prison education is not good enough and budgets have not kept pace with rising costs. I am determined to improve the quality of education by driving up classroom attendance, expanding access by embracing digital learning and strengthening partnerships with employers such as Morrisons, FirstGroup and Marston’s to provide training and jobs on release. Work to improve reading in prisons is a priority and I am pleased to let your Lordships know that Lee Child is our first prison reading laureate.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am sure we can all agree that education will play a crucial part in trying to reduce the incredibly worrying reoffending rates. The Minister has been very kind in giving me detailed responses to Written Questions. I am sure Members will be concerned and worried, in relation to our education programme providers, that at Feltham 60.2% of education programming was not provided and at Wetherby 44.9% was not provided—and so it goes on. Can the Minister assure us that the programmes will be fully provided by the contracted provider? Will we get a rebate on the money that was not provided? Finally, do we have any means of inspecting the quality of provision and the quality of delivery?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord. He is absolutely right and I am looking at this on a daily basis. I walk past too many classrooms in prisons that are not full. Some are only one-third full. If I owned an airline and my planes were one-third full, I would not be doing very well. Recent Ofsted inspections have been encouraging, but we need to make sure our prisons are far more stable. When they are 99.9% full, the priority is not education, unfortunately, but it should be. It is a combination of having more stable prisons, working with our education providers to create a more stable environment to get more men and women out of their cells into education, and developing in-cell digital learning.