Siân C. James

We have extended our successful Energy Company Obligation out to 2017 and have reformed the Green Deal with changes such as the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund.

Together, ECO and the Green Deal have helped more than one million homes become more energy efficient, and as I have informed the House already, yesterday I laid regulations to require landlords to bring their properties up to a minimum level of energy efficiency from 1 April 2018.

If the House agrees these new, tough rules for the private rented sector, we estimate that around one million tenants will benefit from warmer and cheaper to heat homes.

Ten women with home postcodes in Wales applied for a place in a Mother and Baby Unit in the last six months. Of those, six applications were successful, two applications were withdrawn and two have yet to be considered by an Admissions Board.

Prison library providers make sure that the range of reading and reference material available in each library reflects the diverse needs of the prisoners held. Prison Service Instruction 02/2015, published in February 2015, has an expectation that the language needs of prisoners should be met where this is reasonably possible. The number of books available in any given language will be proportionate to the population's requirement.

An inter-library loan request service, facilitated by the librarian or library assistant, enables prisoners to request books in the same way as library users in the community. Welsh speakers can ask for Welsh language books to be provided via this service.

Information about what particular Welsh language library books are stocked in female prisons in England is not held centrally and will need to be collated through enquiries at these prisons. At HMP Eastwood Park, which holds the largest number of women with home postcodes in Wales, and also at HMP Styal, I have enquired about the availability of Welsh language books and seen Welsh language books in both libraries. I will write to the hon Member when we have been able to obtain any additional information about Welsh language books in other women’s prisons.

Women prisoners whose home postcode is in Wales have the same access to facilities as all other women prisoners, to support their appropriate rehabilitation and their resettlement back to Welsh communities. This includes the provision of Welsh language services, under the Welsh Language Scheme, for prisoners whose preferred language is Welsh.

There are strong links between HMP Eastwood Park and the National Offender Management Service in Wales. A number of initiatives provide resettlement support to Welsh women prisoners there. These include the Integrated Offender Management Cymru: Women's Pathfinder project, which is seeking to design and deliver a women-specific, integrated, whole-system approach to working with those who come into contact with the criminal justice system in Wales and which includes other relevant female prisons.

HMP Styal, which holds women whose home is in North Wales, also has strong links with Wales. As a member of the Women’s Pathfinder Project Board along with HMP Eastwood Park, Styal is involved in the development of the project, which is due to be piloted in North Wales from April 2015 and which will link directly with the prison.

The new arrangements for transforming rehabilitation are expected to strengthen the links between women offenders whose homes are in Wales, and all the prisons in which they serve their sentence.

The following table shows the number of remanded and sentenced female prisoners who have a reported address in Wales on four dates in 2014.

Number of remanded and sentenced female prisoners who have a reported address in Wales in 2014

Information on offenders is provided by them on reception in prison and recorded on a central IT system. Reported addresses can include a home address, an address to which offenders intend to return on discharge or the address of their next of kin. No address has been reported and no court information is available for around 3% of all offenders and therefore these figures are excluded from the answer.

Information on how many staff of the National Offender Management Service speak Welsh is not held centrally and to collate this information to answer this question would incur disproportionate cost.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) does not separate annual costs of imprisoning Welsh women prisoners held in England prisons. NOMS does not analyse cost by prisoner nationality and costs recorded on the NOMS central accounting system do not allow identification of costs attributable to individual prisoners.

However, the Department routinely publishes average costs for each prisoner and prison place based on actual net resource expenditure for each private and public sector prison.. This includes the women’s custodial estate and is available in summary form for the whole of the prison estate in England and Wales, on an annual basis after the end of each financial year.

The most recently published figures for financial year 2013-14 is published alongside the NOMS Annual Report and Accounts and available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-and-probation-trusts-performance-statistics-201314

You may wish to note detailed costs of custody for women prisoners can be found at the above link within the file named: costs per place and cost for each prisoner 2013-14 - supplementary information. A copy of this is also placed in the House library.

The Department is committed to delivering prison capacity changes designed to modernise the prison estate and, where possible, reduce prison costs, whilst maintaining a high quality service.

From the financial years 2009-10 to 2013-14 there was a real terms reduction of 17% in the overall average cost for each prisoner, with a reduction of 5% achieved during the last financial year 2013-14.