Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his department is taking steps to deliver the recommendation from the Independent Sentencing Review of increased funding for the voluntary sector to support the Probation Service.

I recognise the valuable role of the thousands of Voluntary Sector organisations that work in partnership with Prisons and Probation to provide vital support to people serving their sentence in prison and returning to the community.

We welcome the Independent Sentencing Review’s recommendation to explore how we can better harness the value of the Third Sector and build even stronger partnerships to enable better targeting of probation resource and improve outcomes for offenders.

We are currently in the process of re-procuring our commissioned rehabilitative services (CRS) contracts. 76% of current CRS contracts are led by the Third Sector. Our new contracts will improve on our current offering with expanded and improved consistency of service available in both custody and community.

We will continue to work with the Voluntary Sector as implementation of the Independent Sentencing Review progresses.