Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to help build the confidence of people serving community pay back and prevent reoffending.

Community Payback is the key punitive requirement available to sentencers when handing down court-ordered community sentences. These requirements are managed by the Probation Service and are delivered separately to police-monitored unpaid work schemes which provide restorative justice for people undertaking out of court disposals.

Community Payback is an important way for offenders serving their sentence in the community to give back to the communities they have harmed, by undertaking demanding work that is valuable to their local area. It can also be an important rehabilitative tool by equipping offenders with back to work skills, such as learning new vocational trades and building pro-social skills with placement beneficiaries (often charities) and Community Payback teams.

Certain eligible offenders, namely those who are unemployed or ‘at risk’ of unemployment, may be required to undertake formal education, training and employment (ETE) activity and programmes. This is limited to up to 30% of their imposed hours.

Improving educational, training and employment outcomes is part of our relaunch of Community Payback, which this Government is delivering with up to £93million additional funding This includes an online learning portal for offenders to access educational and vocational courses, enabling offenders to gain skills relevant to industries as where they will receive certification on completion of a course that can be shown to employers. Currently, there are three mandatory courses which are designed to help offenders with employment opportunities and develop skills for work. In the future, the online courses will be tailored to industries where there are significant labour shortages.