Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, on which occasions performance points were accrued by private prisons in 2013-14; for what reason the points were accrued; and what financial penalties were attached in each case.

On the question of what financial penalties have been levied against those running private prisons in each year since 2010-11, I refer the Rt.Honourable Member to the response sent to him in November of 2013, under PQ 165769, which can be found on Hansard under the reference 4 Dec 2013 Column 705W.

The data presented in table 1 below is based on total number of performance points accrued for the relevant periods. This does not take into account credit points awarded to Contractors and offset against total performance points for the period. Financial remedies are only applicable when performance point baseline targets are exceeded for the period.

Please note, data relating to the 4^th quarter of 2013/14 is pending approval and not available for release at this time. Data for the following prisons are also not available and awaiting verification and validation by the parties:

• HMP Birmingham
• HMP Doncaster
• HMP Dovegate
• HMP Forest Bank
• HMP Oakwood
• HMP Thameside

This information will be available later in the year.

It is important to note that performance points are essentially about operational efficiency, and at no point has public safety been at risk. There are no significant historical trends in the attached figures and it is fair to say that privately managed prisons achieve the majority of their contractual targets with proportionately low levels of performance points and financial remedies applied as a result. The data for each contract is closely monitored by MoJ staff and any emerging or sustained performance failures are discussed in detail with the relevant Contractor in order to rectify performance shortfalls as quickly as possible.