Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether contracts agreed with the Prison Education Service will include provision for inflationary increases to budgets for each prison in each year.

The overall budget for the Prisoner Education Service is subject to the Ministry of Justice’s internal annual budget allocations process to set internal budgets following the Spending Review period, so it is not possible to comment on budgets at prison level for future years at present.

The indexation provisions in the circa. 70 service contracts within the Prisoner Education Service vary between the services to ensure they are proportionate and relevant to the services being delivered. The most significant contracts by value Core Education and Careers Information, Advice & Guidance currently include provision for an annual indexation of contract prices. The two indices that are used to calculate inflationary increases are as follows:

1) Average Weekly Earnings index for staff costs, and

2) Consumer Price Index for all non-staff costs.