Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of the Prison Service Payment Plus policy in each of the last five years, broken down by grade of staff that money has been paid to.
The requested figures are available for years going back to 2016 and are presented below. It should be noted the hourly rate for Payment Plus increased by £5 per hour from £17 to £22 during 2017, and the Payment Plus pay bill was higher in 2020/21, than in the previous two years, due to the additional resourcing challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Grade | 2016/17 * | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 |
Band 3 Officer | £30,134,418 | £40,417,136 | £28,424,839 | £26,446,349 | £39,896,675 |
Band 4 Officer | £5,032,835 | £7,372,709 | £5,703,364 | £4,366,680 | £7,386,766 |
Band 5 Officer | £1,990,098 | £2,511,523 | £2,006,305 | £1,668,558 | £3,582,568 |
Total Cost | £37,157,350 | £50,301,368 | £36,134,509 | £32,481,587 | £50,866,009 |
*costs reflect 11 months only - December 2016 data was unavailable.