Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to provide reading support in prisons; and what programmes her Department funds to provide such support.

All prisons assess prisoner literacy on entry, and deliver English Functional Skills qualifications via the main Prison Education Framework.

HMPPS also fund 62 additional literacy and reading contracts across 80 prisons via the more locally commissioned Dynamic Purchasing System.

All prisons have a library, and to further support reading the Shannon Trust operates their Turning Pages programme in nearly all prisons in England. This programme teaches prisoners to read and is delivered by prisoner mentors who work with individual learners.

Every prison also has a reading strategy which has been supported by the donation of over 150,000 books to prisons by publishing houses through the ‘Bang-Up-Books’ campaign.

In addition, the Literacy Innovation Fund provided funding to a further 15 prisons for projects delivered by the Shannon Trust, to further boost the reach of their peer mentoring and the National Literacy Trust who deliver workshops to encourage creative writing, reading and book groups.