Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking expand educational rehabilitation programmes in prisons.

As detailed in the Prisons Strategy White Paper published on 7^th December, we are creating a Prisoner Education Service that will ensure prisoners improve skills such as literacy and numeracy, acquire relevant vocational qualifications, and access employment opportunities on release. This will be funded as part of our £200m a year investment by 2024-25 to improve prison leavers’ access to accommodation, employment support and substance misuse treatment and further measures for early intervention to tackle youth offending.

To improve outcomes, we are introducing new performance measures to track attendance and progress in English and maths; developing a new literacy strategy, introducing new roles to support prisoners with learning difficulties and disabilities and investing in digital infrastructure to deliver learning. We are also boosting our engagement with employers to understand the skills they need to plug labour market gaps and plan to launch a new fund to support innovation and training next year.