Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what sanctions are imposed on prison providers when targets for education are not met.

The current contractual arrangements enable the National Offender Management Service to impose sanctions upon education providers, including withholding payment, if they do not deliver learning to prisoners or are subject to a poor Ofsted inspection.

Through the Prison Safety and Reform white paper, the Government has set out its proposals to deliver major reforms to the prison system to cut reoffending and help reduce crime. The Justice Secretary has been clear that she wants prisons to be places of safety and reform, helping get offenders off drugs and giving them basic education skills they need to find work on release.

As part of these reforms we will be raising standards, including measuring an individual’s educational attainment, empowering prison governors to take decisions over how best to support their prisoner cohort, while holding them to account on an agreed set of standards.