Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the total spend in England on prison services in 2020 (1) in cash terms, and (2) as a percentage of total government expenditure.

In answer to part 1, for the 2020-21 financial year, the direct cost of prison services was £2.6bn. This is based on our published Prison Unit Costs.

For part 2, we have used the 2019-20 financial year direct costs of £2.4bn which amounts to approximately 0.26% of the total government spend. The reason for using the earlier year to calculate the percentage of total government expenditure is that the latest published Whole of Government Accounts is for 2019-20.