Education in Prisons

Lord Timpson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons A review of work and training provision in adult prisons, published on 13 October, regarding the impact of cuts to education in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

We inherited a crisis in our justice system and I am passionate and focused on providing good education and work opportunities, which are vital to prisoner rehabilitation. The education budget has not been cut—in fact, it has increased by 3%—but many prisons will face reduced delivery due to rising costs, while others will see an increase. We are focused on maximising value from new education services and expanding work opportunities through employer partnerships.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I chair the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee, and our recent report on prisoners made clear that we want to see a much wider range of education opportunities in our prisons, for more people, to help reduce reoffending and to make the public safer. As the Minister clearly said, he entirely agrees with that principle, but he has to accept, as the Chief Inspector of Prisons made very clear, that the current provision of education in our prisons is woefully inadequate. As the Minister pointed out, some provision of education in prisons is being reduced by as much as 50%. Can he at least assure us that, in addition to all the improvements in efficiency that he wants to make, he is lobbying hard for increased funding to pay for that much-needed education provision?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord and I share the ambition for our prisons to be places where people turn their lives around, and education has a big part to play in that. We are making progress. In five prisons, we have the working week happening now—31 hours of purposeful activity. This year, 10% more prisoners participated in education compared to last year, which is really good. Our reading strategy is now in every prison, and the third sector is involved in that. I am a big believer that we need to strongly manage contracts. As I said last week, there are too many classrooms with teachers but not enough prisoners. We need to see more of them. I have also changed the word “education” in our prisons to “skills academy”, thinking that that would appeal more to our prisoners who did not have a good experience of education. I saw that last week in HMP Hindley, where I had positive feedback from the staff and prisoners.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned reading, but he knows that nearly 70% of people entering prison are assessed as having numeracy levels below that of a primary school child. This both hinders rehabilitation and increases recidivism. Is the Minister aware of Shannon Trust’s model of support? It uses peer mentoring to teach maths to prisoners who would not engage with traditional education. It is a model that can take place outside normal structures and reach parts of the prison that formal education cannot. What assessment have the Government made of this model of support and how might they provide further support to Shannon and other charities to roll it out more widely?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am a big fan of the Shannon Trust. It does fantastic work in many prisons and I would like to see more of it. A number of other third-sector organisations play an equally important role: Storybook Dads is one that I have been interested in for a long time, and the National Literacy Trust does really good work as well. The role of peer mentoring is important. Often, fellow prisoners and volunteers are the people who turn someone’s life around. I have employed many people from prison who did not come out of prison with great reading and maths but who were inspired by somebody who helped them to turn their lives around. The role of the Shannon Trust and others is crucial.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, as has been said, prison education is in a dire state. That is very clear from the report. Why have the contracts just been re-awarded to the same failing providers that are responsible for the mess? Rather than shoring up their profits, surely we should look at the advice being given by prison educators and the trade union UCU, which is calling for these contracts to be brought back in- house, for a standardised curriculum and standardised employment practices.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

My noble friend is aware that we are very reliant on fantastic teachers and educators in our prisons. For me, they are some of the finest public servants. They come in, day in, day out, in often very difficult circumstances. The government procurement situation is something that I am still trying to get my head around, coming from the commercial sector. It takes a little longer and is often more expensive than I would expect. We have more than 500 suppliers delivering education services in our prisons; I want to ensure that they deliver them to a high quality and that we hold them to account.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, when asked last week why the Government were abandoning their manifesto commitment to reduce reoffending through access to prison education, the Minister replied:

“We are rebalancing because some prisons had an oversupply of education”.—[Official Report, 14/10/25; col. 165.]


Given that His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons has just found that education provision is atrocious, will the Minister now tell us how many prisons he believes have an oversupply of education provision?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I met the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, yesterday, and we discussed exactly this situation. We discussed, for example, Manchester prison, which used to have over 1,000 prisoners and now has, I think, about 650 to 700. That is why we have reduced the amount of money being spent on education in prisons such as Manchester, because there are just fewer prisoners. The noble and learned Lord is correct that it is about reducing reoffending. We have to focus on that, and education has an important part to play. But it is not just about being in a classroom. When I go and visit prisons, what is more important to the men and women I meet there is them learning a skill so that, when they are out, they can get a job, which means they stay out of prison. Last week, I visited a workshop at Lowdham Grange, where they were making sofas—on which a number of Members of your Lordships’ House probably sit on a regular basis—and a fantastic bricklaying workshop. It is not just about education but about learning skills for jobs on release.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord.

Does the Minister accept that the damage done in individual institutions by cuts in education and skills training is compounded by the effect of the churn going on in the prison population at the moment, meaning that many prisoners are in individual institutions for short periods of time before they are moved to another institution? That is very damaging to the effect, which the Minister was talking about, of having the encouragement to change.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I completely agree. Stability is really important. That is one of the things that I am trying to get into the system. The Sentencing Bill that will come to your Lordships’ House has a real focus on stability. The noble Baroness will know from her fantastic work in prisons that you want to be able to work with an individual for a long period of time to help them turn their life around. When I went to Eastwood Park, a women’s prison just north of Bristol, the average number of days a woman is there is 46. That is just not long enough to support them with their often significantly complex needs.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I acknowledge the Minister’s personal commitment to purposeful training within prisons and the contribution that he has made to providing work to prisoners who have been released, but there are 10 serious concerns identified in this report. Could the Minister say to the House what concrete and specific measures the Government are proposing to take in, say, the next six months to address the more serious of these 10 concerns?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I was clear when I started in this role that it is going to take time to fix what is a complex and troublesome system. Therefore, I cannot say exactly what I can achieve in the next six months. However, I am very clear that we need stability, and staff who are trained to deliver a safe and secure environment. From a position of education, it is important that staff have enough prisoners in their classrooms to teach. All too often, due to regime issues, security issues and so on, we have too many examples—as I saw on my prison visit to Hindley on Thursday—where people are locked up 22 hours a day. That is part of our inheritance but something I am having to deal with. I am addressing it in exactly the same way I addressed how I ran my business: focus, delivery and making sure I get accountability from the teams that are passionately engaged in what we are trying to do.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the omissions from the report from the group of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, is that there is no mention of AI. AI provides us with an opportunity for low-cost training, education and rehabilitation. Could the Minister say that, within the next six months, action will be taken to advance AI in prisons? You can engage prisoners more with AI than with traditional means. Maybe we could try to get some of the tech companies that are not paying tax to come in, working on a joint basis, and do some work in prisons to achieve the kind of objectives the Minister is seeking.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. In over 70% of the meetings I have, AI is mentioned. Often, it is mentioned as a way that will solve problems much further down the line, but it is about how we can embrace it now to get the advantage of it. Digital learning is important in prisons and something that we need to push further on. There is a product called Launchpad, which is in people’s cells. It is basically an iPad-type device that they can learn, read and educate themselves on. There is a business called Coracle Inside that supplies lots of iPads and laptops to prisons. I recently was part of a “Dragons’ Den”, where a number of tech companies came to present some really interesting ideas, and a number of them mentioned AI in their presentation.