Asked by: Nick Gibb (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what current contracts (a) his Department and (b) each of his Department's executive agencies or non-departmental public bodies hold with the Educational Testing Service or any of that organisation's subsidiaries.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
There are no current contracts held with the Educational Testing Service or any of that organisation's subsidiaries, by the Department, and each of his Department's executive agencies or non-departmental public bodies.
Asked by: Nick Gibb (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners released on temporary licence from Ford Open Prison failed to return in each of the last five years.
Answered by Jeremy Wright
The following table shows the number of releases on temporary licence and failures to return recorded at HMP Ford since 2008. Data on failures to return is unavailable before 2009 and centrally held data on temporary releases is unavailable for 2009 and 2010 when a new prison database system was introduced.
Data on temporary release failures for 2013 will be published later this year:
HMP Ford: Release on temporary licence and failures to return
2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
Failures to return | - | 10 | 12 | 18 | 28 |
Temporary releases | 21,145 | - | - | 24,606 | 33,381 |
Failures on ROTL remain very rare, consistently accounting for less that one tenth of one per cent of all releases, but they are taken seriously. In March, we announced a range of measures to strengthen the existing temporary release provisions to ensure that the right balance is always struck between facilitating resettlement and protecting the public. Under our plans, there will be a more consistent, tougher approach to dealing with ROTL failures and, in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, we are seeking to increase the maximum penalty for failing to return from ROTL from six months' to two years' imprisonment.
Asked by: Nick Gibb (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many absconders there were from Ford Open Prison in 2013-14.
Answered by Jeremy Wright
The number of absconds from HMP Ford during 2012/13 were the lowest on record. Abscond figures for 2013/14 are due to be published on 31 July 2014 as part of the Prison Performance Digest.
Figures for the number of absconds, by prison, since 1995 are provided in the Prison Digest contained in the Prison and Probation Trusts Performance Statistics. This can be found at: