Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

1. What recent assessment she has made of the potential (a) financial and (b) social benefits of reducing reoffending rates.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Elizabeth Truss)]

Almost half the people leaving our prisons will reoffend within a year, with a cost to the economy of £15 billion, and countless costs to victims and society. We are giving prison governors the power to be able to turn people’s lives around, to reduce that level of reoffending.

[Mr Baker]

Prison should be a place of transformation and renewed hope. What steps has the Secretary of State taken to ensure that prisons are places of reform and rehabilitation?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to ensure that prison governors have all the tools at their disposal to get people the education they may not have had—almost half of prisoners do not have basic English and maths—to get them into jobs and training, so that they can go into work and lead a lawful life when they leave prison.