Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the change has been to the prisons budget in real terms in each year since 2010; and what the projected change will be in real terms in each year to 2022.

Budgets are subject to in year movement and organisational restructure. Prison unit costs are published annually, providing the actual cost mechanism for all prisons. These are not comparable across the long term due to changes in accounting treatments and scope of business which do not provide a consistent basis. Additionally, the public sector and private sector costs are not directly comparable because of differences in method of financing and scope of services.

Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (formerly known as the National Offender Management Service), routinely publishes average costs per prisoner, costs per prison place and overall prison unit costs for each private and public sector prison in England and Wales. This information is produced on an annual basis and is published after the end of each financial year.

Information on actual prison expenditure for previous financial years can be accessed in the Prison and Probation Performance Statistics pages for each financial year on the https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/prison-and-probation-trusts-performance-statistics#prison-performance-statistics. Prison unit costs can be found within the Excel document Costs per prison place and cost per prisoner by individual prison establishment in the ‘Cost by Establishment’ tab.

The most recent published figures for financial year 2016-17 can be accessed on the www.gov.uk website from the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-performance-statistics-2016-to-2017

Within the costs per prison place and cost per prisoner 2016 to 2017 summary file, the figures for financial year 2015-16 have been restated to enable a more fair comparison between the two years.

Prison Budgets for future financial years have yet to reach a settlement and therefore have not yet been finalised.