Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, Pursuant to the Answer of 19 December to Question 119536, what the total expenditure was in 2017 prices on (a) public and private prisons across the whole estate, (b) public prisons and (c) private prisons in each year since 2010.

The information requested is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

However, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation 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 www.gov.uk website. 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 accurate comparison between the two years.