Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 16 November 2017 to Question Ministry of Justice: Finance, what is the projected change of his Department's budget for probation in real terms is in each year to 2020.

The Ministry of Justice’s funding from HM Treasury was reported at Spending Review 2015 to fall by 15% between 2015/16 and 2019/20. Taking into account additional resource funding agreed at the Autumn Statement 2016 for prison safety and wider reform, MoJ’s funding in real terms will reduce by 11% between 2015/16 and 2019/20. MoJ will shortly be laying its Main Estimate in Parliament, which will provide further detail on our financial plans for the year 2018-19.

Budgets are subject to in year movement and organisational restructure. 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. Therefore we have used the actual outturn costs for previous years for probation services, and the expenditure includes probation boards/trusts prior to 2014-15 and National Probation Services/CRC’s from 2014-15 to 2016-17.

The probation services spend is set out in a summary table below, showing the outturn costs (nominal), the figures adjusted for GDP deflator (real terms). The GDP figures are consistent with the OBR Spring Statement data as at 13 March 2018.

The 2017-18 probation figures are taken from the budget for the year as expenditure has not yet been finalised.