Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, How much money has been spent on subsistence payments to prison officers on detached duty in each year since 2010.

Prison Officers do a challenging and vital job to help protect the public and we are committed to making sure we have enough staff to deliver safe regimes in our prisons. In 2016 the former Secretary of State announced HMPPS would be recruiting an additional 2,500 prison officers by December 2018.

The standard rate of overnight subsistence paid to Prison Officers is £25 per 24 hour period and there are no plans to change the current subsistence rates.

Detached duty is one of the sensible and proportionate measures we take to cover resourcing pressures and ensure we run safe and decent regimes in prisons as well as being able to respond appropriately to any operational issues that arise. It is not possible, without incurring disproportionate cost, to determine how much money has been spent on subsistence payments to prison officers on detached duty in each year since 2010. The reason for this is that centrally held financial records cannot disaggregate the costs of accommodation and subsistence claimed for detached duty from other expenses claimed by staff, for example when attending training.