Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of the recommendations contained in An Alternative Vision for Prison, published by the Public and Commercial Services union in February 2018.

I welcome this report and share PCS’s commitment to improving rehabilitation and reducing recidivism in prisons. We look forward to ongoing work with HMPPS’s National Trade Union Side on this critical issue.

Since An Alternative Vision for Prisons was published we have launched the Education and Employment Strategy on 24^th of May 2018, which sets out the government’s approach to supporting ex-offenders to secure meaningful employment so that they are less likely to reoffend. The new education model will go live in April 2019.

In addition, the Cabinet Office is introducing a new Reducing Reoffending group that will work across government to tackle some of the main causes of reoffending including employment, health and accommodation.

Reoffending by those released from custody costs society around £15 billion per year – and the overwhelming majority of prisoners will be released from custody at some stage in their lives. Through effective rehabilitation we can reduce the number of victims of crime in the future.

We know that effective rehabilitation needs prisoners to be willing to commit to change, take advice, learn new skills and take opportunities to work – both during their sentence and after.