Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much additional funding he plans to allocate to prison governors after April 2019 as a result of the procurement powers conferred on governors in relation to education and employment.

The recent Education and Employment Strategy set out our vision for more partnerships between prisons and employers. The New Futures Network will provide a dedicated team to support governors in this, with experts placed in every geographical prison group in a phased roll-out across England and Wales. Under the new education commissioning arrangements, budgets will be delegated to governors rather than being held centrally as is currently the case. This will help enable governors to decide their prison’s curriculum, how it is organised and who delivers it. This will help prisons build effective partnerships with employers, delivering training that matches their requirements.

Budgets for 2019-20 have not yet been agreed, so it is not possible to quantify how much the devolved education budgets will add to the funds already controlled locally by prison governors.