Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the total spend has been on the female prison estate in each year since 2010.

HMPPS 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, including all categories of the female estate. This information is produced on an annual basis and is published after the end of each financial year.

Information on 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/statistic s/prison-performance-statistics-2016-to-2017

We are committed to doing all we can to address the issues around female offending so we can better protect the public and deliver more effective rehabilitation.

I am pleased to say that on 27 June, we published our strategy for female offenders, which sets out our vision and plan to improve outcomes for women in the community and custody.

This strategy sets out the Government’s commitment to a new programme of work for female offenders, driven by our vision to see: fewer women coming into the criminal justice system,

fewer women in custody, especially on short-term sentences, and a greater proportion of women managed in the community successfully; and better conditions for those in custody.