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 of the report, An alternative vision for prisons, published by the Public and Commercial Services Union in May 2018.

I welcome the publication of this report and share PCS’s commitment to improving rehabilitation and reducing reoffending among people released from our 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 both our Education and Employment Strategy on 24 May 2018, and our Female Offender Strategy on 27 June. The former sets out the Government’s approach to supporting ex-offenders to secure meaningful employment so that they are less likely to reoffend. Our new model for delivering education services in prisons will go live in April next year.

The Female Offender Strategy sets out our commitment to a new programme of work for female offenders, driven by our ambition to see fewer women coming into the criminal justice system at all, and fewer of those that do ending up in custody. We also want to see more female offenders managed successfully in the community, along with better conditions for those in custody.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office has introduced a new cross-government Reducing Reoffending group to address some of the main causes of reoffending including employment, health and accommodation. The Group met for the first time last month.

Reoffending currently costs society around £15 billion per year. We know that most prisoners will be released from custody at some stage, and that through effective rehabilitation we can reduce the number of victims of crime in the future.

We also 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.