Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to paragraph 1.51 of the Budget 2018, whether his Department plans to build new prisons using private finance.

As set out on the 26 June at the Justice Select Committee and in the 2017 manifesto, we remain committed to building up to 10,000 modern and decent prison places to replace old, expensive and unsuitable accommodation.

In the Budget 2018 it was announced that we now intend to build the second prison at Glen Parva through public capital. This will enable the prison to open earlier than originally planned to meet the needs of the growing and complex prison population. The redevelopment will be subject to value for money and affordability tests. While we cannot comment at this stage on the anticipated cost, the newest prison in the estate, HMP Berwyn in North Wales, cost £220 million when it was built in 2015-16. Only PF2 is being retired. We will continue to explore funding routes for the delivery of the remainder of the new places, including through private investment.

The average cost per prisoner, costs per prison place and overall prison unit costs for each private and public sector prison in England and Wales are routinely published by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. This information is produced on an annual basis and is published after the end of each financial year in the Prison and Probation Performance Statistics pages on the www.gov.uk website.

We are investing tens of millions extra in prisons to ensure they remain places of rehabilitation and safe for prisoners and staff. A breakdown on cost details per prison place in respect of public sector prisons and those operated under contract (which includes privately financed prisons) can be found within the link under the file named: Costs per prison place and cost per prisoner 2017-18: supplementary information. Our investment includes the recruitment and training of over 3,500 new prison officers in the last two years which has increased our spending on prisons. This investment ensures prisoners have a genuine chance to turn their lives around and ultimately protects the public from crime.