Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the funding for the 20,000 additional prison places is from his Department's baseline budget.

Our capital requirement is confirmed at each Spending Review (SR) in line with the department’s capital requirement in that period, and are not considered within the department’s baseline. At SR21 we received Capital Departmental Expenditure Limit (CDEL) funding to deliver the 20,000 prison places. Capital funding required to complete construction in future SR periods will be subject to further discussions with HMT. This is in line with the standard approach to capital funding. Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) funding was received at SR21 to manage new places as they come online in this SR period; funding for capacity that comes online in future SR periods will be subject to funding at future Spending Reviews.