Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the number of female offenders who have been unable to enter employment upon leaving prison.

We know that of those released in the 2011/12 tax year, a higher proportion of female offenders were claiming out-of-work benefits both before and after their caution/conviction or prison sentence, than male offenders.

The proportion of women claiming out-of-work benefits in the month before receiving a conviction/caution or prison sentence was 53%, which increases by two percentage points to 55% one month after a conviction/caution or release from prison.

We are aware of a number of barriers that prevent women from entering employment on release from prison and are working to address these issues.

Last May, we published the Education and Employment strategy which aims to set each prisoner on a path to employment, with prison education and work geared towards employment on release from the outset.

Our strategy includes a range of initiatives to support this ambition. For example, we are empowering governors to commission education provision that leads to work, we are encouraging employers to take on ex-prisoners via the New Futures Network (NFN) and we have consulted governors and employers on proposals to increase the opportunities available to prisoners to gain experience in real workplaces through ROTL.