Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders in each prison in England and Wales were eligible for unemployment pay as set out in paragraph 2.2.1 of Prison Service Order 4460 in the last (a) week, (b) month and (c) year for which data is available.

The National Offender Management Service's central accounting system has a single accounting code for Public Sector prisoners' earnings. It does not separately identify unemployment pay or details of the number of prisoners in receipt of such payments.

To obtain this information for both public and private prisons would require us to examine individual prisoner employment records from each establishment to establish those who are in receipt of unemployment pay last week, month and year and this would be a significant exercise and could only be done at disproportionate cost.