Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what programmes are in place to help prisoners to become digitally literate.

The Offender Learning and Skills Service education providers offer a broad curriculum for digital and Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-related education in prisons.

In the academic year 2013/14, total prisoner learner enrolments were in excess of 37,000 across over 80 ICT-related courses. ICT-related learning is frequently embedded into other vocational qualifications.

Additionally, the Virtual Campus (VC), a secure web-based interactive learning tool, is available in 100 prisons and has 30,000 registered prisoner users.

26 Prisons ICT Academies (PICTAs) also offer specialist IT skills training in building and maintaining computer networks; and using Microsoft Office applications.

All IT skills acquisition in custody takes place in a controlled environment and with very restricted secure controlled access to the internet.