Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department has taken to determine the life carbon footprint of the (a) Five Wells and (b) Glen Parva prisons; how that footprint will be measured; and how frequently his Department plans to publish data on that footprint.

For both Five Wells and Glen Parva prisons, we have used industry best practice and existing prison benchmarks to forecast their operational carbon footprints. The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) has also been adopted to encourage low carbon building designs and low embodied carbon construction materials.

The operational carbon emissions of the prisons will be measured in line with Greening Government Commitment requirements. Once the prisons are operational this information will be regularly collated, along with data from all MoJ prisons, and our greenhouse gas emissions performance will be published annually.

Looking ahead to our next four prisons, their whole life carbon footprint will be measured by adopting the PAS2080 Carbon Management in Infrastructure verification scheme.