Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether any additional funds above the agreed contract for 2016-17 were given to community rehabilitation companies in England and Wales.

A total of £37.15m was paid to CRCs above their agreed contracts in 2016/17. These payments were made for a variety of reasons and cannot be broken down by CRC because the information is commercially sensitive. Furthermore, some concessions were agreed with CRCs on a case-by-case basis to enable them to re-invest contractual payment deductions in key areas of the business and improve services.

In addition, we have made changes to how CRCs are paid for future years so they can focus on activities that best rehabilitate offenders and keep society safe. This additional investment will see projected payments to providers being no higher than originally budgeted for at the time of the reforms. A summary of the variations can be found below. Relevant OJEU notices can be found at http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:45770-2015:TEXT:EN:HTML&tabId=4