Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the cost to the public purse of prison sentences for Insulate Britain activists.

Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), does not collate, calculate or analyse separately the costs down to individual prisoner level. The costs recorded on the HMPPS central accounting system do not allow identification of costs attributable to holding specific offenders.

An average cost per prisoner, costs per prison place and overall prison unit costs for each private and public sector prison in England and Wales are routinely published by HMPPS. This information is produced on an annual basis and is published after the end of each financial year.

Information on prison expenditure can be accessed in the Prison and Probation Performance Statistics pages for each financial year on the www.gov.uk website.

The most recent published figures for financial year 2019-20 can be accessed on the www.gov.uk website from the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-performance-statistics-2019-to-2020

Prison unit costs can be found within the document ‘Costs per prison place and costs per prisoner 2019 to 2020 summary’ in Table 2a and in the ‘Cost per prisoner place and prisoner by individual prison 2019 to 2020’ in the ‘Cost by Establishment’ tab.