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7 Jan 2008 : Column 165W—continued
The police forces involved in Operation Safeguard charge NOMS for the cost of making cells available to accommodate prisoners. As invoices are received in arrears and may be subject to variable costs dependent upon individual prisoner and other circumstances, cost per year by force cannot be accurately calculated. However, the average estimated cost of holding a prisoner in a police cell under Operation Safeguard is currently in the region of £385 per night.
Table 2 shows the total numbers of prisoners accommodated overnight in police cells as ad-hoc lockouts.
Ad-hoc lockout data are not available for individual police forces and are approximate due to diverse recording methods.
| Table 2: The number of prisoners held in police cells as ad-hoc lockouts | |
| Number | |
The agreed basic charge for ad-hoc lockouts is £55 per prisoner per night. Police forces may invoice additional charges to cover weekend and bank holidays, medical charges and the need for additional staff. The average cost is therefore estimated to be £120 per prisoner per night.
Prisoners: Release
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice in how many cases the current residential address of a (a) former convicted prisoner and (b) foreign national former prisoner subject to supervision following release is not known. [176304]
Mr. Hanson: The information requested is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost as the data are retained in probation office files, and would have to be collated manually as there is no appropriate search function within the databases.
Prisons
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many existing prison places he plans to withdraw in each year until 2014. [176100]
Mr. Hanson: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor announced on 5 December 2007 in response to the review on prisons by Lord Carter an additional 10,500 prison places by 2014 including up to three large ‘Titan’ prisons, housing around 2,500 prisoners each.
The Carter Review proposed that this increase in capacity will allow the Government to close around 5,000 places in old, inefficient prisons by 2014. Decisions on and the timetable for which prisons should be closed or places removed from use will be made as the programme for these new prison places is developed.
In addition, there is a planned rolling programme of refurbishment of accommodation across the prison estate, which requires the temporary closure of prison places. This allows the critical maintenance of the estate to be undertaken whilst having no significant net change on the number of places in use.
Prisons: Education
Mr. Hurd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what progress has been made in expanding the programme of business-led training of prisoners provided by National Grid Transco. [175185]
Mr. Hanson: I welcome the work that National Grid is doing to train prisoners and get them into work on release and would support any moves by them to expand their Offender Employment Programme.
In December 2006, the Government set out in the document “Reducing Re-offending through Skills and
Employment: Next Steps” their plans for increasing employer involvement in the delivery of skills and employment programmes for all offenders in custody and in the community. I am encouraged by the ever increasing number of employers engaging with offenders and ex-offenders to improve their skills and employment outcomes.
Many of these employers, from the public, private and voluntary sectors, are members of our Employer Reference Group which was established in January 2006 to work with the Government and help shape policy on this important area. National Grid is a member of the Group and contributes to the development of employer engagement activities for improving the employment of offenders.
Mr. Hurd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prisoners have been released to take part in educational programmes in the community in 2007; and what plans he has to increase that number in future years. [175186]
Mr. Hanson: The latest available data on the numbers of releases on temporary licence for training and education relate to 2006, and are published in Offender Management Caseload Statistics (Tables 10.6 and 10.6a), a copy of which is available from the Library of the House and from the following website
Prisoners will only be released on temporary licence if they meet the eligibility criteria and pass a risk assessment. Governors have an overriding duty, when considering any release, to ensure that both public safety and public confidence in the system are maintained.
Data show that numbers of offenders released to take part in educational programmes continues to increase and we will support the Prison Service in maintaining this, subject to the abovementioned concerns being satisfied. It is one of the Government’s key objectives to improve the skills and employment outcomes of (ex) offenders as set out in our “Reducing Re-Offending Through Skills and Employment: Next Steps” action plan.
Prisons: Exercise
Mr. Hurd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will increase the prison rules targets of one hour minimum exercise per week for adult prisoners and two hours minimum for young offenders. [176002]
Maria Eagle: There are no current plans to change the minimum exercise requirements contained within Prison and Young Offender Institution Rules. The minimum requirement is, on average, exceeded by both adult prisoners who accept the opportunity for exercise and young offenders (i.e. those in the 15 to 17 and 18 to 20 age groups).
Prisons: Food
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the cost is of the daily food allowance for prisoners in (a) prison cells and (b) police station cells; and when they were last changed. [176305]
Maria Eagle: The public sector Prison Service does not set a daily food allowance. Each governor sets a food budget based on the establishment's requirements. The average daily food cost per prisoner in public sector prisons for 2006-07 was £1.97. In establishments operated by the contracted sector this figure ranged from £2.10 to £3.07
Under the terms of Operation Safeguard, police forces may be reimbursed for the costs of food, at around £12 for each prisoner over a 24 hour period.
Prisoners are also held as ad-hoc lockouts (i.e. when the designated prison's reception will be closed before their arrival time). Basic charges for holding a prisoner per night includes an element for providing meals.
Prisons: Therapeutic Residential Units
Dr. Vis: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much has been spent on prison-based therapeutic residential units in each of the last five years; and how many beds are in each prison-based unit. [173547]
Maria Eagle: The number of therapeutic community places in prisons is as follows:
| Therapeutic Community Places | |
| Prison | Number |
| (1) Women. | |
It is not possible to separate out the costs of the therapy units at these prisons without incurring considerable and disproportionate cost.
Probation Service
Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what plans he has for future levels of funding of the Probation Service. [175268]
Maria Eagle: Probation funding for the next three years, 2008-09 to 2010-11, is not yet confirmed by the Ministry of Justice. Provisional budget planning figures have recently been issued for probation boards' main grant only for 2008-09 which show an increase of over 2 per cent. for probation boards.
Mr. Gerrard: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what was spent on central IT for the Probation Service in England and Wales for each financial year since 1997-98. [175381]
Maria Eagle: Expenditure on IT services managed centrally by the National Probation Directorate (NPD) and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is:
| £ million | ||
| Resource | Capital | |
The costs include the two centrally managed contracts to provide an IT infrastructure for the Probation Service. STEPS1 ran from 1 January 2002 until 31 December 2005; this was replaced by the OMNI contract which commenced on 1 January 2006 and associated replacement hardware and software. In addition other central IT costs are included(1).
The resource costs are mainly recharged to Probation boards.
For the period up to 31 December 2001 the National Probation Service Information System Strategy (NPSISS) framework enabling agreement (let in 1994) provided the core infrastructure and case management application; by the end of March 2001 49 of the then 54 probation areas were connected to the NPSISS network with the remaining areas existing via local arrangements. The full cost of the NPSISS programme over seven years to the end of 2001 was £118.038 million(2).
(1) Support and development of NFS legacy case management applications, GSI accreditation and half of the OASys and ViSOR costs (these jointly apply to the Prison Service) are included. NOMIS development costs are not included as NOMIS is not primarily a probation system.
(2) NAO report on NPSISS April 2001.
Probation Service: Expenditure
Mr. Drew: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the expenditure of the Probation Service in England and Wales was in (a) 2003-04, (b) 2004-05, (c) 2005-06 and (d) 2006-07 on (i) drug treatment and testing orders, (ii) work on multi-agency public protection arrangements, (iii) basic skills and (iv) victims. [173768]
Maria Eagle: Expenditure is not reported according to the categories requested. Probation boards meet the cost of managing and enforcing Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTO) and Drug Rehabilitation Requirements (DRR) through their grant as they see fit to meet their statutory duties. The following table shows the total budget allocation to probation areas in England and Wales over the period in question:
| Allocation to probation areas to fund DTTO/DRRs supervision and enforcement costs in England and full DTTO/DRR costs in Wales | |
| £ million | |
These figures include DTTO/DRR funding in Wales for the commissioning of drug treatment and testing directly from the treatment providers. In England, the treatment and testing components of the Drug Treatment and Testing Order (DTTO) and Drug Rehabilitation Requirement (DRR) are currently funded by a central contribution to the Department of Health Pooled Treatment Budget (PTB). The total
contribution in 2003-04 was £29.7 million, rising to £42 million in each of the subsequent years, including 2006-07 as described in the following table below:
| Amount paid to pooled treatment budget to fund DTTO/DRR treatment and testing in England | |
| £ million | |
The costs relating to basic skills and victims were not separately identified by probation boards before 2005-06 except in trial costing exercises in 2002-03 and 2003-04 when the data were not complete.
In both 2005-06 and 2006-07 probation boards spent £12.2 million on victims. In 2005-06, the only year in which data were available for basic skills, expenditure was £9.4 million. Expenditure on MAPPA is not identified separately.
Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent on accredited programmes for the Probation Service in England and Wales in each financial year since 2003-04. [173802]
Maria Eagle: Probation boards meet the cost of delivering accredited programmes through their grant as they see fit to meet their statutory duties. Probation boards' spend on accredited programmes is as follows:
| £ million | |
There is no information relating to expenditure for years leading up to 2005.
Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent on central infrastructure, including IT, estates and approved premises, for the Probation Service in England and Wales in each year since 1997-98. [173803]
Mr. Gerrard: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what was spent on local infrastructure, including IT and estates, for the Probation Service in England and Wales for each financial year since 1997-98. [175380]
Maria Eagle: The 42 local probation boards are supported by a range of services provided at the centre of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and to varying extent recharged to the probation boards. The main items of infrastructure are Estate Management and Facilities Management for probation properties (including Approved Premises) and IT services. The gross cost of these services is as follows:
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