Tag: Sadiq Khan

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much the UK Government has agreed to provide the government of Nigeria in financial support as part of the prisoner transfer agreement with the country signed on 9 January 2014; and what the benefits for the UK are of that agreement.

Jeremy Wright

We are currently in discussion about supporting further projects that will assist Nigeria to improve their prisons and build the capacity they need to receive prisoners from the UK under the compulsory prisoner transfer agreement we signed in January this year. To date the cross-Government Migration Fund has funded refurbishment works at Kiri Kiri women’s prison in Lagos, and supported a project aimed at increasing access to justice for remand prisoners to tackle the issue of congestion within the Nigerian prison estate.

The prisoner transfer process is just one mechanism for removing foreign national offenders (FNOs). All FNOs sentenced to custody are referred to the Home Office to be considered for deportation at the earliest possible opportunity. The number of FNOs deported under the Early Removal Scheme (ERS) has increased under this Government with nearly 2,000 FNOs removed in 2013. Under the Tariff Expired Removal Scheme (TERS) which we introduced in May 2012, we have removed 243 FNOs (at April 23^rd 2014).

Whereas this Government has begun to reduce the foreign national population in prison since 2010, between 1997 and 2010, the number of foreign nationals in our prisons more than doubled.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners were employed in work in the community on 1 April in each of the last four years.

Jeremy Wright

Work in prisons is a key priority to ensure prisoners are engaged purposefully whilst they are in custody. It also gives them the opportunity to learn skills and a work ethic which can increase their chances of finding employment on release, a key element to reducing reoffending.

The number of prisoners working in industrial activity in public sector prisons increased from around 8,600 in 2010-11 (the first year for which figures are available) to around 9,700 in 2012-13. This delivered an increase in the total hours worked in industrial activities from 10.6 million hours to 13.1 million hours. Private sector prisons have also been supporting this agenda and have reported that they delivered over 1½ million prisoner working hours in commercial and industrial workshops in 2012-13 which provided work for over 1,200 prisoners.

In addition there are substantial numbers of prisoners who work to keep prisons running on tasks such as cooking, serving meals, maintenance and cleaning.

Figures for public sector prisons are published in the NOMS Annual Report Management Information Addendum: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/225225/mi-addendum.pdf

Figures for the number of prisoners working in the community are not held centrally and could only be obtained from local records at disproportionate cost.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the staff turnover rate has been in (a) the prison estate and (b) HM Prison High Down in each month since September 2013.

Jeremy Wright

The monthly staff turnover rate is calculated as leavers divided by number of staff in post at the beginning of the month. Figures on staff turnover are enclosed in the table below.

Table: Staff turnover rate at (i) High Down and (ii) all prison service establishments in England and Wales, between September and December 2013

Prison Service Establishment	Month	Leavers	Staff in Post	Turnover Rate
High Down	September 2013	40	430	9.5%
	October 2013	10	430	2.1%
	November 2013	~	380	0.3%
	December 2013	~	380	0.0%
All Prisons	September 2013	1,270	43,630	2.9%
	October 2013	440	43,500	1.0%
	November 2013	320	42,320	0.8%
	December 2013	330	42,560	0.8%

Note:

~ denotes suppressed values of 5 or fewer. Low numbers are suppressed, in conjunction with the rounding policy in line with the department’s policy for presenting staffing statistics.

Staffing numbers, which are derived from a dynamic administrative system, have been rounded to the nearest 10 to reflect the level of uncertainty in the figures.

Staff turnover rates include staff on both fixed-term and permanent contracts.

Information on staff turnover is only available up to December 2013.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners have been (a) prosecuted and (b) convicted for receiving each type of illicit or unauthorised items into prison through the post in each of the last four years.

Jeremy Wright

Prisons employ a range of measures to detect, disrupt and deter the trafficking of illicit items into prisons. Any contraband detected coming into the prison will be recorded on a central incident reporting system. However, to identify the manner in which the contraband entered the prison and any subsequent referral to the police would require a manual interrogation of incident reports. This could only be achieved at disproportionate cost.

Information on prosecutions and convictions for these offences is not held centrally and could only be obtained by asking each prison to source information locally. This, again, could only be achieved at disproportionate cost.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many hospital attendances there were from each prison in each of the last four years.

Norman Lamb

This information is not collected centrally by the Department or NHS England.