HC Deb 07 February 2001 vol 362 c616W
Ms Kelly

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what level of expenditure in each prison budget was used for educational purposes(a) as a percentage of a prison's overall budget and (b) per prisoner; in each year since 1992. [149051]

Mr. Boateng

Information is not available in the form requested. The tables, copies of which have been placed in the Library, set out operational spend for each prison (i.e. excluding any capital expenditure), spend on certain separately identifiable areas of education spend, covering payments to education providers and purchase of education materials, and the figure produced when that spend is divided by the average population for each prison in that year. These cover the financial years 1995–96 to 1999–2000; information for earlier years is not readily available; neither is information on education costs at private sector prisons. It should be noted that the figures for 1999–2000 are on a slightly different basis to those for earlier years due to differences in accounting procedure, in that they do not include VAT refunds.