Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will take steps to improve the literacy levels of prisoners
Crispin Blunt (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Prisons and Probation), Justice; Reigate, Conservative)
The MOJ and BIS recently published “Making Prisons Work: Skills for Rehabilitation” on18 May, setting out our reform programme for offender learning. Although our intention is to focus an intensive suite of vocational learning on the period in the run-up to release, we have committed to continuing to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of prisoners at the start of their sentences.
These functional skills are important in enabling prisoners to address other needs that might otherwise prevent them beginning work or training. We are evaluating intensive literacy and numeracy provision and, subject to the outcome of that, plan to extend its use as a means of addressing the needs of those with shorter sentences.