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Business of the House

May we please have a debate on the National Offender Management Service, urgently and in Government time? The Leader of the House will know that NOMS, as it is called, covers both the Prison Service and the probation service. I was alarmed to discover from the parliamentary written answer that I received this morning—and which will no doubt appear in today’s Hansard—from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), that only 3 per cent. of the Prison Service budget is spent on education. Is that not an alarmingly small amount, given that 67 per cent. of prisoners reoffend within two years of their release? Surely it is high time that the Government spent more of the Prison Service budget on educating prisoners, to reduce the rate of reoffending.