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Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2008

Yes, my Lords. On average, such prisoners have had a loan of about £4,000, which they presumably will have had to repay, and a grant of about £1,000. The noble Lord made the point about not knowing the circumstances of the prisoners who were students; whether they were young men or women—I suspect they were probably young men rather than young women; whether they had to pay for their lodgings for the year when they had been put on remand; and for that matter whether the grants were being made in order to buy books, which is very necessary. In all conscience, the problem of education in prisons is huge. We are in the middle of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has been extremely anxious to have a number of amendments considered which relate to prison education. Many of us have this issue on our conscience. A big problem is that when prisoners are released, they can no longer continue the courses that they started. It is vital that they are able to do so. In that process, I have discovered a blog being pursued by a number of noble Lords. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, contributed to that blog yesterday, saying that he was going to pray against the regulations today. He said: "““The point of prison is (in part) to rehabilitate prisoners—and a difficult and tortuous task it is too. Lots of agencies need to work harmoniously together. Prisoners taking university degrees must surely be among the best prospects for rehabilitation—so we ought to take particular care of them””." I sympathise with those feelings. Equally, it is fairly clear, as the noble Lord said, that a Minister has discovered this anomaly and has thought that the hole should be plugged very quickly. The regulations have then been brought forward as a knee-jerk reaction and, yes, on average, £20,000 a year would be saved. Those who are detained at Her Majesty's pleasure already get maintenance from Her Majesty so you can understand the feeling that it is unnecessary to pay them twice. Another way to look at it is that they are a group of prisoners who have discovered a little loophole and have been able to profit from it and why should they? Looking on the more positive side, it seems to me that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has raised an interesting issue and I shall listen with interest to what the Minister has to say.