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Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2008

My Lords, my noble friend is clearly very committed to ensuring that prisoners are equipped with education and skills to assist them on their release from prison and I sympathise with many of the points that he has made. However, I am glad that the Government have now stopped the abuse of the student support system by prisoners. I want to ask the Minister how that quite unbelievable situation came about and why it was allowed to carry on for so long. According to the preliminary investigations by the Government—it has been widely reported in a number of newspapers today—more than 250 prisoners have received £250,000 in maintenance grants since 1998 and an additional £250,000 of loans have been paid out by the Student Loans Company over the past 10 years. When will the Government provide a breakdown of the number of serving prisoners affected by the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2008? I strongly believe that prisoners should be encouraged to learn and train while serving their sentences, but not with grants designed to help students outside prison with their living costs. Students struggling with costs have a right to feel outraged. We are all too aware that many prisoners who arrive in prison are unable to read and write and are often released back into the community in the same condition. The Government say that they are committed to rehabilitation. What is being done to provide a stronger role for the third sector providers who have the ability to link basic education and training in prison with realistic prospects for employment on release? Following on from that, if prisoners are released early, what is the department doing to ensure that they are able to continue the education and training that they undertook in prison to aid their rehabilitation successfully afterwards? I, too, will listen with great interest to what the Minister has to say.