Catherine Atkinson

Catherine Atkinson

Labour — Derby North

Speaking in the House of Commons on 15 October 2025

Debate

Work for Serving Prisoners

Contribution

That is another fantastic initiative. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Impressively, some of the partner agents and partner charities working with the RFA have achieved reoffending rates of under 5%. I was told at HMP Ranby that the most popular work with prisoners was for the rail industry, though sometimes a prison struggles to find long-term rail-related work for prisoners. The RFA is working to help address that. That is particularly important in a sector such as rail, which really needs more skilled workers and is anticipated to lose 90,000 workers by 2030. The RFA has a tracking system that allows it to see how prisoners and placements progress. The Prison Reform Trust reports that, for years, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service “has not published figures on the number of prisoners working in custody, due to the disruption to data quality.” We need more data and we need it to be tracked.

More from Catherine Atkinson

Other recent Hansard contributions by the same speaker.

About Hansard

Hansard is the official verbatim record of proceedings in the UK Parliament. Every word spoken in the Commons and Lords is recorded and published — this page is a single contribution from that record.

For Catherine Atkinson's full parliamentary record including voting history, expenses and all other contributions, see the Catherine Atkinson report card.