Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 9
Seventy-Eighth Report - Resettlement support for prison leavers
Published 11 Nov 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Improving resettlement support for prison leavers All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
In 2017 this Committee recommended that HMPPS and NHS England (NHSE) improve information-sharing arrangements between health, prison and probation staff following concerns that healthcare records do not follow patients as they enter or leave prisons.18 The NAO found that HMPPS and NHSE have been slow to improve the collection and sharing of prison leavers’ data, limiting their ability to provide appropriate support and monitor outcomes.19 The NHS’s ‘informed consent’ approach to managing patient data means prison and probation staff have not necessarily known whether someone has been referred for drug treatment on release. HMPPS told us that its Probation Notification and Actioning Project (PNAP), which aims to support effective handover between prisons and probation on treatment requirements, will be “game-changing” in giving probation staff the information they need to support prison leavers with substance misuse needs.20 HMPPS aimed to launch the service across England in April 2022 but was significantly delayed due to lengthy negotiations with health commissioners on the legal basis of sharing prison leavers’ health information without their consent.21 HMPPS now expects to roll PNAP out to all regions of England and Wales by the end of March 2024.22
From: Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Eighth Report - Resettlement support for prison leavers (HC 1329), 11 November 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 February 2024 (deadline 11 January 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it agrees with each of the Committee's recommendations on resettlement support for prison leavers, giving target dates for several of them.
- On inequalities, HMPPS is planning a programme of work to understand disparities in resettlement outcomes, and says that "By April 2025" it will deliver this analysis across prioritised thematic areas.
- On an action plan, HMPPS will "respond to the Committee by the six-month deadline" and says its plan will aim for "an adequate and consistent resettlement service" for all prison leavers by April 2025.
- On substance misuse, MoJ and the Department of Health and Social Care will develop a proposal on metrics, and the government says it will publish these metrics routinely, with a target implementation date of summer 2024.
- On evaluation, impact evaluations are "expected to be complete" by summer 2024, though findings on impact for some initiatives will only be available beyond 2024.