London: A watchdog has called on the government to make more money available for prison food following concerns over a daily budget for prisoners of just over £2 a day per prisoner, a fifth of the money spent on hospital patients. The call was made in the latest report from the Independent Monitoring Board into HMP Wealstun, a category C prison holding more than 800 men near Wetherby, West Yorkshire. The IMB called on the new justice minister Dominic Raab ‘to consider increasing the daily food allowance, as £2.02 is an extremely small amount to feed adult men and provide the nutrition they require’.
The sum must provide each prisoner with a breakfast pack, a cold meal and a hot meal and has not been increased since ‘at least 2016’. In 2019, then justice minister Lord Keen told the House of Lords HM Prison and Probation Service allocated food budgets to prisons ‘based on £2.02 per prisoner per day, which covers the daily prisoner food and beverage requirements’.
Read more: Jon Robins, Justice Gap, https://bit.ly/3BXTXTf
