Prison porridge costs taxpayers £165m a year
Porridge, baked beans and other prison food cost taxpayers a combined £165m a year, Morning Wire can reveal, as questions around spending efficiencies loom over the Ministry of Justice.
The government has signed a blockbuster £826.7m deal with a leading catering distributor to supply food for prisoners and staff.
BFS Group, a subsidiary of South African-listed distributor Bidcorp, which has a market capitalisation of around £3.8bn, will supply food for inmates and some staff until 2031.
The most recent set of figures from September last year showed there were over 87,400 inmates and more than 27,200 prison officers across England and Wales.
The MoJ estimates the average cost of food for each prisoner and young offender to be £3.20 a day.
BFS also has deals with universities and NHS supply chains, records show.
Prison food is ‘terrible’
Government expenditure has come under scrutiny in recent years due to constraints on public finances.
Chief secretary to the Treasury James Murray has demanded that ministers avoid using emergency funds to cover gaps in spending plans.
He has also announced a review of wasteful spending across government departments and infrastructure before next year’s spending review.
The Office for Value for Money, a body charged with scrutinising government expenditure before the last review, was closed down after the Budget.
The quango cost around £1.6m in total to run and contributed to plans for administration budgets across every government department to be slashed by 15 per cent by 2029.
The MoJ was given a 3.1 per cent real terms boost to its budget over the period between 2024 and 2029 in last year’s spending review.
This settlement came below areas such as defence and health.
Prison inmates have frequently complained about the quality of food. An Albanian murderer, Eugert Merizaj, said on TikTok that prison food in the UK was “terrible”.
Prison officials in Wales have meanwhile raised the alarm on inadequate food provision for inmates.
“All prisoners and young offenders receive three healthy meals a day that meet nutritional guidelines,” a prison service spokesperson said.