To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what he expects the additional running costs of the capacity added by his Department's prison capacity building programme to be in each year to 2014-15. (295818)

The estimated annual running cost of the capacity provided as part of the Core Capacity Programme is around £480 million, once the programme has been completed. The Core Capacity Programme is expected to be complete by 2012.

This figure excludes the running costs of the proposed new 1,500 place prisons.

The procurement process for the five 1,500 capacity prisons, known as the New Prisons Programme, is already under way. An OJEU notice to establish a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) Framework for firms who could design, build and operate these prisons was published on 3 August 2009. This is designed to allow private sector innovation into the full lifecycle of the prisons construction and operation. As such, the running costs will differ for each provider, each site and depend upon the function of the prison. At this early stage in our procurement it is not possible to reveal the estimated running costs from the New Prisons element of the Capacity Programme.