Mr. Mark Johnson:

That could be any figure. While I do not know how the committee feels about this, I have seen some very weird and wonderful figures on social return on investment, and it is all guessing. That is an economic figure that was done independently with KPMG in the UK. However, I would challenge whether the mechanism used was fit for purpose. It may not extract the full social return on investment. There are areas of change and rehabilitation that we cannot measure. How is it possible to measure the impact of someone changing his life around, going back to a community, being a son to his mother, being a father to his children and breaking the cycle of the peer-led criminal chains of conditioning? We cannot put a figure on it. It is the same as how we measure recidivism rates, etc. I question whether the mechanisms by which we evaluate programmes are fit for purpose, never mind accurate. That was one independent company that looked at a council but just measured it in prison and did not take into account the full picture. So that gave the £1.02. I have actually seen third sector programmes coming out with results of £9.

I work with venture capitalists and social investors who would probably agree with me that much of it is questionable.