Ministers and officials are coming under increasing pressure from MPs to explain why a private firm was granted a two-year extension to run a youth jail despite long-term concerns about its performance, a year before the facility was in effect shut down. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced last week that all children at Rainsbrook secure training centre are to be removed after the US-based contractor MTC failed to address problems raised by inspectors and by the justice secretary, Robert Buckland. The future of the site is yet to be determined and officials are looking at alternative uses. In a report on Thursday, members of the justice select committee say the MoJ has questions to answer over its decision to award MTC an extension of the contract in 2020 despite concerns over the operation of the site. “We seek, in particular, an explanation from the ministry of why MTC was, early in 2020, granted a two-year extension to its contract to run Rainsbrook when considerable concern had already been raised about the company’s capacity to do so,” the report says. “We were told in oral evidence that two improvement notices had been given and financial penalties were in fact imposed on MTC for failings at Rainsbrook, with one financial penalty in place since May 2019. Were those improvement notices and financial sanctions taken into account when it was decided to extend the contract?” The committee says it received a response to these questions but regarded it as inadequate and it is now demanding more complete answers. “The response appears to imply that no minister was involved in signing off the two-year extension. Is that so? If it is, why was there no ministerial involvement? What steps will be taken to involve ministers in such decisions in future when questions have been raised about a contractor?” the report says. The government was urged to step in after it emerged that children were being locked up for more than 23 hours a day at the site near Rugby, in Warwickshire, during the coronavirus pandemic. Buckland has previously described the situation as an “unacceptable failure”, and MPs stepped up pressure for the site to be taken back under public control. The facility received a catalogue of negative inspection reports from Ofsted, the Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission, and was issued with two urgent notifications in less than a year. A report by the justice committee in March this year called for the running of the facility to be brought back in house should MTC fail to deliver the improvements necessary. A Youth Custody Service spokesperson said: “The decision to extend MTC’s contract at Rainsbrook was made in November 2019, more than a year before the Urgent Notification was invoked. “As Ofsted noted, many of the issues that led to this were exacerbated by the pandemic. We will formally respond to the committee’s report in due course.”