Prison education and rehabilitation programmes have been hit by a government failure to tackle overcrowding, a Home Office minister has admitted.

Lord Falconer was responding to a question from Lord Hurd, a former Conservative home secretary.

Lord Hurd pressed the government on action to deal with the results of overcrowding in prisons.

Falconer replied that new sentencing proposals aimed at finding non-custodial alternatives to jail for non-serious and non-violent offenders has been trailed in the Queen's Speech.

But he admitted that the situation in prisons was below the government's desired standards.

Hurd asked how many prisoners were incarcerated in cells originally designed for one inmate.

And he wanted the figure for the number of convicts on the "churn" - being shunted around the country's jails as prisons overflowed.

Both, said the peer, were important factors in the disruption of prison education programmes.

The minister revealed that the number prisoners sharing in cells meant for one hit 15,000 in October 2002.

A figure three per cent above a Home Office target.

He also admitted that the number of prisoners moved up and down the country had risen - up from 5771 to 6358 over the year to October 2002.

While prisons required a "core curriculum" including basis skills, IT, preparation for work which lead to nationally recognised qualifications, insisted Falconer, overcrowding had an impact.

"The more people there are in prison, the harder it is to provide that," he conceded.

Lord Hurd, a former chair of the Prison Reform Trust, warned that unless overcrowding was tackled jails could become part of the problem not a part of the solution.

"If we go on like this, won't this often forgotten, but crucially important public service, our prisons, become not a part of the cure for crime but just nurseries for future crime?" he cautioned.