Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what support is available to help ex-offenders reintegrate into communities in high deprivation areas.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Effective resettlement of prison leavers is crucial to reduce reoffending. This includes making sure someone has a home, family links where appropriate, access to healthcare, a job or education, and timely access to benefits where needed.
Community probation practitioners coordinate each individual’s rehabilitation, taking an individualised approach to ensure all prison leavers are connected with the right local support. They work closely with pre-release teams and local services, including through prison-based and commissioned rehabilitative services, to enable effective reintegration back into the community.
To support this, the Government is committed to ensuring robust pre-release plans are in place, identifying and putting support in place to address individuals’ needs before release.
This support includes HMPPS’s Community Accommodation Service Tier 3, which provides up to 12 weeks of temporary housing for those at risk of homelessness on release, offering a stable base to support reintegration. Additionally, we’ve launched regional Employment Councils that bring together businesses, probation, and the Department for Work and Pensions to help prison leavers into work - a key factor in reducing reoffending by up to nine percentage points.
Asked by: Jess Brown-Fuller (Liberal Democrat - Chichester)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to reduce delays in processing times for deputyship applications by the Court of Protection.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
HMCTS is working to increase overall system capacity to decrease processing times across all types of applications. Measures taken include a targeted action plan to allocate additional administrative resources in response to higher demand, as well as training and upskilling new staff. Additional judicial sitting days have been added to support performance improvement. HMCTS has also adopted new digital systems, including an updated case management system, to help reduce overall end-to-end processing times.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 February 2025 to Question 29554 on Prison Accommodation, how many prison places were created as a result of crowding between (a) May 1997 and (b) 2010.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The previous Labour Government added nearly 28,000 places to the prison estate between 1997 and 2010. However, available records do not provide a breakdown for these figures of these places by category. It is therefore not possible to provide the number of places created through crowding.
Prison crowding data is published annually in Annex 2 of the HMPPS Annual Digest, April 2024 to March 2025 - GOV.UK. This publication provides the percentage of prisoners held in crowded accommodation in each year in each prison since 1999. There is no earlier information on crowding available.
This Government is delivering the largest expansion of prison places since the Victorian era – with 2,500 new spaces already delivered and 14,000 on track for delivery by 2031.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of prison education contracts in reducing reoffending rates.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice recognises the vital role prison education plays in reducing reoffending. Evidence shows that prisoners who engage in any form of education while in custody are up to nine percentage points less likely to reoffend.
To strengthen outcomes, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service will soon launch new Prisoner Education Service contracts which will have clearer specification of high-quality delivery, screening and assessment and providing support for additional learning needs.
An evaluation and monitoring strategy is being developed to assess the effectiveness of these contracts, including their impact on reoffending. This will help build a robust evidence base to inform future improvements and ensure the service delivers on its rehabilitative aims.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to expand (a) literacy and (b) numeracy support for prisoners who enter custody with low basic skills.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Too many prisoners enter into custody with significant gaps in their education and low levels of literacy and numeracy. Improving prisoners' functional skills is a key priority for both HMPPS and the Ministry of Justice as strong foundational skills are vital for rehabilitation.
HMPPS has introduced whole-prison strategies to strengthen literacy and numeracy, and this is supported by Heads of Education, Skills and Work who bring expertise of education into prisons. Participation in English and maths functional skills has increased across public prisons and the number of prisoners achieving a full or partial grade in functional skills courses increased by 21% in the year to 31 March 2024.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of property condition on the (a) capacity and (b) safety of the (i) prison and (ii) courts estate.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice prioritises maintenance funding for both the HMCTS and HMPPS estates to make sure buildings are safe, secure, meet statutory requirements and protect continuity of service.
The condition of HMCTS and HMPPS properties is routinely monitored and any faults or safety concerns are resolved as soon as practicable.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were remanded into electronically-monitored court bail by magistrates' courts in each year between 2018 and 2024; how many of those were (a) later found not guilty and (b) had charges not proceeded against; and what the (i) median, (ii) mean and (iii) 90th percentile for time on electronically-monitored remand was for people (A) found not guilty of charges for which remanded and (B) not proceeded against.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of those remanded in custody and bailed together with details of the final sentence at criminal courts in England and Wales in the remands data tool. This can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
However, data held centrally does not include information on the time a person spent on remand in prison.
Data on the number of remand prisoners in each prison in the HMPPS estate is routinely published within the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly (OMSQ): Offender management statistics quarterly - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were remanded into prison custody by Crown Courts in England and Wales in each year from 2018-2024; of these people, how many were guilty but given a non-custodial sentence; and what was the (a) median, (b) mean and (c) 90th percentile for time on remand in prison for those found guilty and given non-custodial sentences.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of those remanded in custody and bailed together with details of the final sentence at criminal courts in England and Wales in the remands data tool. This can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
However, data held centrally does not include information on the time a person spent on remand in prison.
Data on the number of remand prisoners in each prison in the HMPPS estate is routinely published within the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly (OMSQ): Offender management statistics quarterly - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were remanded into prison custody by Crown Courts in England and Wales in each year from 2018 to 2024; of these people, for each year how many were guilty and sentenced to immediate custody; and for each year, what was the (a) median, (b) mean and (c) 90th percentile for time on remand in prison for those found guilty and sentenced to immediate custody.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of those remanded in custody and bailed together with details of the final sentence at criminal courts in England and Wales in the remands data tool. This can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
However, data held centrally does not include information on the time a person spent on remand in prison.
Data on the number of remand prisoners in each prison in the HMPPS estate is routinely published within the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly (OMSQ): Offender management statistics quarterly - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were remanded into prison custody by Magistrates' Courts in England and Wales in each calendar year from 2018 to 2024; of these people, for each year how many were not guilty of charges for which remanded or not proceeded against; and what was the (a) median, (b) mean and (c) 90th percentile for time on remand in prison for those not guilty of charges for which remanded or not proceeded against for each year.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of those remanded in custody and bailed together with details of the final sentence at criminal courts in England and Wales in the remands data tool. This can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
However, data held centrally does not include information on the time a person spent on remand in prison.
Data on the number of remand prisoners in each prison in the HMPPS estate is routinely published within the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly (OMSQ): Offender management statistics quarterly - GOV.UK.