Prisoner Early Release

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

Can the Minister tell us the projected number of rapists and child groomers who will be released, and over what period? Are we expecting hotspots around the country?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

What is important is that we get the numbers right. While we are here today, our incredibly hard-working and talented staff in our offender management units are working out the release dates of a large number of people who are currently in prison. We have already stated that we think, as part of our impact assessment, that there will be 7,500 prison place savings, but there is more work to be done. We have a quarterly update that we publish, and that is where this sort of information goes. But the most important thing throughout all this is that we cannot run out of prison places. We need to make sure we do this safely, with great communication with victims, but we need to make sure we do not run out of prison places again.