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These initiatives were driven by Baroness Corston, and are more likely to reflect personal policy preferences.
Baroness Corston has not introduced any legislation before Parliament
Baroness Corston has not co-sponsored any Bills in the current parliamentary sitting
The National Health Service is making arrangements to ensure the care, support and safety of women through pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period to mitigate increased pressures on healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. NHS England and NHS Improvement have published a clinical guide for the temporary reorganisation of intrapartum maternity care to ensure the safety of mothers, babies and staff. To reduce the risk of infection, there are now restrictions on visitors in most hospitals and maternity units. Further, the Department is funding several studies researching the impact of COVID-19 on maternity and neonatal care to ensure rapid learning.
We have worked rigorously to make the app as privacy-conscious as possible, only collecting the data necessary to fulfil its epidemiological purpose and save lives. Security and privacy have been prioritised at all stages of the app’s development and we have drawn on expertise from across Government and industry to review our app’s designs.
Any user data collected centrally by the National Health Service will be held to the highest security standards. In addition to the continual monitoring, review and oversight undertaken by the NHS, we have consulted with the National Cyber Security Centre to review and supplement our processes. The app has been designed to calculate a user’s risk of infection using a heuristic model developed in collaboration with expert epidemiologists from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute. We have published an explanation of how the risk scoring algorithm works on the online only FAQ page of the NHS COVID-19 website. NHS doctors and scientists will continuously update the risk scoring algorithm to make it as accurate as possible.
The data collected supports the wider public health approach of manual contact tracing and testing. Anyone who has symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19, whether or not they are an app user, will be able to report those symptoms and get a test to find out if they have the virus.
As at 30 June 2019 (latest available data) no females and one male were in prison, having been committed to prison for non-payment of council tax.
On 31 March, this government announced that pregnant women and prisoners living on Mother and Baby Units will be considered for Release on Temporary licence on compassionate grounds during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of Friday 1 May, 21 pregnant women and prisoners with babies in custody have been released.
Issues have been identified with the data reported in the Accommodation and Employment annexes to the Community Performance Quarterly publication and this will be re-issued at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-update-to-june-2019 once these have been resolved.
A corrected version of HL111 will also be provided. We aim to have this issue resolved by the end of the month.
The accommodation status for all offenders released from custody, including those under National Probation Service (NPS), Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) supervision, and offenders on community sentences, has been published since July 2018. The latest publication can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-update-to-march-2019. The relevant table of data from this publication is attached for reference.
It is vital that everyone leaving prison has somewhere safe and secure to live, as a platform to access the services and support needed to make a fresh start. We have invested an additional £22 million per annum over the remaining life of the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) contracts to deliver an enhanced “Through-the-Gate” resettlement service to offenders leaving prison, to prepare them for release. Through the Government’s Rough Sleeping Strategy, we are also investing up to £6.4m in a pilot scheme to support individuals released from three prisons: Bristol, Leeds and Pentonville. Services have now commenced in all three areas, with the first individuals now being supported into accommodation following release. Subject to evaluation, we will use the lessons from the pilot to inform future provision of accommodation for all ex-offenders. Additionally, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service is working in collaboration with other Government Departments and interested parties to help to meet the accommodation needs for prisoners on their release.