Lord Rennard

The National Audit Office is independent of the government.

Former Prime Ministers submit invoices to the Cabinet Office setting out their claims. This information is used by the Cabinet Office for auditing and assurance purposes and is made available to NAO.

Most of the claims are used to cover the salaries of the staff that work in the offices of the former Prime Ministers. These staff are not civil servants, and it would therefore not be appropriate for the Cabinet Office to publish any further detail.

The Public Duty Costs Allowance (PDCA) has a limit of £115,000 per year. The limit is reviewed annually and at the start of each Parliament; the government is currently in the process of reviewing the limit and will publish the outcome in due course.

There are no current plans to review the PDCA more widely.

The Public Duty Cost Allowance (PDCA) is not paid to support private duties, nor is it used for security purposes.

Further details about the PDCA are on gov.uk at the following web link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-duty-cost-allowance.

Annual payments are published in the Cabinet Office Annual Report and Accounts. The most recent report is available on gov.uk at the following web link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-office-annual-report-and-accounts-2022-23.

The government published details of its legislative programme alongside the King's Speech. We are committed to strengthening our democracy and upholding the integrity of elections, and our first step will be to ensure every legitimate voter is able to exercise their right to vote. We will consider the Electoral Commission report on the 2024 General Election when it is published in due course.

The government published details of its legislative programme alongside the King's Speech. We are committed to strengthening our democracy and upholding the integrity of elections, and our first step will be to ensure every legitimate voter is able to exercise their right to vote. We will consider the Electoral Commission report on the 2024 General Election when it is published in due course.

The Government has no plans to revise the franchise for any elections based on permanent residency.

As our manifesto made clear, the government will address the inconsistencies in voter identification that prevent legitimate electors from voting, specifically including veterans of HM Armed Forces. We are considering what changes we wish to make in order to achieve this and will bring forward proposals in due course.

The Electoral Commission is the independent electoral regulator and will be reporting on the administration of the May local elections and the recent General Election. We anticipate publication of their initial findings on voter ID in September, with their full election report expected later in the year. We are keen to see their findings and recommendations.

An independent regulator for elections is a cornerstone of a healthy functioning democracy. The Electoral Commission plays an important part in the UK’s democratic system, promoting public confidence in the democratic process and ensuring its integrity.

The Government is committed to strengthening our democracy and upholding the integrity of elections and will continue to review what interventions are necessary as part of this commitment.

As at 30 June 2024, prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales held 3,277 male and female prisoners serving sentences of one year or less.

Note:

The figure presented includes fine defaulters.

Data sources and quality

The figures in this table have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Source: Prison NOMIS

Please find below a breakdown of the sentenced female prison population by main offence group, as of the latest published population snapshot.

Table 1: Sentenced female prison population by main offence group, as at 31 March 2024

We have provided a table for the sentenced female population, but information on the female remand population [split by 'untried' and 'convicted unsentenced'] by offence group this can be found here: Prison-population-31-Mar-2024.ods (live.com).

We do not hold information on the number of children taken into care as a result of maternal imprisonment, however we are working to improve our understanding of the impact of maternal imprisonment on children. For example, on 18 July 2024 we published analysis looking into the number of parents in prison with children and the number of children with parents in prison. This analysis indicated that 55% of women in prison have children under 18 but did not show how many of these women had their children living with them before going to prison. We are also piloting prison-based children’s social workers in women’s prisons that support women with family court proceedings, parental rights and maintaining or strengthening family ties.

The adult prison population in England and Wales as of 31 December 2023 was 87,227. It is not possible to robustly estimate the proportion of the adult population of England and Wales this represented at that time, because population estimates beyond mid-2023 have not yet been published by the Office for National Statistics.

The Department and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service routinely monitor, and seek to learn from prison systems in other jurisdictions. This can include, among other areas, monitoring prison population data. We do not specifically benchmark our population data against any other jurisdictions.

The literacy and numeracy skills of all prisoners are assessed on entry to custody. Data on education participation in prison are published annually as official statistics in the Prison Education Statistics and Accredited Programmes in Custody publication. In 2022-23, prisoners took a total of 58,907 English initial assessments. 65 per cent of those prisoners in 2022-23 were at Entry Levels 1-3 in English (i.e., below the lowest GCSE grade).

All prisons now have a reading strategy, and we have published a national Reading Framework to support prisons in maintaining their strategy. HMPPS has introduced a Literacy Innovation Fund, to pilot two specialist reading and literacy projects across fifteen prisons, to offer education to prisoners at the lowest reading level. Literacy provision is a significant element of the core education offer, with all prisons offering functional skills qualifications in Literacy from Entry Level to Level 2.

As of 31 March 2024, the latest date for which we have figures, 76,869 British nationals were held in prison in England and Wales. The Ministry of Justice does not disaggregate data for Northern Ireland citizens. Data for 1 January in each of the past ten years up to 1 January 2024 are included in the attached table.