Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in which prisons the end of custody supervised licence scheme (a) is operational and (b) has been since October 2023.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Unlike Labour’s End of Custody License scheme which ran from 2007 to 2010, End of Custody Supervised Licence only operates in specific prisons where it is absolutely necessary. The number of prisons where it is in operation is reviewed constantly and therefore varies as required.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether (a) domestic abusers and (b) stalkers are ineligible for release under the end of custody supervised licence scheme.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Nobody convicted of serious violence will be released early and anyone convicted of any sexual or terror offence is automatically excluded. Unlike Labour’s End of Custody Licence scheme, which ran from 2007 to 2010, all offenders who may be eligible for release will be subject to the same set of licence conditions that would apply had they been released automatically.

Those licence conditions will reflect the risk management release plan prepared by probation staff and what is necessary to safely manage the offender in the community. The offender can be immediately recalled to prison if they do not comply or otherwise behave in a way that is assessed to be putting the public at risk.

In contrast to Labour’s approach, we have introduced an additional safeguard, whereby it remains at the discretion of the prison service to block the ECSL release of any prisoners where releasing an offender earlier presents a heightened risk than if they were released at their automatic release date.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for which types of offences prisoners released under the end of custody supervised licence scheme were sentenced.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) allows certain lower-level offenders to be released before their automatic release date. Unlike Labour’s scheme, which ran from 2007 to 2010, all offenders will be released onto strict licence conditions.

Nobody convicted of serious violence will be released early and anyone convicted of any sexual or terror offence is automatically excluded. In contrast to Labour’s approach, we have also introduced an additional safeguard, whereby it remains at the discretion of the prison service to block the ECSL release of any prisoners where releasing an offender earlier presents a heightened risk than if they were released at their automatic release date.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners have been released under the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) began in October 2023, and an analysis of its use will be based on one year’s worth of data and published on an annual basis in line with other statistics, such as deaths of offenders in the community.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison cells have been built in each year since 2010, broken down by cell type.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

As some cells hold more than one person, the operational capacity of the prison estate is best understood by the number of places rather than number of cells, and this is how data is recorded by HMPPS.

The below table provides a summary of the number of prison places which have opened in each year since 2010, broken down into Adult Male, Female and CYPSE (Children and Young People’s Estate). Please note that, for simplicity, all places relating to a prison opening are included in the year that the prison opened. In practice, a new prison may take more than a year before reaching its final operational capacity.

We continue to push ahead with the largest prison expansion programme since the Victorian Era – with 10,000 of the pledged 20,000 additional places to be delivered by the end of 2025.

We have also put in place short-term measures across the prison estate to expand capacity by the equivalent of around 2,000 places since September 2022, through doubling up cells and delaying non-urgent maintenance work where safe to do so. Thousands of places are also being created through the expansion of prisons through additional house blocks and major refurbishments at existing prisons and we are rolling out Rapid Deployment Cells across the estate, with c.590 already delivered at eleven sites.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress his Department has made on providing 20,000 additional prison places by 2025.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

We are delivering 20,000 additional, modern prison places, the largest prison build programme since the Victorian era, ensuring the right conditions are in place to rehabilitate prisoners, helping to cut crime and protect the public.  So far, c.5,900 additional places have been completed. This includes our two new c.1,700 place prisons, HMP Five Wells, which opened in 2022 and HMP Fosse Way, which opened last year. It also includes, among others, c.590 Rapid Deployment Cells (RDCs) now in place across 11 sites.

There was no commitment to deliver 20,000 additional prison places by 2025. By the end of 2025, we are on track to have delivered around 10,000 places in total. This will include our third new prison, HMP Millsike, delivering c.1,500 places, new houseblocks at HMPs Stocken and Rye Hill, as well as hundreds more RDCs.

We have secured outline planning permission for our fourth new prison, near the existing HMP Gartree in Leicestershire, and for our fifth new prison, near the existing HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire. We will now seek to deliver those new places as quickly as possible.

We are continuing to push ahead with further options to deliver capacity across the estate, including looking at all options for accelerating timelines.