Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners who are biologically (a) male and (b) female are housed in prisons designated for the opposite sex.

As of 1 February 2026, there were seven prisoners on E Wing, the separate unit for transgender women at HMP Downview.

The information requested cannot be provided for the general female or male prison estates without breaching our legal obligations under data protection legislation. Where a request is made for statistical information and the total figure amounts to five or fewer, we must consider whether this would be likely to lead to the identification of individuals, and whether disclosure of this information would be in breach of our statutory obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Transgender women with birth genitalia and/or any history of violent or sexual offending cannot be placed in the general women’s estate except in exceptional circumstances, where an exemption has been granted by Ministers. No transgender women have received such an exemption under this Government.