Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the (a) adequacy of the starting salary of a probation officer and (b) the impact of that salary on recruitment.

In April 2021 we published to all Probation Service staff the first national Recruitment and Retention Strategy for the Probation Service.

We committed to recruiting 1,000 trainee probation officers by the end of 2020/2021. The HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) workforce quarterly statistics update, published on 20 May 2021, confirmed that we reached our target with a total of 1,007 trainees.

We remain committed to developing a fair and enduring reward package for Probation Service staff and hope to do so through agreement of a multi-year pay deal.

In recent years we have raised base salaries for many of our workforce, including probation officers, improving our offer for new entrants.