Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the extension to custody time limits on the number of people being held in pre-trial custody.

The most recently publicly available data on the remand population covers the period to 30 September 2020 and therefore would not demonstrate any potential effect of the extension to custody time limits.

CTL extensions are being routinely granted amongst those who were remanded before the SI came into force. As such the changes will not necessarily lead to a substantial increase in the remand population. However, the MoJ and HMPPS will continue to assess any anticipated impacts to effectively manage the number of prison places available.