Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners with at least one life sentence have been transferred to open prison conditions in each year since 2020, broken down by offence.

To answer the question would incur disproportionate cost as it would require a search of individual prisoner records. Centrally-collated data on prisoner transfers cover transfers between a predominant function closed prison and a predominant function open prison but does not distinguish instances of prisoner movements between a ‘closed’ wing and an ‘open’ wing where a prison has both types of function. Therefore, this would require a search of individual prisoner records.

Public protection remains the priority and prisoners will only be transferred to open conditions if it is assessed that it is safe to do so.