Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of retirements due to (a) ill health and (b) injury were taken by prison staff aged 60 or over in each of the last 12 quarters.

Information on the number of prison staff, aged 60 plus who left HMPPS due to ‘ill health retirement’ and the proportion they make up of all ‘ill health’ retirements is given in the following table. Figures are presented quarterly, from April 2020 to March 2023.

We work hard to keep all prison staff safe. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act has increased the maximum penalty to up to two years imprisonment for assaulting prison officers. A new Crime in Prisons Taskforce will improve evidence collection for serious assaults and will secure more effective prosecutions.

We also continue to roll out PAVA – a synthetic pepper spray – in the adult male estate to protect staff and prisoners from incidents of serious violence alongside SPEAR, a Personal Safety training package used to resolve and de-escalate incidents. More than 13,000 new body cameras have been rolled out to public sector prisons, ensuring every operational band 3-5 officer can wear one and capture high-quality evidence to support prosecutions against prisoners who commit assaults.

There is not a specific, centrally held, leaving reason for ‘injury’.

Table 1 Headcount of prison staff retirements due to ill health - aged 60 and over(1) - quarterly from April 2020 to March 2023

Notes:

1. Age as at time of leaving

~ denotes suppressed values of 2 or fewer or other values which would allow values of 2 or fewer to be derived by subtraction. Low numbers are suppressed to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 2018.