Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 7 June 2023 to Question 187087 on Prison Accommodation, for what reason it is not practicable to collect data on time out of cell for each prison in England and Wales.

Prison governors set a regime for each day specifying when prisoners will ordinarily be unlocked. There will be occasions, however, when certain prisoners will remain in their cell during these times. Reasons for this will include illness, being over retirement age, the management of operational incidents, and other operational reasons such as staff needing to be deployed to other duties.

There will also be occasions where prisoners will be out of cell at times when they are scheduled to be locked in, for example to attend medical appointments at hospital, a late arrival from court, or a transfer between prisons.

To accurately record the amount of time prisoners spend out of cell, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) would therefore be required to record information for each individual prisoner, taking into account their unique movements on a daily basis.