Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prisoners who were given a life sentence (a) applied for and (b) were refused a resettlement licence in each of the last five years.

Temporary release can be a valuable tool in the resettlement of prisoners in the community but it must never take place at the expense of public safety. We conducted a fundamental review of the policy and practice of release on temporary licence (ROTL) after serious failures last year. We are introducing a system that enhances the assessment of serious offenders and restricts access to ROTL to cases where there is a clear, legitimate reason for the release. We have already introduced some of these changes and have additionally introduced a restriction on prisoners transferring to open conditions and having ROTL if they have previously absconded from open prisons; or if they have failed to return or reoffended whilst released on temporary licence.

Data on temporary release applications and the outcomes of such applications is not collected centrally and could not be provided except at disproportionate cost. Data on releases on temporary licence are published at the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-december-2013-and-annual

and

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statistical-notice-releases-on-temporary-licence-2012