Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent estimate she has made of the annual cost to the public purse of people serving imprisonment for public protection sentences.

It is right that the sentence was abolished. The Government is determined to make further progress towards a safe and sustainable release for those serving the IPP sentence, but not in a way that impacts public protection.

For 2022/23, the average Overall Resource Expenditure cost per prisoner was £51,108. The annual cost for IPP prisoners is not collected or published.

To improve the prospects of release for the unreleased cohort of IPP Prisoners, we published the updated IPP Action Plan on 15 November 2024. The Updated Plan puts stronger emphasis on effective frontline delivery in our prisons ensuring that those serving IPP sentences have a sentence plan tailored to their needs, and that they have access to the right interventions or services to address their offending behaviour.