Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers working in Welsh prisons declared as Welsh-speaking using the Welsh language question introduced to Ministry of Justice systems in 2023, in (a) March, (b) June, (c) September and (d) December 2025, by prison in Wales.

The below table shows the headcount of Band 3-5 officers who have reported that they are Welsh speakers on the Department’s HR database:

~ denotes suppressed values of 2 or fewer. Low numbers are suppressed to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018.

Whether staff can speak Welsh is a self-reported variable, with the vast majority of staff not reporting this information, so the true numbers of Welsh speakers are likely to be higher.