Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of people serving a sentence of imprisonment for public protection received a positive direction from the Parole Board for (a) release and (b) transfer to open conditions following a recall to custody in each of the last three reporting years.

The power to recall is a vital public protection measure. Where an offender serving an IPP sentence is recalled to custody, it is because the Probation Service has assessed that the offender’s risk has escalated to the point where the offender may no longer be safely managed in the community and has evidence that the offender’s behaviour is similar to the behaviour at the time of the offending which attracted the IPP sentence. This means that an IPP offender does not have to have committed a further offence to be recalled.

Successive thematic reviews conducted by HM Chief Inspector of Probation have found that the Probation Service is using recall appropriately and for public protection purposes.

Table 1: Number and Proportion of IPP Recalls Not Involving a Charge for a Further Offence, 2023-2025 [note 1]

With regards to the cost of Parole Board hearings relating to people serving an IPP sentence who had been recalled to custody having not committed a further offence, the data are not routinely available to provide a reasonable estimate, and the work to collate it could not be completed without incurring disproportionate costs.

Table 3: Number and proportion of Parole Board IPP recall review outcomes of release and open conditions from completed cases, 2022/23 to 2024/25 [note 2] [note 3]

Table 4: Number and proportion of Parole Board IPP recall review outcomes of release and open conditions from completed cases, where the offender was not facing a charge for a further offence, 2022/23 to 2024/25 [note 2] [note 3] [note 4]

We may not disclose the number of recalled IPP prisoners in custody as of 30 April 2026 as the data are a subset of data scheduled to be published at the end of July.

Table notes:

[note 1] The proportions are of total number of IPP recalls. An offender can be recalled multiple times in a year or across years.

[note 2] The outcomes are the final outcomes of each review and do not include intermediate decisions that were subsequently remade such as through reconsideration mechanism.

[note 3] Completed cases are cases that resulted in one of release, knockback and open conditions.

[note 4] Offenders not facing a charge of further offence are those who were not facing a charge of further offence at the point of their recall prior to the recall review.