Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 February 2025 to Question 29554 on Prison Accommodation, how many prison places were created as a result of crowding between (a) May 1997 and (b) 2010.

The previous Labour Government added nearly 28,000 places to the prison estate between 1997 and 2010. However, available records do not provide a breakdown for these figures of these places by category. It is therefore not possible to provide the number of places created through crowding.

Prison crowding data is published annually in Annex 2 of the HMPPS Annual Digest, April 2024 to March 2025 - GOV.UK. This publication provides the percentage of prisoners held in crowded accommodation in each year in each prison since 1999. There is no earlier information on crowding available.

This Government is delivering the largest expansion of prison places since the Victorian era – with 2,500 new spaces already delivered and 14,000 on track for delivery by 2031.