Question to the Ministry of Justice:

What plans he has to increase the use of electronic tagging.

I am pleased to confirm to the Hon Gentleman that my Department completed the national roll-out across England and Wales of location monitoring GPS tags for adults in September last year. They have been well received by courts as an important additional tool to manage offenders in the community.

Building on this success, in November we began the phased roll out of GPS tags to under 18s. This will complete nationally in March this year.

To tackle offending fuelled by alcohol, we are introducing sobriety tags, increasing our electronic monitoring capabilities and our ability to manage offenders in the community effectively.