Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of children with a parent in prison.

In the year ending October 2024, around 219,000 children were estimated to have a parent in prison in England and Wales. For too long, there has been no systematic mechanism to recognise children with a parent in prison, which is why we are testing how children can be recognised safely and connected to focused support.