Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many whole life orders were handed down by courts in England and Wales in each year between 2021 and 2025.

The Ministry of Justice publishes Accredited Official Statistics on sentencing outcomes including life sentences, in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, which can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.

These data are based on the Court Proceedings Database. However, it is not possible to separately identify life sentences that carry a whole life order. This information may be held within court records but to examine individual court records would be of disproportionate costs.