Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many and what proportion of Parole Board recommendations to move prisoners (1) serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence, and (2) serving a life sentence, to open conditions were rejected in each month in 2025.

For many years the Secretary of State has asked the independent Parole Board for advice on whether a prisoner serving an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) or a life sentence is suitable for transfer to open conditions. Where the Parole Board recommends that a prisoner is so suitable, the Secretary of State is not bound to accept the recommendation, and it is the Secretary of State who is ultimately responsible for determining whether a life or IPP prisoner is safe to be managed in an open prison.

The following tables provide the number and proportion of recommendations made by the Parole Board which were rejected in each month in 2025 for prisoners serving (1) an IPP sentence and (2) a life sentence.

Table 1: Outcomes of consideration of IPP open condition recommendations

Table 2: Outcomes of Consideration of life sentence open condition recommendations

1. These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Data have been provided for the period 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025 to align with the publication of the Parole Board’s data on recommendations for open conditions.

Public protection remains the priority and prisoners will only be approved for a move to open conditions if it is assessed that it is safe to do so.