Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when the Secretary of State for Justice intends to implement the ratio of personal responsibility for six prisoners being given to every prison officer, as stated during scrutiny of the Prisons and Courts Bill.

We want our prisons to be places where staff and offenders feel safe and where those in our care are challenged and supported to make the most effective use of their time in custody to best prepare them for release.

This is why we have committed to the introduction of the new Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) model will improve the way in which we case manage offenders through their sentence and on to release.

We have therefore invested £100m to boost the front line by 2,500 prison officers by the end of December 2018. These additional officers will enable us to rollout the OMiC model. The key worker model is currently being rolled out across the prison estate which started with 11 ‘pathfinder’ prisons, 4 of which have had sufficient numbers of new officers to commence their keyworker sessions.