Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to remarks by Lord Stewart of Dirleton on 29 April (HL Deb col 1704), what are (1) the make-up, and (2) the objectives, of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) safety team, in relation to prisoners on IPP sentences in danger of self-harm.

HMPPS Safety Group supports the safety of all prisoners, and within the group, one member of staff focuses on IPP prisoners, which includes taking forward the safety actions identified in the IPP Action Plan.

Our refreshed IPP Action Plan, which will be published this summer along with our IPP Annual Report, now has a workstream dedicated to Safety with the main objective of supporting prisons to deliver safety improvements for those serving an IPP sentence.

Our primary focus is on raising awareness of the heightened risk of self-harm and suicide of IPP prisoners and we have developed an IPP Safety Toolkit to support prisons.

We will continue to monitor, analyse and share any changing or emerging trends in published IPP prisoner data with staff and to inform and update our guidance where appropriate.