Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how working hours were spent by civil servants in the Ministry of Justice undertaking agreed staff network leadership roles or carrying out agreed activity requested by the Department in the past six months, and what is the average agreed allocation in hours per civil servant.
Answered by Jake Richards - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The information requested is not held centrally. Under the Ministry of Justice Staff Groups and Networks Policy 2026, staff network leaders may agree a time allocation, which should not generally exceed 10% of contracted hours (pro-rated).
Asked by: Richard Fuller (Conservative - North Bedfordshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many FTE equivalent staff in (a) their Department and (b) each Arm's Length Body it sponsors are dedicated to fulfilment of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED); what the (i) annual employment and (ii) total annual cost incurred is as a result of PSED and compliance with PSED for each of those bodies; what the outputs are from the work of PSED teams and personnel dedicated to PSED; and if they will publish an assessment of their Department's compliance with PSED.
Answered by Jake Richards - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is a statutory obligation that applies across the public sector. As a procedural duty to have "due regard" to equality considerations, compliance is an on-going responsibility rather than a one-off task. It is integrated into the day-to-day development and delivery of all policies and services; as such, it is a core responsibility of all civil servants across government, rather than being restricted to dedicated personnel.
Because it is a continuous, procedural duty applicable to all civil servants, it is impossible to disaggregate the specific fraction of time or cost dedicated solely to Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) compliance versus general policy and operational work. Attempting to calculate an FTE or cost figure would incur disproportionate cost and still be highly inaccurate.
Asked by: Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they intend to set out a policy on the suitability of accommodating biological males in the women’s prison estate.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The policy inherited by this Government is that no transgender woman charged with or convicted of a sexual or violent offence, or who retains birth genitalia, can be held in the general women’s estate, other than in exceptional circumstances and where granted an exemption by a minister. No such exemptions have been granted under this Government.
We are currently reviewing transgender prisoner allocation policy in light of the recently updated EHRC Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations, and will be able to say more on this shortly.
Asked by: Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of foreign nationals that might be identified because of the potential publication of data on foreign national offending between 2018 and 2024; and what assessment they have made of the potential impact of that publication on any foreign nationals identified.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice is in the process of appealing the Information Commissioner Officer’s decision to the First-tier Tribunal. It would be prejudicial to live proceedings to release any of the requested information.
Asked by: Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the costs associated with complying with the ruling by the Office of the Information Commissioner instructing the Ministry of Justice to publish data on foreign nationals’ offending between 2018 and 2024.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice is in the process of appealing the Information Commissioner Officer’s decision to the First-tier Tribunal. It would be prejudicial to live proceedings to release any of the requested information.
Asked by: Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is their current estimate of legal costs associated with litigation by the Ministry of Justice against the Office of the Information Commissioner regarding the publication of data on offences committed by foreign nationals.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice is in the process of appealing the Information Commissioner Officer’s decision to the First-tier Tribunal. It would be prejudicial to live proceedings to release any of the requested information.
Asked by: Lord Kempsell (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government who will sit on the panel for the Independent Review of the Prison System.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Work is ongoing to establish a panel to support the Independent Review, in line with the appropriate appointment process. The panel will comprise individuals with the relevant expertise and experience to support the Review’s consideration of the matters set out in its Terms of Reference. Details of panel member appointments will be confirmed in due course.
Asked by: Lord Banner (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of the current timescales for private rental sector landlords to obtain and enforce possession orders where justified; and what steps they are making to speed up the process.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly Mortgage and landlord possession statistics - Mortgage and landlord possession statistics - GOV.UK - which details the number of claims and the average time (mean/median) from claim to possession.
In 2025, the median average wait between claim and repossession by County Court bailiffs was 27 weeks and approximately 31% of the claims submitted required enforcement by County Court bailiffs.
Most possession claims do not require bailiff enforcement, as tenants vacate the property at various stages of the process and only a minority lead on to bailiff enforcement.
The timeliness of the enforcement of an order, where this is required, can be influenced by the actions of users and court. HMCTS is taking forward work to explore further improvements to bailiff recruitment and retention practices and to reduce administrative tasks for bailiffs to improve communications and efficiency.
Asked by: Lord Garnier (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential impact of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill on the functions of the intelligence and security services.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government has worked closely with the UK Intelligence Community and with the Intelligence and Security Committee to assess the impact of any measures on the functions of the intelligence and security services.
The Bill includes measures designed to ensure that sensitive information is handled securely and can be protected from inappropriate disclosure. This includes information related to the functions of the intelligence and security services.
As for all public authorities, there will be some limited costs for the intelligence and security services in preparing for the application of the duty and in adapting existing practice to meet its requirements. The Bill’s impact assessment sets out that the extent of ‘new’ costs in the support of these investigative processes is likely to be low.
The Government will continue to review the impact assessment of the Bill as the Bill is amended.
Asked by: Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to monitor the safety of release provisions in place for offenders serving custodial sentences for (a) domestic abuse-related offences, (b) sexual offences and (c) child sexual offences who are eligible for early release.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This Government is committed to strengthening public protection and ensuring the Probation Service has the tools and capacity it needs to keep communities safe and protect victims. We are investing £700m into probation and community services, recruiting 1,300 additional probation officers this year, and ensuring every prison leaver is tagged unless there is clear reason not to. We are delivering the biggest expansion of tagging in history, with thousands of offenders having their every movement tracked as well as investing £100m to expand our ability to monitor even more individuals in the community. These changes will significantly strengthen probation’s ability to monitor offenders in real time and intervene quickly where risk escalates or conditions are breached.
We are ensuring there is a robust regime of controls and punishment outside of prison, offenders may be controlled by a range of measures. This includes curfews, exclusion zones, requirements to live in a different part of the country to their victim, bans from spaces such as sport matches and pubs. This is designed to manage risk and restrict offenders’ movements as necessary.
Probation will apply additional licence conditions where appropriate to address the specific risks an offender presents – including victim-related conditions such as exclusion zones and no-contact requirements. We are also introducing tough new Restriction Zones which will restrict the movements of the most serious sexual and violent offenders to specific geographical areas where appropriate, so their victims know they are safe wherever else they want to go. These will be robustly monitored by electronic monitoring and provide probation with greater visibility of offenders’ movements and strengthen their ability to identify and respond to breaches at an early stage. Victims who are eligible and opted into the Victim Contact Scheme will be notified of an offender’s release, in line with existing practice and will continue to be able to make representations for licence conditions.
From September 2026, we are expanding the Domestic Abuse Perpetrators on Licence (DAPOL) scheme from 8 probation regions to all 12 across England and Wales from September 2026. This will give probation staff a greater ability to track hundreds of prison leavers who pose a threat to a former partner or their children.
We are also introducing Electronic Monitoring Data Insight (EMDI), a new tool allowing probation practitioners near real-time access to electronic monitoring information and GPS trail maps. This will help practitioners monitor compliance with licence conditions, identify emerging risks more quickly and make better-informed decisions and make better-informed decisions to support public protection.
We are extending and expanding a feasibility pilot in the South West of England to the North West and North East NHS regions pilot on the use of Medication to Manage Problematic Sexual Arousal (MMPSA) for sex offenders, which marks a vital first step towards a national rollout and is a wider intervention probation can use. We are also exploring the feasibility of mandatory or incentivised treatment.
Our CAS 1 provision, also known as Approved Premises, accommodates higher-risk prison leavers and people on probation. Approved Premises are temporary accommodation for public protection purposes in the community and are staffed 24 hours a day, operate a curfew, carry out mandatory drug testing, closely monitor licence conditions, and are covered by CCTV across all sites. They provide a high level of supervision in a controlled environment and are closely integrated with Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). This will allow continuous monitoring of the highest risk offenders as they transition from custody to the community.
Probation has a broad range of tools available when setting conditions or managing offenders safely in the community. These will be dependent on the specific risks posed by each offender and not all measures will be applied in every case. All offenders will remain on licence to the end of their sentence and where an offender breaches their licence conditions, probation have a full suite of options for managing this, including recall to prison.
All Ministry of Justice policies are routinely kept under review and statistics relevant to core policies will be published in the usual way to support public scrutiny.