Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his department has made of the potential impact of a) being a peer mentor, or b) having a peer mentor, on reoffending rates.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Reducing reoffending is a top priority for this Government. Our approach is led by evidence on what works to support offenders in turning away from crime, focusing on addressing the underlying needs linked to offending behaviour, including housing, employment and education, substance misuse treatment, family ties and improving personal skills and behaviours.
Peer mentoring already plays an important role in supporting rehabilitation within prison and probation services. It is used in various ways, including providing lived experience insights into probation requirements and direct one-to-one mentoring. Some peer-led services are also delivered by external organisations, further supporting rehabilitation efforts. Overall, there is national variation in delivery of peer-led services.
While there is external evidence that peer mentoring can be beneficial, there is currently no centrally collated data on how many people in custody have served as a peer mentor or had access to one over the last 10 years.
A recent study by HMPPS (Ministry of Justice, 2024, Education, Skills, and Work, Peer Mentoring in Men’s Prisons, Ministry of Justice Analytical Series) found that peer mentoring can positively influence inmates' engagement with educational programmes and enhance their skills, as well as improving staff/prisoner relationships.
Every prison has been encouraged to deliver peer mentoring as part of the prison regime. This will help embed peer support across the custodial estate, promoting rehabilitative engagement and enhancing prisoners’ access to mentoring opportunities and supporting.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners have a) served as a peer mentor and b) had access to a peer mentor, in each of the last 10 calendar years.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Reducing reoffending is a top priority for this Government. Our approach is led by evidence on what works to support offenders in turning away from crime, focusing on addressing the underlying needs linked to offending behaviour, including housing, employment and education, substance misuse treatment, family ties and improving personal skills and behaviours.
Peer mentoring already plays an important role in supporting rehabilitation within prison and probation services. It is used in various ways, including providing lived experience insights into probation requirements and direct one-to-one mentoring. Some peer-led services are also delivered by external organisations, further supporting rehabilitation efforts. Overall, there is national variation in delivery of peer-led services.
While there is external evidence that peer mentoring can be beneficial, there is currently no centrally collated data on how many people in custody have served as a peer mentor or had access to one over the last 10 years.
A recent study by HMPPS (Ministry of Justice, 2024, Education, Skills, and Work, Peer Mentoring in Men’s Prisons, Ministry of Justice Analytical Series) found that peer mentoring can positively influence inmates' engagement with educational programmes and enhance their skills, as well as improving staff/prisoner relationships.
Every prison has been encouraged to deliver peer mentoring as part of the prison regime. This will help embed peer support across the custodial estate, promoting rehabilitative engagement and enhancing prisoners’ access to mentoring opportunities and supporting.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his department will publish the average time-in-role for prison governors in each of the last 10 calendar years.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The latest published HMPPS workforce statistics covers the period up to 30 September 2025 so the latest calendar year available is for 2024. Figures showing the average length of time spent in post for public sector prison governors in England and Wales as at 31 December 2015 to 2024 and 30 September 2025 are given in the table below.
The figures relate to the governing governors’ time in the role they were in on the given date only and exclude previous governor service. In addition, figures do not include deputy governors temporarily covering a governing governor role.
Table 1 - Average (mean) length of service (in years) of governors in the public sector prison role they were in on the given date, as at 31 December 2015 to 2024, and as at 30 September 2025.
Date | Average years (mean) |
31 December 2015 | 2.2 |
31 December 2016 | 2.0 |
31 December 2017 | 2.3 |
31 December 2018 | 2.3 |
31 December 2019 | 2.3 |
31 December 2020 | 2.7 |
31 December 2021 | 2.8 |
31 December 2022 | 3.1 |
31 December 2023 | 2.7 |
31 December 2024 | 2.9 |
30 September 2025 | 2.7 |
Notes:
1. Figures show average length of service of the prison governor role on the given date.
2. Figures relate to governing governors only (band 10-11) and do not include deputy governors temporarily covering the role.
3. The number of governors and prisons change over time, as vacancies arise and as prisons transfer between the public and private sector.
4. Each governor is only included once per given date, though it is possible to temporarily be governor of more than one prison at a time.
5. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time and is dependent on staff completing the details correctly. The database itself is dynamic and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, or are incorrect then these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate and may not match local data.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his department is taking to increase the autonomy of prison governors.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Government recognises the value of autonomy for governors and the innovation this can drive, whilst also balancing this with the level of central control to achieve consistency between prisons.
In 2023, HMPPS launched a framework for governor empowerment – the Free, Flex, Fixed (FFF) framework of operational policy. This clarifies the extent of governor freedoms and flexibilities to ensure that they are used to their full potential. It also provides an opportunity for governors to challenge areas of fixed policy and is a clear framework for increasing flexibility if agreed centrally.
Some examples of the flexibility set out in the FFF framework are: governors are free to recruit locally for roles other than prison officer and operational support grades; they have flexibility to vary regime beyond the mandated elements; they have freedom to decide how staff time is allocated; and they flexibilities within their local budgets, such as the number of staff at different grades, provided it is within their overall pay budget.
We will continue to review governor autonomy, looking at what we can do to support governors whilst maintaining value for money and national consistency. Regular HMPPS leadership meetings adopt a continuous improvement approach to finding new flexibilities and freedoms for governors. We will continue to update governors so that they are aware of how to access all their freedoms.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases of e-coli were reported in each individual prison in each of the last 10 calendar years.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Statistics on prisoners’ health are the responsibility of the NHS. I am informed that the figures that are collected do not indicate whether an illness or hospitalisation relates to unhygienic conditions or show the causes of illnesses linked to E-coli.
Arrangements are in place to ensure hygiene standards are maintained across the prison estate. These include regular monitoring and cleaning delivered through a combination of prisoner working parties and contracted cleaning services.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his department will provide the total number of prisoner days, aggregated across all prisoners, in which an individual prisoner with a disability received a) no time in open air and b) no time out of cell.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The information requested for adult prisoners is not held by the Ministry of Justice, as collecting data on time in and out of cell would require detailed monitoring of cell activity in each prison establishment.
PSI 75/2011 (Residential Services), which includes general guidance on time-out-of-cell, can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/residential-services-psi-752011.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his department will provide the total number of prisoner days, aggregated across all prisoners, in which an individual prisoner received a) no time in open air and b) no time out of cell.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The information requested for adult prisoners is not held by the Ministry of Justice, as collecting data on time in and out of cell would require detailed monitoring of cell activity in each prison establishment.
PSI 75/2011 (Residential Services), which includes general guidance on time-out-of-cell, can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/residential-services-psi-752011.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many a) reported illnesses or b) hospitalisations of prisoners in each of the last 10 calendar years have been partially or wholly attributed to unhygienic prison conditions.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Statistics on prisoners’ health are the responsibility of the NHS. I am informed that the figures that are collected do not indicate whether an illness or hospitalisation relates to unhygienic conditions or show the causes of illnesses linked to E-coli.
Arrangements are in place to ensure hygiene standards are maintained across the prison estate. These include regular monitoring and cleaning delivered through a combination of prisoner working parties and contracted cleaning services.
Asked by: Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what sanctions are provided for in the Public Office (Accountability) Bill in response to serious wrongdoing by police officers.
Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill creates four new criminal offences:
Failing to comply with the duty of candour and assistance;
Misleading the public;
Seriously improper acts; and
Breach of duty to prevent death or serious injury.
Police officers may be prosecuted for any or all of these.
The offences of failing to comply with the duty of candour and assistance and misleading the public have a maximum sentence of two years in prison.
The seriously improper acts offence has a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment. The breach of duty to prevent death or serious injury offence has a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment.
Asked by: Ben Goldsborough (Labour - South Norfolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his department is taking to reduce turnover rates of prison governors.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Enable Programme is a workforce transformation programme that aims to change how HMPPS trains, develops, leads, and supports its prison staff to ensure that they feel safe, supported, valued, and confident in their skills and ability to make a difference.
A key focus for the programme is to strengthen prison leadership and operational capability and build a quality pipeline of leaders for the future. To support this work Governor Succession Planning is managed via a National Talent Committee, that monitors tenure, identifies talent and considers succession in line with civil service rules. This senior multi-disciplinary team meet quarterly and are informed by internal management information, the leadership requirements of individual sites and the strengths of individual governors.