Asked by: Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the financial stability of the litigation funding sector, and whether introducing legislation to reverse the effect of R (on the application of PACCAR Inc and others) v Competition Appeal Tribunal and others [2023] UKSC 28 will increase systemic financial risk and volatility within that sector.
Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government has not carried out a formal assessment of the economic impact of the UK Supreme Court’s judgment in PACCAR on businesses, publicly funded bodies, or stability of the litigation funding sector. There is also no official estimate on the cost of defending and settling increased volumes of funder-backed litigation against public bodies. However, the Civil Justice Council carried out a thorough and holistic review of litigation funding which the Government has welcomed and has been used to inform our policy development in this area. The Council’s full report can be found here and its interim report and public consultation can be found here. Alongside the public consultation, the Council established both a core Working Group and Consultation Group to ensure a wide range of perspectives informed the development of its recommendations.
As announced via Written Ministerial Statement on 17 December 2025, we intend to legislate to implement the Council’s recommendations to mitigate the effects of the PACCAR judgment and introduce proportionate regulation of Litigation Funding Agreements (LFAs) when parliamentary time allows. The legislation will restore the availability of LFAs as a source of funding by clarifying that they are not Damages Based Agreements, and ensure there is a regulatory regime that protects those signing up to LFAs.
The new regulatory framework will take a balanced and holistic approach, with appropriate consideration for financial impacts on public bodies, implications for businesses, and wider economic factors. These will complement the existing safeguards preventing speculative and disproportionate litigation, such as the power in Part 3 of the Civil Procedure Rules for the court to dismiss any claim with no reasonable grounds. There are no current plans to introduce further measures beyond those announced on 17 December 2025 until we have considered the Council’s remaining recommendations in more detail.
We recognise the critical role third-party litigation funding can play in access to justice and in the attractiveness of England and Wales as a jurisdiction to resolve disputes, as well as the need to ensure that it works fairly and proportionately for all involved. We will outline next steps in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what safeguards they plan to introduce alongside legislation to reverse the effect of R (on the application of PACCAR Inc and others) v Competition Appeal Tribunal and others [2023] UKSC 28 to prevent speculative or disproportionate litigation that could negatively impact economic growth.
Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government has not carried out a formal assessment of the economic impact of the UK Supreme Court’s judgment in PACCAR on businesses, publicly funded bodies, or stability of the litigation funding sector. There is also no official estimate on the cost of defending and settling increased volumes of funder-backed litigation against public bodies. However, the Civil Justice Council carried out a thorough and holistic review of litigation funding which the Government has welcomed and has been used to inform our policy development in this area. The Council’s full report can be found here and its interim report and public consultation can be found here. Alongside the public consultation, the Council established both a core Working Group and Consultation Group to ensure a wide range of perspectives informed the development of its recommendations.
As announced via Written Ministerial Statement on 17 December 2025, we intend to legislate to implement the Council’s recommendations to mitigate the effects of the PACCAR judgment and introduce proportionate regulation of Litigation Funding Agreements (LFAs) when parliamentary time allows. The legislation will restore the availability of LFAs as a source of funding by clarifying that they are not Damages Based Agreements, and ensure there is a regulatory regime that protects those signing up to LFAs.
The new regulatory framework will take a balanced and holistic approach, with appropriate consideration for financial impacts on public bodies, implications for businesses, and wider economic factors. These will complement the existing safeguards preventing speculative and disproportionate litigation, such as the power in Part 3 of the Civil Procedure Rules for the court to dismiss any claim with no reasonable grounds. There are no current plans to introduce further measures beyond those announced on 17 December 2025 until we have considered the Council’s remaining recommendations in more detail.
We recognise the critical role third-party litigation funding can play in access to justice and in the attractiveness of England and Wales as a jurisdiction to resolve disputes, as well as the need to ensure that it works fairly and proportionately for all involved. We will outline next steps in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the cost of defending and settling increased volumes of funder-backed litigation against public bodies.
Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government has not carried out a formal assessment of the economic impact of the UK Supreme Court’s judgment in PACCAR on businesses, publicly funded bodies, or stability of the litigation funding sector. There is also no official estimate on the cost of defending and settling increased volumes of funder-backed litigation against public bodies. However, the Civil Justice Council carried out a thorough and holistic review of litigation funding which the Government has welcomed and has been used to inform our policy development in this area. The Council’s full report can be found here and its interim report and public consultation can be found here. Alongside the public consultation, the Council established both a core Working Group and Consultation Group to ensure a wide range of perspectives informed the development of its recommendations.
As announced via Written Ministerial Statement on 17 December 2025, we intend to legislate to implement the Council’s recommendations to mitigate the effects of the PACCAR judgment and introduce proportionate regulation of Litigation Funding Agreements (LFAs) when parliamentary time allows. The legislation will restore the availability of LFAs as a source of funding by clarifying that they are not Damages Based Agreements, and ensure there is a regulatory regime that protects those signing up to LFAs.
The new regulatory framework will take a balanced and holistic approach, with appropriate consideration for financial impacts on public bodies, implications for businesses, and wider economic factors. These will complement the existing safeguards preventing speculative and disproportionate litigation, such as the power in Part 3 of the Civil Procedure Rules for the court to dismiss any claim with no reasonable grounds. There are no current plans to introduce further measures beyond those announced on 17 December 2025 until we have considered the Council’s remaining recommendations in more detail.
We recognise the critical role third-party litigation funding can play in access to justice and in the attractiveness of England and Wales as a jurisdiction to resolve disputes, as well as the need to ensure that it works fairly and proportionately for all involved. We will outline next steps in due course.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the news story from the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales entitled The evolving response to ethnic disproportionality in youth justice, published on 19 December 2025, what recent assessment he has made of the trends in the level of adultification bias within youth justice decision making.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Ministry of Justice has not made an assessment of the impact of Islington’s changes to pre-sentence reports which the independent Youth Justice Board (YJB) included in its news story. We encourage YOTs to make full and effective use of pre-sentence reports in order to ensure judges make the most informed decision possible when sentencing a child.
Research commissioned by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) in 2021 highlighted that disproportionate outcomes for some ethnic groups persist, including more restrictive remand outcomes, fewer out-of-court disposals, and harsher court sentences, even when accounting for demographic and offence-related factors.
While these disparities cannot be attributed solely to adultification bias, evidence indicates that differential practitioner assessments can inflate the perceived reoffending risk for ethnic minority children, increasing the likelihood of disproportionate outcomes. Research commissioned by the YJB in 2024 found that pre-sentence reports for Black children gave less consideration to their health, life experiences and trauma than those for White children, which may contribute to Black children being viewed through a less safeguarding- and support-focused lens. However, the small sample size means these findings may not be representative.
The Government is clear that racial disparities within the youth justice system must be addressed. The YJB’s news story highlighted a number of issues, including poorer remand outcomes for Black and Mixed children even after accounting for offence severity. The Ministry of Justice is committed to tackling unnecessary custodial remands, and is currently developing a package of reforms to ensure that custody for children is only used as a last resort.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential implication for his policies of the news story from the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales entitled The evolving response to ethnic disproportionality in youth justice, published on 19 December 2025.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Ministry of Justice has not made an assessment of the impact of Islington’s changes to pre-sentence reports which the independent Youth Justice Board (YJB) included in its news story. We encourage YOTs to make full and effective use of pre-sentence reports in order to ensure judges make the most informed decision possible when sentencing a child.
Research commissioned by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) in 2021 highlighted that disproportionate outcomes for some ethnic groups persist, including more restrictive remand outcomes, fewer out-of-court disposals, and harsher court sentences, even when accounting for demographic and offence-related factors.
While these disparities cannot be attributed solely to adultification bias, evidence indicates that differential practitioner assessments can inflate the perceived reoffending risk for ethnic minority children, increasing the likelihood of disproportionate outcomes. Research commissioned by the YJB in 2024 found that pre-sentence reports for Black children gave less consideration to their health, life experiences and trauma than those for White children, which may contribute to Black children being viewed through a less safeguarding- and support-focused lens. However, the small sample size means these findings may not be representative.
The Government is clear that racial disparities within the youth justice system must be addressed. The YJB’s news story highlighted a number of issues, including poorer remand outcomes for Black and Mixed children even after accounting for offence severity. The Ministry of Justice is committed to tackling unnecessary custodial remands, and is currently developing a package of reforms to ensure that custody for children is only used as a last resort.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Gloucester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government (1) how many, and (2) what proportion of, prisoner leavers who were assessed as posing high or very high risk of harm were classed as homeless or rough sleeping at release between April 2024 to March 2025.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The information requested is set out in the table below:
Offenders assessed as high to very high risk of serious harm, released homeless or rough sleeping on first night of release, England and Wales, April 2024 - March 2025.
Risk of Serious Harm category | Releases from custody | Homeless, not rough sleeping | Rough sleeping | Homeless, not rough sleeping (%) | Rough sleeping (%) |
Very High | 2,765 | 20 | 330 | 0.7% | 11.9% |
High | 38,435 | 330 | 4,980 | 0.9% | 13.0% |
Total | 41,205 | 350 | 5,310 | 0.8% | 12.9% |
All prisoners at risk of becoming homeless and who are supervised by probation can be offered up to 12 weeks of basic accommodation on release by HM Prison and Probation Service with support to move to settled accommodation. This programme has been gradually rolled out nationwide since July 2021 and since then has supported over 23,100 prison leavers who would otherwise have been homeless. For those prison leavers and people on probation who present the highest levels of risk of harm, placements can be provided through our CAS1 Approved Premises provision.
Data caveats:
Data sourced from nDelius; while data has been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset, the possibility of errors cannot be eliminated.
To protect the disclosure of personal information of any individual, all cases within the tables are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.
Releases from custody include: releases following recall, releases following committal to custody for breach of post sentence supervision and releases at sentence expiry or post sentence supervision expiry.
Release on temporary licence (RoTL), releases where the individual is subject to same-day recall to custody, releases from unsupervised short sentences and releases both to and from Immigration Removal Centres are not included.
Where an offender has been released from custody more than once in the period, they will be counted once for each release, with the accommodation circumstance relevant at the time of that release.
In instances where an individual has had multiple releases on the same day, only one of the records is assessed. All other instances of the records are excluded.
Due to use of different inclusion criteria and data cleansing, the total volume of releases in this dataset will not necessarily match official statistics for total offender releases.
Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for government’s most important contracts, Data for July to September 2025, published on 25 December 2025, if he will provide a hyperlink to the contract performance information for the (a) Provision of Custodial Services and (b) PFI Contracted Estate Prison contracts.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The information requested is published and can be accessed at the following link: Prison and Probation Performance Statistics - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Gloucester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, for the period from April 2022 to March 2023, what proportion of people released from prison went on to reoffend; how many repeat offences were committed per reoffender on average; what was the total number of repeat offences; and what was the total number of repeat offences by custodial sentence length for (1) men, and (2) women.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
For the period from April 2022 to March 2023:
Adults released from a custodial sentence had a proven reoffending rate of 37.5%. Men released from custody had a reoffending rate of 36.9% and women released from custody had a reoffending rate of 46.0%.
The average number of reoffences per reoffender following release from custody was 5.18 for men and 6.78 for women.
The total number of reoffences was 80,293 for men and 9,718 for women.
Proven reoffending rates, average number of reoffences per reoffender, and the total number of reoffences by sentence length for men and women can be found in the attached Excel table.
Public protection is our priority so offenders out on licence face strict conditions such as being tagged and can be hauled back to prison if they break these rules. Since 2018, recalled offenders have doubled — a symptom of the prison crisis this Government inherited. That’s why we're reforming sentencing and building 14,000 extra places, to make sure punishment cuts crime, reduces reoffending and keeps victims safe.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Gloucester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people of each ethnic group were in prison as of 30 September 2025 by religion.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The information requested is set out in the attached table.
Please note that the figures in the table 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.
Where necessary, [c] has been used to suppress values of one or two to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further disclosure control may be completed where this alone is not sufficient. This could include the secondary suppression of zero values.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to his Department's press release entitled Battlefield tactics to inspire UK fight against prison drones, published on 16 January 2026, what proportion of the 1,712 drone incidents referenced resulted in prison officers intercepting and seizing contraband.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
We publish the number of drone incidents in prisons in England and Wales in the HMPPS Annual Digest. Data specific to the recoveries of illicit items cannot be disclosed for security reasons.
We are working hard to deter, detect and disrupt the use of drones to deliver contraband into prisons, which poses a major threat to prison security. In this 2025-26 financial year, we are investing over £40 million in physical security across 34 prisons. This includes circa £10 million on anti-drone measures such as secure windows and robust netting at 15 prisons.
Our approach is multi-faceted and includes physical security countermeasures, legislation, and working closely across Government, with law enforcement, the private sector, and international partners on this global issue. Due to operational sensitives, we are not able to discuss in detail the tactics used, as that would aid those seeking to exploit prison security.