Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to manage prison population levels.

We continue to focus on the prison capacity challenge.

To meet rising demand, we are building c.20,000 modern, rehabilitative prison places – the biggest prison build programme since the Victorian era. We have already delivered c.5,900 of these, including through our two new 1,700 places prisons, HMP Five Wells and HMP Fosse Way, and c.590 Rapid Deployment Cells across 11 sites. By the end of 2025, we are on track to have delivered around 10,000 places in total.

On 11 March, I announced the next steps in our plan, to allow us to go further and faster in removing FNOs. This includes expediting prisoner transfers with our priority partners such as Albania and the creation of a new taskforce across the HO and MoJ to change the way we process FNO cases radically.

We have also put in place short-term measures across the prison estate to expand useable capacity, while ensuring our prisons remain safe for staff and offenders.

The Government will continue to monitor the evolving situation with demand for prison places carefully, so that we can make sure we have the right approaches in place to maintain the capacity required for a safe and effective criminal justice system.