Asked by: Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the timetable is for the implementation of the bovine Tuberculosis eradication strategy for England.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government is currently considering the proposals set out in the recommended bovine TB control strategy for England.
The department will continue to work closely with farmers, vets, scientists and industry partners to move swiftly from recommendations to implementation through a series of rolling three to five-year delivery plans.
The first delivery plan will be published in due course and will set out the first timetable for implementation of the strategy's recommendations.
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.
Asked by: Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate his Department has made of the number of prisoners serving standard determinate sentences for (a) domestic abuse-related offences, (b) sexual offences and (c) child sexual offences who are eligible for the Government’s early release scheme in accordance with the Sentencing Act 2026.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will now deliver a more sustainable solution to the prison capacity crisis we inherited, including through the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send people to custody in order to keep the public safe. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.
The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences. Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now.
Public protection and victims’ interests were central considerations throughout the development of the Sentencing Act 2026 reforms. That is why, once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community.
All offenders will remain on licence until the end of their sentence, and where an offender breaches their licence conditions, probation has a full suite of options available, including recall to custody. We are also introducing restriction zones for the most serious sexual and violent offenders where appropriate, enforced through electronic monitoring. The Government is investing up to ÂŁ700 million in probation and community services by 2028/29, including recruiting at least 1,300 additional trainee probation officers and expanding tagging capabilities, to ensure the Probation Service has the capacity and tools it needs to manage offenders safely in the community.
Victims who are eligible for and have opted into the Victim Contact Scheme will continue to be notified of an offender’s release and may make representations regarding licence conditions, including exclusion zones and non-contact conditions.
It is not possible to estimate sufficiently accurately the number of future releases because of the uncertainty of the volume of eligible offenders who will be sentenced to prison in the near future nor can we estimate any added days for bad behaviour committed which will determine their release point. The Ministry of Justice routinely publishes Accredited Official Statistics on prisoner releases as part of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly (OMSQ) publication.
Asked by: Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential risk to victims of (a) domestic abuse-related offences, (b) sexual offences and (c) child sexual offences arising from the reduction of automatic release points for standard determinate sentences.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will now deliver a more sustainable solution to the prison capacity crisis we inherited, including through the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send people to custody in order to keep the public safe. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.
The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences. Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now.
Public protection and victims’ interests were central considerations throughout the development of the Sentencing Act 2026 reforms. That is why, once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community.
All offenders will remain on licence until the end of their sentence, and where an offender breaches their licence conditions, probation has a full suite of options available, including recall to custody. We are also introducing restriction zones for the most serious sexual and violent offenders where appropriate, enforced through electronic monitoring. The Government is investing up to ÂŁ700 million in probation and community services by 2028/29, including recruiting at least 1,300 additional trainee probation officers and expanding tagging capabilities, to ensure the Probation Service has the capacity and tools it needs to manage offenders safely in the community.
Victims who are eligible for and have opted into the Victim Contact Scheme will continue to be notified of an offender’s release and may make representations regarding licence conditions, including exclusion zones and non-contact conditions.
It is not possible to estimate sufficiently accurately the number of future releases because of the uncertainty of the volume of eligible offenders who will be sentenced to prison in the near future nor can we estimate any added days for bad behaviour committed which will determine their release point. The Ministry of Justice routinely publishes Accredited Official Statistics on prisoner releases as part of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly (OMSQ) publication.
Asked by: Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department provides dedicated guidance on minimum rehabilitation requirements for prisoners in custody serving standard determinate sentences for (a) domestic abuse-related offences, (b) sexual offences and (c) child sexual offences.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Rehabilitative interventions are determined for each offender based on their specific needs and offending profile as part of sentence planning. There is no dedicated guidance on minimum rehabilitation requirements specifically for the offence types listed.
In custody, a range of interventions are delivered to support rehabilitation, including Accredited Programmes which are designed to target the underlying factors that can lead to offending by building skills and methods that can help improve decision making, problem solving, and self-management and regulation of emotions. Accredited Programmes are targeted at individuals assessed as presenting a medium or higher risk of reoffending with the targeted risks, as evidence indicates they are most effective for this group.