Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he plans to hold discussions with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on his comments of December 2025 on the treatment of hunger-striking prisoners.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
No discussions are planned. We are confident that the measures in place to ensure proper care for prisoners who refuse food are in accordance with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Freedom From Violence and Abuse Strategy, published 18 December 2025, if she will take steps to ensure that the expansion of electronic monitoring for perpetrators of violence against women and girls does not automatically link the perpetrator to their previous residence when this could potentially be the survivor’s home.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Probation practitioners follow robust safeguarding practices when considering the use of Electronic Monitoring (EM). Practitioners assess the suitability of an offender’s proposed address covering who resides there, any safeguarding concerns, and proximity to victims. They will not recommend EM where it could increase risk e.g. imposing a curfew to an address that puts the occupants in danger. Informed consent from the main occupier is required for a curfew requirement. Enquiries must be made with police and relevant safeguarding agencies to inform a risk assessment before an EM curfew condition is proposed.
We will continue to expand EM for perpetrators of violence against women and girls, ensuring that public protection and victim safety will remain at the heart of decision making when determining whether to impose EM.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to make trauma-informed training mandatory for all criminal court staff by spring 2026.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We are rolling-out national trauma-informed training for HMCTS criminal court staff from spring 2026. Staff will be encouraged to undertake the training, particularly where their role involves regular interaction with witnesses and victims.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of job vacancies in key professions within his Department’s responsibilities, including contractor organisations.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Ministry of Justice has not undertaken a central assessment of trends in job vacancies across key professional groups. Workforce planning is devolved to individual business groups, which are responsible for assessing their own staffing requirements and monitoring vacancy levels in line with operational priorities. This includes oversight of contractor organisations supporting the department, who are similarly responsible for overseeing their own workforce needs. Through established governance and performance-management arrangements, the department maintains oversight to ensure that services continue to be delivered effectively.
However, the ONS publishes information on the number of vacancies from the Vacancy Survey. These headline accredited official statistics are published monthly on a rolling three-monthly basis at UK-level, by industry sector, and by size of business, as part of the ONS's Vacancies and jobs in the UK release.
Further insights into labour demand are provided in the ONS's Labour demand volumes by Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2020), UK dataset, which includes official statistics in development sourced from Textkernel data. These tables are published monthly and contain the number of online job adverts split by local authority and occupation (SOC 2020).
Be advised the ONS caution use of these alternative data sources because the data is not seasonally adjusted or directly comparable to their headline estimates.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of a centralised Probation service.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
A unified Probation Service operates throughout England and Wales, under the leadership of the Chief Probation Officer, who provides both professional guidance and system oversight for probation staff.
We recognise that probation works best when delivering in partnership, and Regional Probation Directors and their teams have significant flexibility to collaborate with local partner agencies. Examples of that local collaboration and innovation include joint delivery of Integrated Offender Management with police forces and co-commissioning of services for offenders with metro mayors.
The probation service needs investment and strong leadership – which we are delivering. It is our assessment that further structural changes at this time would be disruptive and detrimental.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which prisons have humanist pastoral support provided through prison chaplaincy services.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
We recognise and respect the right of prisoners to register and practice their faith or belief while in custody. Chaplaincy plays a critical and unique role in the work of prisons and the life of prisoners. It not only provides advice on faith and belief matters but also offers pastoral care regardless of an individual’s faith or belief, in support of HM Prison and Probation Service’s commitment to decency, safety and rehabilitation.
Specifically Humanist/Non-Religious pastoral support is available from chaplains at the following prisons:
Aylesbury
Bullingdon
Channings Wood
Dovegate
Durham
Frankland
Highpoint
Isis
Pentonville
Stafford
Wayland
Wormwood Scrubs