Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of his Department's progress towards its target of increasing prison capacity.

This Government inherited a prison system in collapse. We have taken decisive action to put prison capacity on a sustainable footing and end the cycle of repeated crises.

We have committed to the largest expansion of the estate since the Victorians, investing £7 billion in building prison places between 2024/25 and 2029/30. We are on track to deliver 14,000 new prison places by 2031 with c. 2,900 delivered already under this Government.

On top of this, we have introduced landmark sentencing reforms to end our prisons crisis – and deliver punishment that cuts crime. On 2 September we introduced the Sentencing Bill to take forward most of the recommendations made by David Gauke’s Independent Sentencing Review, as well as the measures that go further to manage offenders in the community. The House of Lords committee stage was concluded on 3 December.