Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of ex-army personnel who are serving a prison sentence for a minor offence in the most recent period for which figures are available.

In January this year, as part of our probation reforms we introduced a new tool which sees all new offenders entering prison asked if they have served in the Armed Forces. Prior to this information on ex-armed service personnel in prisons was not held centrally.

We intend to publish this information at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/offender-management-statistics-quarterly from January 2016, subject to appropriate quality assurance checks having been carried out.