Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of children annually affected by the imprisonment of a parent or main caregiver; and on what basis that estimate has been reached.

No recent annual estimate has been made of the number of children affected by the imprisonment of a parent or main caregiver. However, the Government acknowledges the importance of better data collection to further understand the prevalence and needs of prisoners with children and is committed to collecting more data centrally and using this to inform policy and improve our services.

Changes are currently being made to the Basic Custody Screening Tool to enable us to collect data on entry to prison about how many primary carers are in custody and how many children under the age of 18 are affected by their imprisonment. Once these changes are made, we will be able to collate this information centrally.