Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average caseload has been by region for a Victim Liaison Officer in each year since 2010.

The Government is carrying out a review of the Transparency of the Parole Board and victim support, which we expect will be concluded by Easter, when will set out our next steps.

We have already made good progress in making victim contact more compassionate, clearer and more informative, the ongoing review will ensure we improve services and better support victims.

The staffing budget dedicated to the Victim Contact Scheme has increased from £8.0 million to £9.6 million since the creation of the NPS in 2014 and the number of VLOs has increased nationally from 169 to 189 staff over the same period.

There has also been a significant increase in the number of administrative staff, from 47 to 76 posts, employed to support the work of VLOs, which has freed up VLOs so they can focus on better supporting victims.

The information requested by the hon Member for Leeds East, Richard Burgon, is not available. The current national victim’s database was only introduced in April 2016 and data migration of active cases from previous databases was not fully completed until February 2017.

Data currently held on the national victims’ database indicates that the average caseload by region for the last two years for a Victim Liaison Officer is as follows: