Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to HM Prison Inspectorate's report entitled Independent, serious further offence review of Jordan McSweeney, published on 24 January 2023, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the findings of that report on the level of (a) excessive workloads and (b) staffing vacancies in the Probation Service in the London region.

The Probation Service has accepted the recommendations from the HM Probation Inspectorate Report following the serious further offence review of Jordan McSweeney and has an action plan in place.

Following the successful unification of the Probation Service for England and Wales, the Probation Service received an additional annual funding of £155 million. We have significantly increased staff recruitment and have exceeded trainee Probation Officer recruitment targets for 2020/21 and 2021/22, recruiting 1,007 and 1,518 trainees in respective years. The target for 2022/2023 is a further 1,500 trainees.

We are strengthening probation officer numbers so that we can reduce caseloads and focus on strengthening the probation officer’s relationship with those they supervise, thereby providing more consistent management and delivery of sentence plans, as well as better assessment and management of risk.