Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 15 December 2024 to Question 5054 on Prison Sentences: Foreign Nationals, what the evidential basis is for the calculation of the number of previous convictions of non-UK nationals in prison incurring a disproportionate cost.

A cost calculation was completed which reflects that there are over 350 nationality codes within the Ministry of Justice extract of the Police National Computer, and an individual can have multiple nationalities. Establishing which individuals are known not to be UK nationals from this data and identifying their criminal histories would have required bespoke investigation, coding and linkage to wider data.