Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation’s report, A thematic review of the quality and effectiveness of probation services recovering from the impact of exceptional delivery models introduced owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, published on 25 February 2021, what steps he is taking to ensure that (a) remote supervision methods and (b) alternative delivery arrangements for accredited programmes and rehabilitation activity requirements are robustly evaluated based on their effectiveness and outcomes for different types of service user.

The Ministry of Justice is committed to ensuring suitable evaluation of the interventions that we use.

Officials are currently scoping potential research on offender supervision undertaken using a “blended” approach (that is, using a mixture of remote and face to face activity). In addition, my officials are exploring ways we can incorporate the alternative delivery formats used for accredited programmes during the pandemic into our strategies for future retrospective evaluations of affected accredited programmes. On the alternative delivery of rehabilitation activity requirements deployed during the pandemic, we have contacted CRCs and supply chain providers to capture good practice and learning and are planning more formal evaluation going forward.

We will be publishing a full action plan in response to the recommendations in Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation’s thematic report in due course.