Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress his Department has made on providing 20,000 additional prison places by 2025.

We are delivering 20,000 additional, modern prison places, the largest prison build programme since the Victorian era, ensuring the right conditions are in place to rehabilitate prisoners, helping to cut crime and protect the public.  So far, c.5,900 additional places have been completed. This includes our two new c.1,700 place prisons, HMP Five Wells, which opened in 2022 and HMP Fosse Way, which opened last year. It also includes, among others, c.590 Rapid Deployment Cells (RDCs) now in place across 11 sites.

There was no commitment to deliver 20,000 additional prison places by 2025. By the end of 2025, we are on track to have delivered around 10,000 places in total. This will include our third new prison, HMP Millsike, delivering c.1,500 places, new houseblocks at HMPs Stocken and Rye Hill, as well as hundreds more RDCs.

We have secured outline planning permission for our fourth new prison, near the existing HMP Gartree in Leicestershire, and for our fifth new prison, near the existing HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire. We will now seek to deliver those new places as quickly as possible.

We are continuing to push ahead with further options to deliver capacity across the estate, including looking at all options for accelerating timelines.