Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent discussions he has had with His Majesty's Prison and Probations Service on the potential merits of using the Equalities Monitoring Tool to explore data on disproportionality in offender outcomes.

We recognise that race disparities persist in the Criminal Justice System, and we are committed taking a data-driven and evidence-led approach to enable us to address these disparities across the MoJ.

The Equalities Monitoring Tool enables us to do this, alongside other information that prisons hold to explain or take action to change unfair outcomes. This enables us to identify prisoner demographic trends and highlight disproportionality amongst ethnic and other protected characteristic communities.

Revisions are currently being considered to the tool which will show disproportionality in a more simple and easily interpretable way.