Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will publish its data on the average time spent out of cell in each prison in England and Wales.

The information requested for adult prisoners is not held by the Ministry of Justice as collecting it would require the detailed monitoring of cell activity in each prison establishment.

There is no central mandate which governs the amount of time that prisoners should spend out of their cells. Governors are instead afforded the flexibility to deliver balanced regimes that maintain an appropriate level of time out of cell on a range of activities, including association, which meet the needs of the establishment’s population.

HMPPS has introduced a Regime Dashboard which reports the percentage of prisoners receiving different levels of regime each week. We are further developing this to align to future regimes. A performance metric has also been introduced to hold prisons to account on their levels of regime delivery. Data from this are scheduled for publication in July 2023.