Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of trends in the number of staff in the Prison and Probation Service working from home on the (a) time taken to process cases and (b) quality of service provision.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) offers hybrid working arrangements where business need allows. This is an informal, non-contractual form of flexible working that blends working from a staff member's base location, different MoJ sites and / or from home. Arrangements are agreed between staff members and their line managers and subject to regular review. Some roles, such as those which are prison-based or require direct supervision of people on probation, will not be suitable for hybrid working.

The MoJ routinely publishes a range of data on service delivery in both prisons and probation at https://data.justice.gov.uk/prisons and https://data.justice.gov.uk/probation.