Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the numbers of electronic GPS tags available for prisoners on early release.

The government has invested £156 million to expand the use of electronic monitoring (EM) and build the evidence base for the effective use of the technologies. The majority of our expansion projects are on post-custody licence.

The Department works with EM equipment providers to ensure sufficient equipment is available across the justice system to support forecast caseload projections. This includes the use of GPS tags to monitor those released under the ECSL scheme where necessary and proportionate to help support their reintegration into the community. The Lord Chancellor announced on Monday 16th October that the number of GPS tags available to the sentencers will be doubled to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to monitor offenders’ compliance with sentences served in the community where ordered by the court.