Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases remained unprocessed by the Parole Board on 1 (a) January, (b) April, (c) July and (d) October in (i) 2010, (ii) 2011, (iii) 2012, (iv) 2013 and (v) 2014.

The volume of Indeterminate Sentence Prisoners (ISP) cases to be reviewed on the dates requested is set out in the table below save that the figure for 1 July 2014 is not yet available:

The Parole Board is committed to working in an effective and efficient manner in order to reduce the backlog of outstanding cases. The Board is developing a new operating model in order to respond to the requirement to hold an increased number of oral hearings following the Supreme Court judgment in Osborn, Booth and Reilly. To support this work, we have increased the Parole Board’s resource allocation from £10.85m in 2013/14 to £13.8m in 2014/15.