Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the availability of places in the prison estate to safely accommodate those sentenced to custodial sentences by the courts.

This Government will always ensure that we have enough prison places for those sent to us by the courts and we continue to modernise the prison estate so that it delivers best value for the taxpayer.

We have a long term strategy for managing the prison estate which will provide more adult male prison capacity than we inherited from the previous Government. We also have a range of contingencies available to manage temporary or unexpected increases in the population.

We are expecting to open over 2,000 adult male prison places in the coming months, which include 1,250 new places at four new house-blocks. We are also building a new prison in Wrexham that will increase capacity by a further 2,100 places by 2017.

Taken together, these measures will enable us to accommodate safely those sentenced to custody by the courts.