Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 20 May 2019 to Question 254239, what estimate he has made of the cost of identifying how many children in custody are looked after children.

To obtain the requested information, there would be a need to examine separate information technology systems to establish and validate records of all children currently in custody (c.880). With a conservative average estimate of around ten minutes to check each record, this equates to a cost of approximately £3,600.