Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 21 October 2019 to Question 550 on Prisons: Fires, why the number of referrals for fire related events in prison is not held centrally.

The department records all fires in prison on an electronic national database that comprises information specific to the circumstances surrounding each individual event. As part of this, prison fire-related referrals to the police are recorded and are held centrally by HMPPS. However, as confirmed in the response to 550, Crown Prosecution Service referrals are not held centrally by HMPPS because such referrals are made by the police. The requested data may, therefore, be held by individual police forces.