Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment has been made of the potential merits of using secure temporary accommodation units for low-risk offenders to ease pressures on the prison population.

As set out in the December 2024 10-Year Prison Capacity Strategy, we are committed to delivering an additional 14,000 prison places and are working to do so by 2031; we have already delivered around 3,300 of these since taking office.

As part of these plans, the Rapid Deployment Cells (RDC) Programme is delivering modular, self-contained accommodation on existing prison sites. These units are non-secure and designed for use by low-risk prisoners in the open estate and by risk-assessed prisoners in the Category C estate. Around 1,000 RDC places have been delivered across 20 sites, with a further 400 planned.

We currently have no plans to introduce secure temporary accommodation across the prison estate, as no suitable design yet meets the operational and security requirements for prison use. We continue to explore innovative approaches to increasing prison capacity and keep both temporary and permanent accommodation solutions under review