Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what new contracts have been signed to deliver additional electronic tagging capacity for the temporary release scheme during the covid-19 outbreak.

We have been working with our existing suppliers to ensure we have the equipment required for the End of Custody Temporary Release (ECTR) scheme and have also signed two new contracts to deliver additional electronic tagging capacity.

An agreement was signed on 7^th April 2020 with Buddi Ltd and on 22^nd April 2020 with Attenti EM UK to provide 2000 electronic monitoring tags between them.

Both contracts are for 6 months duration with the provision to extend by a further 18 months if required. The services of these suppliers were contracted using the government’s existing Digital Marketplace G-Cloud framework and both have extensive UK and international experience in providing electronic monitoring technology.

We are considering alternative uses for tags not required for the ECTR scheme.