Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the press notice entitled Extra funding for organisations that steer women away from crime, published by his Department on 23 January 2021, how much his Department has spent on on building new prison places in existing women’s prisons since January 2021.

New places being delivered in the women’s estate will be delivered as part of our £3.8bn investment to deliver 20,000 prison places across England and Wales by the mid-2020s.

New facilities in the women’s prison estate will provide up to 500 extra places that are safe, secure, trauma-informed and gender-specific. We will also continue to invest in community-based interventions, to ensure women have an alternative to a custodial sentence where appropriate