Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has had discussions with the Home Secretary on the proposal to extend the time that can be spent on release on home detention curfew from four and a half months before the halfway automatic early release point to six months.

In answer to your first question, the Secretary of State for Justice wrote to colleagues in the Domestic Affairs and the Union Committee on 11 March 2020 to inform them of the proposed changes to Home Detention Curfew (HDC).

In answer to your second question, HDC is the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. The proposed legislation did not make any change to who was eligible for HDC nor to the way in which the police are involved in the HDC process. It solely extended the maximum period a prisoner could be released on HDC and the impact on the police would have been minimal. However, we did notify the National Police Chiefs’ Council when planning to introduce the change.

The Lord Chancellor has decided that now is not the right time to proceed with the changes to HDC in the Statutory Instrument, given the department’s focus on the rapidly changing and unpredictable situation created by Covid-19.