Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 9 April 2025 to Question 43038 on Prisons: Overcrowding, how many and what proportion of the Operation Safeguard police cells made available overnight were used.

Operation Safeguard is an important contingency measure used to ensure that the current demand on prison places does not cause undue disruption to Criminal Justice System partners. The first places were activated by the previous Government in February 2023.

Between 20 February 2023 – 4 July 2024, 86,561 Operation Safeguard police cells were made available overnight. Over the same period, there were 2,564 overnight uses of Safeguard.