Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the INQUEST report entitled Deaths of racialised people in prison 2015-2022: Challenging racism and discrimination, published on 12 October 2022, for what reason his Department's Safety in custody statistics do not disaggregate deaths in prison by the (a) category of death and (b) ethnicity of the prisoner; and if he will make it his policy to include such data in future.

Every death in custody is a tragedy and we continue to do all we can to improve the safety of prisoners. As the INQUEST report acknowledges, the number of deaths of prisoners from minority ethnic groups is not disproportionate to their representation in the prison population. All deaths are investigated thoroughly and impartially by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, which operates independently of the Ministry of Justice. Racism and discrimination are not tolerated in our prisons, and we take strong action to ensure the fair, equal and decent treatment of all prisoners and staff.

Data on the category of death and ethnicity of the prisoner is collected in all cases. Until now, we have published the ethnicity breakdown for self-inflicted deaths only but we will keep this under review.