Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prisons provide planned activity to all inmates who are neither unwell nor undergoing punishment which involves (a) morning and (b) afternoon purposeful activity between Monday and Friday.

All prisons have systems in place for the day-to-day management of regime delivery. This ensures that regimes are safe, decent, secure, resilient, and sustainable. Each prison has a Regime Management Plan that clearly sets out the full range of prisoner activities and services delivered within the prison, morning and afternoon, from Monday to Friday, in accordance with Regime management planning: PSI 07/2017 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

We know that sufficient frontline staffing is essential to improving the regime offering to prisoners. Against a challenging labour market, we have seen indications of an improving national staffing picture within prisons. Between 30 September 2022 and 30 September 2023, the number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Band 3-5 officers in post rose from 21,617 to 23,058 – an increase of 1,441 FTE (6.7%). In the same period, we saw a fall in the resignation rate among Band 3-5 officers of 2.9 percentage points in the year to 30 September 2023 compared to the previous year (from 11.5% to 8.6%).

This increased staffing is working. The number of prisons delivering an Amber/ Red or Red regimes has reduced significantly over the past 12 months, from 44 in January 2023 to 31 currently.