Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of levels of occupancy in prisons in Wales.

Individual prison population and capacity information for every prison in England and Wales is published monthly on the Ministry of Justice website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prison-population-figures-2014

Prisons are not expected to operate above their operational capacity and ensuring that this capacity is set to reflect the provision of safe and decent accommodation and the operation of suitable regimes ensures that levels of crowding in prisons are carefully managed.

Sensible measures have been taken to ensure that we have sufficient capacity to deal with any temporary increases in population. These include creating additional places in prisons in a safe and decent way and ensuring that prisons reflect the needs of the current population.

We will end this Parliament with more adult male prison places than we inherited, more hours of work in prisons than we inherited, more education for young detainees than we inherited and a more modern, cost effective prison estate than we inherited.