Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the current total amount of (a) compensation and (b) civil claim payments made to families of prisoners who have died in custody while serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection.

The information requested is not held centrally. Information relating to payments relating to civil claims following the death in custody of prisoners is not broken down by sentence-type.

It remains a priority for the Government that all those on IPP sentences receive the support they need to progress towards safe release from custody or, where they are being supervised on licence in the community, towards having their licence terminated altogether. Guidance has been provided to all prison staff and partner agencies to raise the importance of recognising the heightened level of risk of self-harm and suicide amongst IPP prisoners and an IPP Safety Toolkit has been developed, with a range of resources to promote learning and to help front-line staff support and engage those serving the IPP sentence effectively.