Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what new initiatives they plan to pursue to support those prisoners with few or no family contacts.

The government is committed to supporting prisoners establish or maintain relationships with their families and significant others. We recognise that we need also to support prisoners who do not have family links, or for whom family relationships are not appropriate, to develop alternative sources of support.

Prisons already collect and record the details of prisoners’ next of kin or nominated contact when they arrive at the prison as a requirement of the Early Days in Custody Prison Service Instruction 17/2015. Prisoners who do not identify contacts are flagged and prison staff or partner agencies encourage them through their sentence plan to establish and develop appropriate relationships.

In October governors were given control over family services in their prison, to strengthen their ability to support the specific needs of their prisoners including through commissioning services tomanage visits centres, deliver family learning programmes and provide family engagement workers, who can support prisoners who do not have contact with family.