Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Baroness Goldie on 22 November (HL Deb, col 1838) concerning the central unit which is being set up to assess indeterminate sentences, what its remit will be, how many full-time equivalent staff will work for it, what its budget will be, and how it will interact with the National Offender Management Service.

The Public Protection Casework Section (PPCS) of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is responsible for co-ordinating all information and activity for the parole reviews of indeterminate sentence prisoners. A new discreet unit within PPCS has been established, funded from existing budgets, to augment and enhance the work of PPCS, by focusing on those cases which are particularly complex and where additional support is needed to resolve issues identified during the parole process, without compromising either the integrity of the process or the assessment of risk. Up to 15 full-time equivalent staff will work in the unit.