Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether a current list of those serving custodial sentences in HM Prisons is available online to (1) the police, (2) HM Passport Office, and (3) HM Revenue and Customs.

Within each prison there is a Police Liaison Officer, who has access to National Prisoner Offender Database and can therefore see who is serving a custodial sentence within the said Prison.

The department also do a National Prisoner Offender Database extract called OFFLOC that is a complete extract on a regular basis that is imported into the Police National Computer (PNC) system so the Police have the information available directly via their own system and also share information with other agencies like DWP, via an extract.

Although the Police, HM Passport Office and HM Revenue and customs currently don’t have direct access as the database is hosted on a restricted network, the MoJ shares information with other Government departments when needed subject to a risk assessment and an information sharing agreement is in place.

The department don’t share information without a specific need, due to the sensitive nature of the information, and this is covered under the Data Protection Act to keep information secure and only share with people that need to see it.