Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government when the provisions in section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 will come into effect.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This Government remains committed to delivering on its commitment to criminalise the non-consensual creation of purported intimate images.
As with several other measures in the Act, the provisions in section 138 will come into effect when commenced by regulations in due course.
Asked by: Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what (a) assumptions and (b) formulae she uses to model prison place need.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
On 11 December 2024, we published the first annual statement on prison capacity, fulfilling our commitment to increased transparency, holding this government and future governments to account.
The demand projections used in the annual statement are based on population projection Accredited Official Statistics which are published at: Prison Population Projections: 2024 to 2029 - GOV.UK. Further detail on the modelling methodology is contained within the publication, including an overview of the assumptions used.
Asked by: Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time was that remand prisoners spent on remand in each of the last 20 years.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Information relating to the time spent on custodial remand is not centrally held by the Ministry of Justice. To obtain the data to answer this question would involve a manual interrogation of court records which would incur a disproportionate cost to the Department.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to help improve the quality of probation services across the North West of England.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Probation Service in the North West has developed a Quality Improvement Plan which prioritises and focuses improvement activity across Probation Delivery Units in the region, and at regional level, and includes actions derived from internal audits and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation reports. Progress is routinely monitored, assured and supported by regional and national, Performance, Assurance and Risk functions.
We regularly publish performance ratings for each region of the Probation Service, which can be found at the following link: Community Performance Annual, update to March 2024 - GOV.UK.
We are hiring 1,300 trainee probation officers by March 2026 in addition to the 1,050 already appointed last year. We are also investing in new technology to lift the administrative burden on probation officers so they can focus on what they do best – managing and rehabilitating offenders.
Probation funding will increase by up to £700 million by the final year of the spending review – a 45% increase in the next three years. We will deliver thousands more tags, more staff, and more accommodation to ensure that offenders are tracked and monitored closely in the community.
Asked by: Rebecca Paul (Conservative - Reigate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 2 July 2025 to Question 62457 on HMP/YOI Downview, how many of the seven males held on E Wing have access to the general women's estate for (a) work and (b) other services.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
As noted in the Answer of 2 July 2025 to Question 62457, prisoners on E Wing are located separately from all other prisoners at HMP/YOI Downview. Supervised access to activities in the main prison’s regime, including work, is provided only where a local risk assessment has determined this to be appropriate.
Given the small number of prisoners held on E-Wing, it would not be appropriate to provide information about the management of the individuals in question.
We are reviewing the transgender prisoner policy in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling and will set out any changes to our approach in due course.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of food served in prisons is sourced from British farms; and what plans she has to encourage more prisons to buy British produce.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
As at May 2025, 56.1% of food products sourced via the prisoner food contract and served in prisons is of British origin, however we do not hold a figure for farms specifically.
The sourcing of products is managed through commercial food contracts which are based upon value for money and the quality of the product, with British produce being chosen wherever possible. We continue to review options to source from UK suppliers as part of standard procurement processes.
Asked by: Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time was that prisoners released from recall spent on recall in each year for which data are available.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The requested information for indeterminate prisoners re-released following recall can be found in Table 5_Q_11 of the Department’s Offender Management Statistics Quarterly publication: licence-recalls-Oct-to-Dec-2024.ods.
The corresponding information for determinate sentenced prisoners is only obtainable at disproportionate cost as it requires data matching between different data systems (namely prison recall information from the Public Protection Unit Database, and prisoner release information from prison-NOMIS).
Asked by: Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average number of people in prison on custodial sentences was in each of the last 20 years.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Information on the number of people in prison on custodial sentences is published as part of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly.
Data from 2002-2015 can be found in Table 1.Leg.1 at the following link: Prison-population-2002-to-2015.ods.
Data from 2015-2024 can be found in Table 1.A.1 at the following link: Prison-population-2015-to-2024.ods.
Asked by: Baroness Porter of Fulwood (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of foreign national offenders, and how many foreign national offenders, have been transferred to Poland to serve their sentences since the Memorandum of Understanding between the UK and Poland on Cooperation in Criminal Justice Matters was signed in November 2024.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
All convicted foreign national offenders (FNOs) who receive a custodial sentence are referred to the Home Office to be considered for deportation. On entry to custody, FNOs are informed of the likelihood of deportation and encouraged to take up removal schemes including prisoner transfer agreements.
The Ministry of Justice has invested £5 million on 82 FNO specialists to oversee swift removals from prisons. These specialists are working with the Home Office to remove FNOs who have no right to remain in the United Kingdom, by encouraging compliance, and by actively investigating, and seeking to remove, barriers to removal, thereby reducing the costs to the taxpayer and helping to protect the public.
These specialists have also received training on prisoner transfers and in addition to their main function of ensuring deportation under the Early Removal Scheme, they also encourage FNOs to apply for voluntary repatriation under prisoner transfer agreements including the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. Prisoner Transfer is only one of the mechanisms where FNOs can be removed early.
14 FNOs have been successfully transferred voluntarily under this Convention between July 2024 and 31 December 2024. Data on repatriations after 1 January 2025 is not able to be shared.
There were no FNOs transferred to Poland under the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons between the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the UK and Poland on Cooperation in Criminal Justice Matters in November 2024 and the end of December 2024. Data on repatriations after 1 January 2025 is not able to be shared.
Asked by: Baroness Porter of Fulwood (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many foreign national offenders have been transferred under the voluntary transfer mechanism provided by the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons in the past year.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
All convicted foreign national offenders (FNOs) who receive a custodial sentence are referred to the Home Office to be considered for deportation. On entry to custody, FNOs are informed of the likelihood of deportation and encouraged to take up removal schemes including prisoner transfer agreements.
The Ministry of Justice has invested £5 million on 82 FNO specialists to oversee swift removals from prisons. These specialists are working with the Home Office to remove FNOs who have no right to remain in the United Kingdom, by encouraging compliance, and by actively investigating, and seeking to remove, barriers to removal, thereby reducing the costs to the taxpayer and helping to protect the public.
These specialists have also received training on prisoner transfers and in addition to their main function of ensuring deportation under the Early Removal Scheme, they also encourage FNOs to apply for voluntary repatriation under prisoner transfer agreements including the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. Prisoner Transfer is only one of the mechanisms where FNOs can be removed early.
14 FNOs have been successfully transferred voluntarily under this Convention between July 2024 and 31 December 2024. Data on repatriations after 1 January 2025 is not able to be shared.
There were no FNOs transferred to Poland under the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons between the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the UK and Poland on Cooperation in Criminal Justice Matters in November 2024 and the end of December 2024. Data on repatriations after 1 January 2025 is not able to be shared.