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Written Question
Young Offender Institutions: Pepper Spray
Thursday 21st March 2024

Asked by: Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench - Life peer)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to publish an evidence-based assessment of the respective benefits and risks attached to the use of PAVA incapacitant spray in the children’s custodial estate.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The safety and welfare of children and young people in custody, and of our staff, is paramount. We are focused on improving safety in the youth estate, where we manage an increased risk of serious incidents, with higher rates of assault on young people and on staff than in other parts of the secure estate.

PAVA spray is currently available for use in the event of a serious incident in the youth estate, if the National Gold commander decides this is necessary. Consideration is being given to whether the criteria for its use in the youth estate require revision.

Following wide engagement on this issue, both with specialists across His Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service, and externally, including with medical advisors and legal experts, we are in the process of examining all the evidence. This is taking time, owing to the complexity of the issues and the seriousness of the question to be decided.

The evaluation of the PAVA roll-out in the adult estate is currently being peer-reviewed prior to publication.


Written Question
Prisons: Offensive Weapons
Thursday 21st March 2024

Asked by: Earl Attlee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether prison canteens are permitted to sell materials that could be used to manufacture offensive weapons that could cause serious facial disfigurement.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

Many everyday necessities can be adapted and misused as weapons. Deciding which items should be made available therefore involves striking a balance between considerations of safety and decency.

Establishments select their local canteen list from items in the National Product List. They make their selection on the basis of a dynamic local risk assessment, taking into account a range of factors, notably security, safety, and prisoner needs.

The Government is committed to making prisons a safe place to work and recognises the risks associated with prisoners’ access to everyday items, including wet-shave razors. In our 2021 Prisons Strategy White Paper, we committed ourselves to trialling alternatives to wet-shave razors in prisons, to determine whether a change in approach might lead to a safer environment for both prisoners and staff. Throughout 2022 and 2023, six pilots have been carried out in the male estate and one in the female estate. Testing at all sites has now concluded and the results are being evaluated. The evaluation, which is nearing completion, will enable us to make informed recommendations on future shaving provision in prison establishments.


Written Question
Animal Welfare: Prosecutions
Thursday 21st March 2024

Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many prosecutions for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal were successful in (1) 2019, (2) 2020, (3) 2021, (4) 2022, and (5) 2023.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice holds information on prosecutions, convictions and sentencing outcomes for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal, covering the period requested. The latest data available, until year ending June 2023, can be obtained through the Outcomes by Offence data tool in the following link: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Prosecutions and convictions for all years requested, from January 2019 until data is available up to June 2023, has been provided in Table 1. These totals relate to both the summary non-motoring and triable either way classifications of the offence. The full calendar year for 2023 will be available in the next update of the Outcomes by Offence tool, expected in May 2024.


Written Question
Prisoners' Release
Thursday 21st March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners were released within two months of the scheduled end of their sentence in the last 12 months.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) began in October 2023, and an analysis of its use will be based on one year’s worth of data and published on an annual basis in line with other statistics, such as deaths of offenders in the community.


Written Question
Birds: Eggs
Thursday 21st March 2024

Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many prosecutions for stealing protected wild birds' eggs in England were successful in (1) 2019, (2) 2020, (3) 2021, (4) 2022, and (5) 2023.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice holds information on prosecutions, convictions, and sentencing outcomes for summary offences in relation to nests and eggs of birds under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (HO offence code 19002). The latest data available, until year ending June 2023, can be obtained through the Outcomes by Offence data tool in the following link: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

A further breakdown of the published data is required to extract figures specific to stealing the eggs of protected wild birds, for the offences ‘Take eggs of Schedule 1 wild bird’ and ‘Take eggs of non-Schedule 1 wild bird’, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Between 2019 and June 2023, there was one prosecution and one conviction in 2021 on a principal offence basis, relating to the eggs of a non-schedule 1 wild bird. Figures for the rest of 2023 will be available in the next update of the Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly publication, expected in May 2024.


Written Question
Hunting and Poaching: Prosecutions
Thursday 21st March 2024

Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many prosecutions for poaching in England were successful under the Game Act 1831, the Hunting Act 2004 and the Night Poaching Act 1828 in (1) 2019, (2) 2020, (3) 2021, (4) 2022, and (5) 2023.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice publishes information on prosecutions, convictions, and sentencing outcomes for poaching offences. The latest data available, until year ending June 2023, can be obtained through the Outcomes by Offence data tool in the following link: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

A further breakdown of the published data is required to extract figures specific to poaching offences under the Game Act 1831, the Hunting Act 2004, and the Night Poaching Act 1828. Prosecutions and convictions for all years requested, from January 2019 until data is available up to June 2023, has been provided in Table 1 on a principal offence basis. The full calendar year for 2023 will be available in the next update of the Outcomes by Offence tool, expected in May 2024.


Written Question
Probation Service: Vacancies
Wednesday 20th March 2024

Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many vacancies in the probation service there were in each region on 1 January 2024.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The workforce position, at 31 December 2023, was 20,806 full-time equivalent (FTE) Staff in Post working in Probation Service grades (including those working in Approved Premises). This is an increase of 1,856 FTE (9.8%) since 31 December 2022.

Recruitment and retention remain a priority across the Probation Service and we have injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year since 2021 to deliver more robust supervision, recruit more staff and reduce caseloads to keep the public safer.

We have recruited a record 4,039 trainee Probation Officers between 2020/21 and 2022/23 and we expect these intakes to qualify by the end of 2024 and begin to take on Probation Officer caseloads.

Trainee Probation Officers are onboarded twice annually (including this March which will not be counted in the figures below), and this can lead to fluctuations in staffing levels across the year.

We will continue to run centralised recruitment campaigns in priority regions to help bolster the number of applications.

Table One: Vacancies across Probation Service Regions, December 2023, all Probation Service grades.

Probation Service Region

Vacancies (FTE)

PS East Midlands

21

PS East of England

277

PS Greater Manchester

15

PS Kent, Surrey & Sussex

121

PS London

463

PS North East

50

PS North West

128

PS South Central

154

PS South West

85

PS Wales

0

PS West Midlands

82

PS Yorkshire & the Humber

45

PS Approved Premises

0

Notes

  1. Data shows average resource across the month, adjusted for joiners and leavers within the month. Data shown as of December 2023, aligning with the most recent HMPPS Workforce Quarterly publication. More recent data cannot be provided due to potentially pre-empting future statistical publications.
  2. Vacancies have been calculated as Required Staffing (FTE) minus Staff in Post (FTE).
  3. Where the number of Staff in Post (FTE) in a region exceeds Required Staffing (FTE), the number of vacancies has been shown as 0 FTE. Summing the figures in the table will not give the overall number of vacancies across the Probation Service due the surpluses in some regions that haven’t been shown in the table.
  4. Vacancies have been netted off between grades and business units. As a result, the overall vacancy figures presented mask the presence of vacancies at both grade and business unit level.
  5. Data have been taken from the Workforce Planning Tool and are subject to inaccuracy as a result of the manual nature with which returns are completed. This approach differs from the published statistics, which uses data from the Single Operating Platform (our departmental HR system).
  6. Staff in Post (FTE) has not been adjusted for long-term absences (e.g. Trainee Probation Officer training time). In addition, we have not factored in loans / temporary cover / agency and sessional. The actual resourced position will therefore differ as a result of these.
  7. Trainee Probation Officers are included in the data. Trainees spend a proportion of their time training and the remainder of their time carrying out work at a Band 3 PSO level. Both training time and time spent delivering caseload are included in the Staff in Post (FTE) calculations, which means that number of vacancies is lower than the actual gap between Required Staffing and frontline delivery.

Written Question
Prisons: Civil Disorder
Wednesday 20th March 2024

Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many barricade or prevention of access incidents took place in prisons in England and Wales in each year since 2018.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

A barricade or prevention of access is an incident where one or more prisoners deny access to all or part of a prison, by use of any physical barrier, to those lawfully empowered to have such access.

An incident at height is any incident that takes place above or below ground level where a person could be injured if they fell from that place. Incidents at height come in many forms, ranging from internal incidents (prisoners on the fall arrest netting or climbing over bars) to an external incident (prisoners on the roof).

The information requested can be found in the HMPPS Annual Digest - Protesting Behaviour data tool: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64c1438a90b545000d3e83c4/7.__Protesting_behaviour_data_tool.xlsx.

These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS Incident Reporting System. Care is taken when processing and analysing returns but the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. Although shown to the last case, the figures may not be accurate to that level.

The national staffing position in prisons is improving, with a substantial increase of over 1,634 Full-Time Equivalent Band 3-5 prison officers in the 12 months ending 31 December 2023.

We are committed to making prisons a safe place to work and providing prison officers with the right support, training and tools to empower them to do their jobs. We are providing targeted support to prisons to operate the Challenge, Support and Intervention Plan (CSIP) which provides a framework for managing violence that is centred around the individual needs of prisoners, helping them to move away from violent behaviours.


Written Question
Prisons: Civil Disorder
Wednesday 20th March 2024

Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many incidents at height occurred in a prison in England and Wales in each year since 2018.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

A barricade or prevention of access is an incident where one or more prisoners deny access to all or part of a prison, by use of any physical barrier, to those lawfully empowered to have such access.

An incident at height is any incident that takes place above or below ground level where a person could be injured if they fell from that place. Incidents at height come in many forms, ranging from internal incidents (prisoners on the fall arrest netting or climbing over bars) to an external incident (prisoners on the roof).

The information requested can be found in the HMPPS Annual Digest - Protesting Behaviour data tool: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64c1438a90b545000d3e83c4/7.__Protesting_behaviour_data_tool.xlsx.

These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS Incident Reporting System. Care is taken when processing and analysing returns but the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. Although shown to the last case, the figures may not be accurate to that level.

The national staffing position in prisons is improving, with a substantial increase of over 1,634 Full-Time Equivalent Band 3-5 prison officers in the 12 months ending 31 December 2023.

We are committed to making prisons a safe place to work and providing prison officers with the right support, training and tools to empower them to do their jobs. We are providing targeted support to prisons to operate the Challenge, Support and Intervention Plan (CSIP) which provides a framework for managing violence that is centred around the individual needs of prisoners, helping them to move away from violent behaviours.


Written Question
Prisoners' Release
Wednesday 20th March 2024

Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many individuals will be released under the end of custody supervised license scheme in 2024.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

While ECSL is in operation, it will continue to free up spaces as more prisoners reach the point in their sentence when they become eligible for release, but only where that continues to be necessary to remain within maximum capacity levels.

An analysis of its use will be based on one year’s worth of data and published on an annual basis in line with other statistics.