The Government published the Concordat on Children in Custody in 2017 which clearly sets out the statutory duties of the police and local authorities, and provides a protocol for how transfers of children from custody to local authority accommodation should work in practice. The Home Office is also working with the Metropolitan Police Service regarding its Children in Custody Golden Hour Information Exchange pilot. This pilot with three local authority areas aims to put in place early liaison to ensure more children refused bail receive better accommodation support.

The Spending Review 2021 maintains and increases capacity in secure and open residential children’s homes by making available £259 million over the Spending Review period so more children can receive the care they need.

We have invested £100m to combat crime in prisons, including reducing the conveyance of illicit items such as drugs and mobile phones.

Since 2020, we have installed an additional 75 x-ray body scanners, bringing the total to 97 and providing coverage to the entire closed male estate. As of April 2022, there have been approximately 20,000 positive indications recorded.

A full evaluation of our security investments is underway and will be published in 2023. Further deployment of x-ray body scanners across the prison estate will be informed by the results of this evaluation.

As at 30 June 2022, there were 6,731 prisoners serving a sentence for murder or manslaughter. Manual checks of paper records for each prisoner would be required to provide the answer to this question, which can be achieved only at disproportionate cost.

We remain committed to the aims in the Female Offender Strategy (2018) of seeing fewer women offending and reoffending; fewer women in custody, especially on short sentences, with more managed effectively in the community; and better conditions for women in custody that support effective rehabilitation.

As we have an independent judiciary, setting a numerical target as proposed is not appropriate and may have unintended consequences. We are working to ensure that interventions and pilot projects are, where possible, evaluated so that we can understand their impact on the numbers and make-up of the population.

Data on the incentive scheme are published in the HMPPS Annual Digest. The requested disaggregation by month and age group does not form part of the published data and could not be provided without incurring disproportionate cost.

Data on the incentive scheme are published in the HMPPS Annual Digest. The requested disaggregation by month and age group does not form part of the published data and could not be provided without incurring disproportionate cost.

The Ministry of Justice values the scrutiny provided by the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) at HMP Rye Hill. The Department recognises the recruitment challenges faced by IMBs and across the wider volunteer sector.

In response to this, the Department has increased the funding available to IMBs by £440,000 for the financial year 2022-23 and provided an additional £500,000 in capital funding. This additional funding aims to help ensure that IMBs increase their complement of members. The increases will fund structural developments to improve new member recruitment and retention, for example, through the recruitment of Regional Support Leads, who will play a key role in supporting recruitment to Boards through improving local outreach. A Regional Support Lead has been recruited for the region which HMP Rye Hill is located in and is expected to take up post in November 2022. A regional approach to recruitment will also help streamline the recruitment process to ensure that candidates can progress quickly and join the boards they have been recommended to.

Individual boards have flexibility in how their members work individually and as a collective to ensure that the welfare of prisoners is monitored effectively. In addition, a National Monitoring Framework provides guidance to all boards on how to meet their monitoring requirements. The IMB Secretariat continues to provide support to members and boards through training, guidance and recruitment assistance.

The additional funding provided by the Department has also increased communications resource to raise the profile of IMBs and improve recruitment advertising to support member recruitment.

We value the scrutiny provided by the independent scrutiny bodies, including the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs).

In the 2022-23 financial year, we increased the level of funding for the IMBs by £0.44m and provided an additional £0.5m of capital funding. The increases will fund structural developments to improve new member recruitment and retention, for example, through the recruitment of Regional Support Leads, who will play a key role in supporting recruitment to Boards through improving local outreach.

Additionally, the development of a new organisational database will provide improvements to member recruitment and retention by replacing the current outdated legacy software and providing better access to member learning and development records, whilst aligning with plans to improve recruitment techniques. We hope this will positively impact the recruitment of board members and we will continue to keep this under review.

Since the publication of the action plan, HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has committed to increase capacity across the Approved Premises estate by 200 beds. To date, we have delivered more than 152 beds with the full expansion on track to be delivered by March 2024. Additionally, our new Community Accommodation Service Tier 2 (CAS-2), (formerly known as Bail Accommodation and Support Services), will increase spaces by a further 300 beds over the next 3 years.

The Community Accommodation Service Tier 3 (CAS3) offers temporary accommodation for up to 84 nights to prison leavers who would otherwise be homeless. It can be used as ‘move on’ provision from Approved Premises as well as for prison leavers at risk of homelessness.

HMPPS has also retained the Homeless Prevention Teams as a permanent feature to develop relationships with local authorities and other strategic partners in order to embed and expand housing options for prison leavers.

We have a significant prison build programme, delivering safe, secure and modern prison places across the country. More than 3,100 places have already been delivered.

As part of this, we are building brand new prisons with a design focused on security and rehabilitation, supporting family ties and resettlement into the community. These include HMP Five Wells which opened earlier this year and was the first of its design to be built; HMP Fosse Way near Leicester which is due to open next year; and a new prison next to the existing HMP Full Sutton where construction has started, and the prison is due to open in 2025.

We are investing £550 million to rehabilitate offenders by getting them off drugs and into work and stable accommodation.

Between April 2021 and March 2022, the proportion of prisoners released from custody employed at six months rose by almost two thirds.

Together with NHS England, we are continuing to improve services in prison to ensure that people have access to timely and effective mental health care that is tailored to their needs. This will be reflected in the new National Partnership Agreement on health and social care in England, which is due to be published shortly, and the refreshed NHS England mental health service specification for prisons, which will be rolled out by April 2023.

The Government published the draft Mental Health Bill in June, and it is now subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. It includes vital reforms to support people with serious mental illness in the criminal justice system by speeding up access to specialist in-patient care and treatment, and it seeks to end the use of prison as a place of safety. The Bill will introduce a new statutory time limit of 28 days for transfers from prison to hospital.

What recent steps his Department has taken to help support the mental health of prisoners.

As the Minister is aware, a very high percentage of prisoners have mental health problems. It may also be the case that they end up in prison because of mental health issues. Will the Ministry of Justice work more closely with the Department of Health and Social Care and other people who can provide mental health services to try to stop the spiral?

I very much welcome the Department for Work and Pensions having a dedicated team in my constituency to ensure that ex-offenders find gainful employment. May I seek assurances from the Ministry of Justice that that collaborative work to rehabilitate ex-offenders will continue?

The Justice Committee, of which I am a member, published our report on IPP—imprisonment for public protection—sentences on 28 September. There was a very clear recommendation that all IPP prisoners currently in custody should be resentenced, something which I wholeheartedly support. Could I ask my hon. Friend to confirm the timeframe for the Government’s response to the Justice Committee report? Further, what immediate steps are being put in place to support IPP prisoners currently struggling in a custodial environment?

So-called open prisons in constituencies such as mine, such as North Sea Camp, play a vital role in our justice system, but the inmates in those prisons often cause concern to local residents. Would the Minister join me in encouraging both the Prison Service and the Parole Board to engage with local communities so that they can understand what they do to make sure local communities are kept as safe as they possibly can be?

The National Evaluation of the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway was published on 13 October 2022.

For offenders detained in prison, the Prison Rules provide for the temporary release of sentenced prisoners for specified purposes. By providing opportunities to work, learn and build family ties, temporary release from prison helps prevent offenders from returning to crime when they leave prison.

Release on temporary licence (ROTL) will only take place after careful risk assessment and is subject to stringent conditions, which are robustly enforced. Prisoners breaching conditions can be immediately returned to prison, disciplined and may face re-categorisation to a higher security prison and refusal of subsequent ROTL applications.

Where a Hospital Order is made by a court as an alternative to a prison sentence, the court may also impose a restriction order under section 41 of the Mental Health Act, if it considers it necessary to do so to protect the public form serious harm. While a section 41 restriction order is in force, patients are subject to special controls by the Secretary of State for Justice meaning the clinician treating the patient must obtain the consent of the Secretary of State for Justice for certain key decisions, such as transferring the patient to a different hospital or allowing access to the community. This is to ensure that the patient is managed safely and that public protection is a priority in the patient’s progress through the hospital system.

Decisions made in relation to leave are made following rigorous risk assessments that consider, among other things, the risk of harm posed by the patient to themselves and to the public.

Blackpool Youth Offending Team received the following sums from the Ministry of Justice in each of the last three years: £435k (anticipated allocation for 2022/23), £396k (2021/22), £365k (2020/21).