As the Contracting Authority for the electronic monitoring services contract, the Ministry of Justice is responsible for overseeing the supplier’s performance.

Having experienced staff in our prisons is vital to ensuring prisons remain safe, secure and decent. Ministers receive regular briefings from Prison Service leadership on prison resourcing and proactive measures are being taken to improve recruitment and retention.

There are recruitment campaigns open for all prisons with vacancies and a tailored approach to recruitment advertising is being taken at sites where it is harder to recruit.

We made a significant investment in pay for prison staff through the 2022/23 pay award. This delivered an increase in base pay of at least 4% for all staff between bands 2 to 11, alongside further targeted pay rises for our lowest paid staff of up to £3,000.

Since April 2022, we have also invested in several new initiatives to improve the experience of our new joiners and increase retention. These include a new peer-to-peer learning scheme, the introduction of mentors for new prison officers, piloting additional staff support and supervision in two prisons, and new leadership training in prisons facing retention challenges.

The table below shows the annual spend on agency staff for the financial years from 2010-11 to 2015-16. Beyond this point, these figures appear in the HMPPS annual report and accounts, which available online.

The number of prison officers has increased by more than 4,000 in the last four years and we have committed to hiring an extra 5,000 officers by the mid-2020s.

The number of staff in post in HMPPS HQ and Area Services each year since 2010 can be found below in table 1 (headcount) and table 2 (full time equivalent).

Table 1: HMPPS HQ and Area Services staff in post¹, by financial year as at 31 March 2010 to 31 March 2021 and 31 December 2021 (Headcount)

Table 2: HMPPS HQ and Area Services staff in post¹, by financial year as at 31 March 2010 to 31 March 2021 and 31 December 2021 (full time equivalent)

1. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time, to ensure consistency of reporting. However the database itself is dynamic and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate.
2. In June 2010 approximately 1,500 NOMS HQ staff transferred to the central Ministry of Justice.
3. In April 2017 certain corporate functions were moved out of HMPPS HQ and Area services to the central Ministry of Justice under functional leadership changes.

In the period covering the last five financial years, National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has paid the following sums to Stonewall.

2016-17 to 2019-20 Financial Years

£0

2020-21 Financial Year

£837.60 (formally NOMS) Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service conference attendance

2021-22 Financial Year

£0

In the period covering the last five financial years, Office of the Public Guardian has paid the following sums to Stonewall.

2016-17 to 2019-20 Financial Years

£0

2019-20 Financial Year

£552.00 Stonewall Conference Attendance

2020-21 & 2021-22 Financial Years

£0

In the period covering the last five financial years, Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years, the Department's Welsh Language Scheme has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years, Independent Monitoring Authority has not made any payments to Stonewall.

Please note that MoJ does not have a Probation Board. However, the Parole Board is an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB), sponsored by the MoJ. In the period covering the last five financial years, Parole Board has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years Legal Aid Agency has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years Judicial Appointments Commission has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years Youth Justice Board has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years Legal Services Board has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) has paid the following sums to Stonewall:

2016-17 to 2019-20 Financial Years

£0

2020-21 Financial Year

£3000 Cafcass Stonewall Diversity Champions Membership

2021-22 Financial Year

£0

In the period covering the last five financial years Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years Legal Ombudsman (LeO) has paid the following sums to Stonewall:

2016-17 to 2020-21 Financial Years

£0

2021-22 Financial Year

£3000 LeO Stonewall Diversity Champions Membership

In the period covering the last five financial years Criminal Case Review Commission has not made any payments to Stonewall.

In the period covering the last five financial years Government Facility Services Limited has not made any payments to Stonewall.

As independent arm’s length bodies (ALBs), the decision on whether to allocate resources to a particular membership is one for the Accounting Officers of those ALBs. These decisions are taken within the ALBs’ internal systems of governance and control (which include the requirements of Managing Public Money and regard to MoJ and Cabinet Office spending controls) and generally do not require the approval of the Ministry of Justice.

The Ministry of Justice has produced an initial assessment of the cost of returning offender management services in Wales to the public sector. These costs include exit costs for current Community Rehabilitation Company contracts which will be subject to negotiation with providers. Releasing these figures may compromise that negotiation so we cannot do so at this time.

As part of plans for the future of probation announced on 16 May 2019, the National Probation Service (NPS) will assume responsibility for managing all offenders in England and Wales. The NPS is performing well in managing higher risk offenders and is best placed to achieve the benefits of unifying offender management within a single organisation. There are no plans to change the status of the NPS as a public body.

The aim of these changes is to help deliver a stronger, more stable probation system that better plays to the respective strengths of the public, private and voluntary sectors, that will reduce reoffending, support victims of crime and keep the public safe – and merit the confidence of the courts and the public.

The ACCT case management system for prisoners at risk at self-harm or suicide has been formally reviewed twice since it was introduced into prisons across England and Wales from 2004-2007. The most recent review concluded in 2015, and as this was an internal review the results were not published. The 2015 review found that ACCT was an effective system, but identified opportunities to increase the level of compliance with the policy in prisons and to improve the quality of care delivered to prisoners. This has informed a number of the measures that we have since taken to improve the system, including the introduction of improved training and the publication of further guidance for staff.

We will shortly be consulting stakeholders on proposals for improvements to the ACCT form and associated policy that are based on the outcome of the 2015 review as well as more recent feedback on the operation of the system.

HMPPS staff working on recruitment of prison officers also work on a range of other initiatives and it is not possible to identify work on prison officer recruitment from other duties. Recruitment services are also provided to HMPPS by contracted suppliers including Shared Service Connect Limited.

The number of band 3-5 prison officers recruited in HMPPS (formerly NOMS) each year since 2010 can be found in table 8a in the HMPPS workforce statistics, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/her-majestys-prison-and-probation-service-workforce-quarterly-september-2017.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 15 December 2016 to Question 41046 http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2016-06-20/41046/.

The total cost of public interest transfers that have been approved within NOMS since January 2012 is £13.14m. The majority of these costs have been authorised to support staff transferring from prisons that have closed since 2012. Our records do not allow us to provide the breakdown by grade of staff in responding to your question

A total of 145 staff currently work at Medway Secure Training Centre. Eight new staff members have commenced working at the centre since National Offender Management took over the running of the centre.

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.