Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much the Government has paid in compensation claims for injuries while in custody in the last two years.

Andrew Selous

From 2005 to 2010 approximately £7.69m was paid in compensation to prisoners as a result of injuries sustained whilst in custody. In 2010 to 2015 this fell by 21.1% to £6.07m, with £0.68m paid in 2013/14 and £1.2m in 2014/15 respectively.

NOMS robustly defend all claims brought and successfully defended two thirds of total claims brought by prisoners. An audit of all concluded personal injury claims submitted to the Prison Service over the course of a year is underway as part of a drive to identify opportunities to cut payouts and legal costs.

The data relates to claims cases settled out of Court and those lost at Court. It is drawn from information available on a National Offender Management Service database. As with any large scale recording system, it is subject to possible error in data entry and processing.