Pledge over children of prisoners

MINISTERS say they are assessing how many children are affected by parental imprisonment amid a Bristol MP’s concern it could be “hundreds of thousands”.

Asked if the Government would take steps with prisons to estimate the number of children affected, justice minister Damian Hinds said “yes, I certainly will” and that he agreed “it is important to understand the number of children this affects”.

Bristol East Labour MP Kerry McCarthy said: “We absolutely need this data because we think there could be hundreds of thousands of children over the years affected.

“It’s not only really traumatic for them, but it puts them at risk themselves. Once we’ve got the data we can look at support services.

“But I would urge him to do what he can to work with prisons, schools, local authorities to try to make sure there is a comprehensive database.”

Mr Hinds said he agreed and added that he had spoken with previous ministers about it.

“She is absolutely right,” he said, “the first step, the basis, has to be the data, and there is important work under way, including changes to the basic custody screening process.

“Then the big cross-Government project called ‘better outcomes through linked data,’ and we will continue to work hard on that.”