Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 30 June 2021.
Thank you, Laura Anne Jones, for that question. In fact, I met with the executive director of HMPPS Wales today and we had an update on prisons. He did say—and you'll welcome the progress report—that recovery is going well in prisons. They have four levels. The fourth level, the highest level, is when they aren't able to come out to activities and are very much confined to their cells, with level 1 being almost normal service. He actually reported to me today that all prisons in Wales are at level 2 apart from Swansea, which is going to move to level 2 later this week. He also confirmed that there are no outbreaks in prisons in Wales and that staff cases are low. He was very positive about the fact that there is close working with the devolved services that, of course, support our prisons, in terms of health particularly, which is key, but also in terms of the opportunities for prisoners when they leave prison.
I would just like to very quickly say how much I welcome the unification of the probation service. We actually did press for this and we unified it ahead of England back in December 2019. We pressed for it; it wasn't in our powers, but I have to say that a certain Rory Stewart, the former Minister, actually pressed for it as well and we achieved it. But as of Monday, everything is unified; we have a National Probation Service, which will be crucial for the communities and for the people leaving and resettling from prisons across Wales.