The minister acknowledged the need for improvements but did not provide a specific date for addressing staffing issues, focusing on ongoing reforms and additional funding.

The minister confirmed that excessive caseloads can impact decision-making but stressed the importance of rigorous training and support for staff to mitigate such risks.

The minister detailed new policies and funding for staff dedicated to accessing domestic abuse and child safeguarding information from relevant agencies.

The Minister appreciates the questions posed by the shadow Minister and confirms ongoing efforts to recruit more staff with additional funding of £155 million annually. Specific measures are being implemented in London to address high vacancy rates.

The Minister accepts the scrutiny provided by the Select Committee and commits to reviewing recommendations for follow-up actions internally. He acknowledges ongoing efforts to address issues before these tragic cases occurred.

Acknowledges failings but notes investment in staffing and prioritisation towards areas with staffing challenges, including London. Emphasises ongoing efforts to support probation staff.

Acknowledges the need for recruiting and retaining talented people to deliver effective services. Committed to addressing staffing challenges.

Acknowledges high levels of violence against women and girls and commits to prioritising it within the Government, police, and justice system.

Commits to making systematic changes to ensure recalls are actioned swiftly, with a prompt to prevent delays.

Acknowledges need for link-ups with children’s services, local authorities, education, youth provision, among others.

Commits to ensuring accurate risk assessments and continuous improvement in intelligence sharing, joint working, and regimes for managing high-risk individuals.

The hon. Gentleman is right to identify the particularly serious findings on London probation services and his particular service in Hammersmith and Fulham. We published at the start of this month a comprehensive plan for addressing those issues. We had already been implementing a number of initiatives and programmes. A lot of it is to do with ensuring that we get the staffing up to where it needs to be. At the time of the London inspections, quite a large number of individuals had not been allocated to named officers and were instead coming through a central facility. All those cases are now allocated, ensuring that the multi-agency public protection arrangements are properly in place. There is an ongoing programme of surveilling progress in London to make sure we are delivering against the really important improvements that we know need to be made. Although we do not have the numbers yet, I expect that in the next set of statistics on recruitment, we will see an improvement in the London area.

The probation service needs to look at everything about the individual in terms of their risk. The specific thing I was talking about earlier is that, before putting somebody in a domestic situation with an intimate partner with children, or saying that they can be in that situation, a series of mandatory additional checks need to be done around intelligence and their record on domestic abuse, safeguarding issues and the consent of the partner. That does not take away from the overall risk assessment of the individual, which should take into account all factors.

On the first point, the hon. Lady is right about the need to manage workloads and ensure they are reasonable. That is very closely linked to her second question. I did not mean to imply that the 1,500 people were going to be recruited between 24 January and 31 March. It is within the planning year or the fiscal year. Government years, like company years, tend to run 2020-21, 2021-22 and so on. We are now in the year 2022-23, which will end at the end of March, so we expect the figure to be 1,500 for the year ending March 2023. I hope that that clarifies the point.

Data management goes to the heart of record management. We have talked a lot about how we share intelligence and information, and how to make it better. Of course, how we manage it internally is also very important and something I take a close interest in. The systems we use should be straightforward to use and not overly onerous. Ideally, a record-keeping system should also make us think as we use it and should raise questions. I am told that the systems do that. I am sure there is more we can do. I mentioned some changes we are making to OASYS, to ensure that it includes information specifically about risks to children.