Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of prison staff have completed suicide awareness training in each of the last three years.

All staff in contact with prisoners are required to receive training on suicide and self-harm prevention.

We have recently revised the content of the training, and we are now rolling out a new ‘Introduction to Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention’ course, comprising six modules, including mental health awareness training. The course is provided as part of the entry level training for new prison officers, and as refresher training for existing staff.

Since May 2017 over 1,000 new prison officers have received the training, and over 9,000 existing staff (around 25%) have been trained in at least one of the six modules, with just under 3,000 (8%) completing all six modules.

We have set Governors the challenging but achievable target of ensuring that all staff who have contact with prisoners complete all the modules by April 2019.

Figures for the completion of the previous version of the training were not collected centrally.