Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether a risk assessment was conducted by his Department on the smoking ban in prisons before the roll-out of that ban.

The Government remains fully committed to making all prisons smoke free. The decision to go smoke free in every prison is only taken after careful planning and preparation and the final decision is only taken when each prison has met stringent checks to ensure that it is safe to do so and all necessary healthcare support is available to help prisoners give up smoking.

The national roll out of the Smoke Free Prisons project has been actively managed under usual project management disciplines.