Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average number of times is that ambulances have been called to prisons in England and Wales per prison since March 2017.

The information on the average number of times an ambulance has been called to a prison, and the average number of incidents of a prisoner attending accident and emergency departments at local general hospitals is not collected centrally.

In February 2013, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) (now HM Prison and Probation Service) issued guidance to prisons and immigration removal centres operated by NOMS concerning emergency ambulance call-outs. This guidance, Prison Service Instruction (PSI) 03/2013 Medical Emergency Response Codes outlines the medical symptoms in a prisoner, for which a prison must always call out an emergency ambulance. This PSI is mandatory in all prisons in England.