Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the levels of (a) availability and (b) use of psychoactive substances in prisons in each of the last three years.

We take a zero-tolerance approach to drugs in our prisons. Anyone found with contraband will be subject to disciplinary action and police investigation. We are taking unprecedented action to stop the supply and use of drugs. This is based on a multi-agency approach working closely with health partners and law enforcement agencies. We are the first prison jurisdiction in the world to have developed a test for psychoactive substances and have over 300 dogs to detect psychoactive substances.

We have invested £3m in enhancing our intelligence capability to identify the organised crime groups and individuals behind supply routes, and are using this intelligence to work with the police to disrupt them

Data on the number of finds of Psychoactive Substances has been recorded on the HMPPS Incident Reporting system since October 2015, so whole year data is only available for 2016 and 2017.

Testing for psychoactive substances was only in place across the whole prison estate from September 2016 onwards. Figures for 2017/18 will be published in the Annual HMPPS Digest in July 2018.