Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many days of detached duty were worked by prison staff in 2017.

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The deployment of staff between prisons on detached duty is a regular and normal part of prison resourcing. It allows staff to be allocated from prisons with the capacity to provide them, to those where additional staffing is required. Since October 2013, national detached duty has been coordinated centrally. Detached duty is one of the sensible and proportionate measures we take to ensure we run safe and decent regimes in prisons and respond appropriately to any operational issues that arise.