Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the proportion of drugs smuggled into prisons by drones.

Drones are one of a number of ways through which criminals attempt to bring contraband, such as drugs, into prisons. As a result, and because not every instance is detected, we cannot reliably estimate the proportion brought into prisons through drones.

Our security counter-measures are targeted at every stage of these criminal enterprises. Last year we launched Operation Trenton, a specialist team of Prison Service and Police investigators, to work together to intercept drones and track down the criminals behind them. To date, there have been at least 30 convictions related to drone activity, with those sentenced serving a total of more than 100 years in prison. We are also putting in place physical counter-measure such as netting and providing prison-specific vulnerability assessments to those establishments that have experienced a high number of drone incursions.