Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of potential trends in the use of PAVA incapacitant spray on (a) Black, (b) Muslim and (c) young adult prisoners.

We have been conducting research on Use of Force, attending the local Use of Force committee meetings and gathering best practice, including in the data considered at the committee, ways of running the meeting, and its membership. The research included speaking to prisoners and staff who have experienced force. This will be available to use in Autumn 2023.

The department is incorporating data on Use of Force into its prisons equalities monitoring tool to be released to front-line D&I leads. This tool is for internal operational monitoring and policy development. This will allow D&I leads to directly compare across ethnic groups in Use of Force incidence within prisons.

We have established a Use of Force Disproportionality working group, which brings together Diversity and Inclusion, the HMPPS Race Action Programme and Use of Force team, that will collect and share good practice around reducing disproportionality and develop further guidance on how to take action where necessary.