Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) searches for and (b) discoveries of drugs there have been in prisons in each of the last three years.

The misuse of drugs in prison drives violence, vulnerability and crime and so tackling this is one of our top priorities. Consequently, we are improving our security to restrict the availability of drugs. We use body, property, cell and area searches, metal-detecting scanners and drug and phone detection dogs across the estate. We are investing £6 million to tackle drug supply and reduce demand in 10 of the most challenging prisons, with body scanners and more staff focused on effective searching.

The Ministry of Justice does not record the number of searches conducted in each prison. Data and information on drug finds is routinely published as part of the normal publication schedule

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-hm-prison-and-probation-service-digest-2017-to-2018

Data on drug finds in 2018-19 will be published in due course in line with the normal publication schedule.