Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the availability of drugs in prisons.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) takes the issue of all contraband in prisons extremely seriously and deploys a comprehensive range of robust searching and security measures to detect items of contraband both at the point of entry to the prison and concealed within the prison. We do not tolerate drugs in prison and anyone caught with them will be punished and could face further prosecution.

NOMS has in place a comprehensive drugs strategy. The success of this strategy is illustrated by the reduction of drug misuse - as measured by the random mandatory drug testing programme - which has declined by 17.0 percentage points over the past fifteen years (positive rates were 24.4% in 1996/7 and 7.4% in 2013/14) despite the fact that more drugs are being tested for. Random MDT provides a reliable and statistically valid way of measuring patterns and trends of drug misuse in prisons at national and regional level.

There is growing evidence that there has been an increase in the use and seizure of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) into prisons. We have already announced a series of measures to crack down on this and will ensure Governors have the powers and support they need to tackle it.

New, additional powers in the Criminal Courts and Justice Bill will give powers to specify non-controlled drugs (including New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and prescription drugs) which can be tested for as part of the Mandatory Drug Testing Programme.

NOMS has also very recently circulated new guidance to prison governors, which sets out clearly for the first time the measures available to them to deal with NPS. This will reinforce the prison estate’s zero tolerance approach to contraband.