Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the total number of days of detached duty worked was in each of the prisons in the 10 Prisons Project in (a) the last six months of 2017 and (b) the last six months of 2018.

Detached Duty (DD) 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. The deployment of staff between prisons on DD is a regular and normal part of prison resourcing; the number of Prison Officers deployed on DD varies from one week to the next in order to reflect operational circumstances.

Detached Duty is allocated on a cycle (4 week average) rather than on a month by month (or day by day) basis. The prisons in the 10 Prisons Project are: Hull, Humber, Isis, Leeds, Lindholme, Moorland, Nottingham, Ranby, Wealtsun, Wormwood Scrubs. Of these, only Isis (total of 26 weeks) and Nottingham (total of 5 weeks) received Detached Duty support in the last six months of 2017.

Annex A shows the number of staff deployed at HMPs Isis and Nottingham, each week, in the last six months of 2017.

There was no Detached Duty deployment at any prison in the 10 Prisons Project in the last six months of 2018.