Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Annual Report of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Swaleside, published on 3 September 2021, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of enabling Independent Monitoring Boards to monitor the progress of Confidential Access complaints under the Prison Rules.

A prisoner complaint submitted under confidential access must be sent to either the Governor or Director of the prison where the prisoner is held, the Prison Group Director or the Director’s line manager in a contracted prison, or the Chair of the local Independent Monitoring Board (IMB). It is a prisoner’s decision who they direct a confidential access complaint to, and it

should only be opened by the person it is addressed to. The person responding is required to keep a copy and make a record, although they must not share details of the complaint.

Although IMB members do not have access to details of confidential access complaints that are not addressed to them, they are able to access locally held data records, including those held at HMP Swaleside, about the number of these being raised.