Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans she has to review guidance in Prison Service Instruction 09/2016, cell, area and vehicle searching, in respect of the regularity of accommodation fabric checks and cell searches outside the high security estate.

Prison Service Instructions are reviewed on a regular basis in keeping with changes in policy and legislation and where new threats or opportunities arise. As part of the Prison Reform programme, work is underway to revise all Prison Instructions, providing simpler and more manageable documents which will allow prisons to operate more effectively.

Meetings held by Ministers are published on .gov.uk. The Secretary of State has met recently with representatives of the Prison Officers’ Association and Prison Governors Association and discussed a range of issues. Officials from the National Offender Management Service regularly hold discussions with staff associations, including on matters relating to security.

As part of the work on prison reform announced by the Government in the recent White Paper, we are planning to boost our searching capability within prisons and are examining options for better equipped and more widely deployed searching teams at national, regional and local levels. We are also investing in improved intelligence capabilities at all levels to enable searching and other security activities to be targeted more effectively.