Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment her Department has made of implications for its policies of the findings of the report of the Howard League, Preventing prison suicide, published on 28 November 2016.

The Government is committed to making prisons safe. Reducing self-inflicted deaths is a key priority for the Government.

As part of this, providing the right intervention and treatment is vital to improving the outcomes for people who are suffering or otherwise vulnerable. All prisons have established procedures in place to identify, manage and support people with mental health issues or at risk of suicide or self-harm.

But we recognise that more can be done. That is why we have invested in specialist mental health training for prison officers, allocated more funding for prison safety and have launched a suicide and self-harm reduction project to address the increase in self-inflicted deaths and self-harm in our prisons.