Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many safer cells there are; and what proportion of prison cells are safer cells in each prison in England.

Safer cells are designed to make an act of suicide or self-harm as difficult as possible. However, no cell is totally safe, and where a prisoner is accommodated in a safer cell this forms only a part of the package of support measures that are put in place to manage the risk of self-harm or suicide.

It is not possible to express the number of safer cells as a proportion of the total number of cells. This is because only those safer cells being used to accommodate prisoners who are being supported using the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) case management process for prisoners at risk are operating as safer cells. The number of safer cells therefore varies over time.