Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of current controls of mobile telephones in prisons.

We take the issue of mobile phones in prisons very seriously and are committed to minimising the number of mobile phones entering prisons and to detecting and disrupting their use by prisoners when they are smuggled into prisons.

With the help of leading mobile phone companies and cutting edge technology, we are stepping up measures to find and block mobile phones.

The Secretary of State has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mobile Phone Network Operators to develop a system which prevents unauthorised mobile phone use within prisons.