Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many incidents of drugs smuggling into prisons were detected in England in each of the last 12 months.

We are spending £100 million to bolster prison security and clamp down on the weapons, drugs and mobile phones that fuel violence and crime behind bars. This money fund measures including airport-style security, x-ray body scanners and phone-blocking technology. To date, x-ray body scanners have stopped over 10,000 attempts by prisoners to smuggle contraband into prisons and HMPPS currently has over 500 drug detection dogs working across the estate.

In the 12-months ending March 2021, there were 20,295 finds of drugs in prisons; a decrease of 6% from the 21,575 in the 12-months to March 2020. These figures are available in the HMPPS Annual Digest.