Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what guidance her Department has issued on what prisoner to staff ratio in prisons is safe.

The Government is committed to ensuring our prisons are places of safety and reform.

As part of a major overhaul of the prison system, the Government has committed to recruiting 2,500 extra frontline officers, and it has already achieved its target of recruiting 400 extra staff in ten of the most challenging prisons by March 2017.

As part of this investment in extra staff, we are introducing key workers who will be prison officers to whom prisoners will be able to turn to for advice and support throughout their sentence. It is planned that each prison officer will have a case load of approximately 6 prisoners for whom they will be the dedicated officer.