Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the provisions of the Courts Bill as introduced will include measures to reduce the level of suicide and self-harm in prisons.

The Courts Bill will reform our courts and tribunal system to improve access to justice, making better use of technology and modernising working practices. While the Bill does not include clauses on prisons, work to reduce levels of suicide and self-harm in prisons is already underway and does not require primary legislation.

New training is being rolled out across the estate to support our staff to identify the risks and triggers of suicide and self-harm and understand what they can do to support prisoners at risk.

We have put in place specialist roles - regional safer custody leads - in every region to provide advice to prisons and to spread good practice on identifying and supporting prisoners at risk.

We are using experts – including providing extra funding for the Samaritans – to provide targeted support for prison staff and to prisoners directly. We are also auditing existing processes in each prisons for identifying, managing and helping prisoners at risk, so that we can identify best practice and target improvements where needed.

Alongside this, the Government is investing £100 million a year to recruit an extra 2,500 prison officers. Additional staff will provide the capacity for them to give more time to directly supervising offenders, through one-to-one support from a key worker. Alongside a range of other activities to upskill staff and enhance the capability of the estate this engagement will be vital in reducing the currently unacceptable levels of self-harm and suicides.