Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of prison cells in England and Wales do not contain a toilet.

Prison operating standards state that prisoners in normal accommodation should have sanitation either within their cell or as an annex to the cell. The vast majority equating to around 68,400 (90%) of cells, including all newer prisons, have modern sanitation inside the cell. These cells hold approximately 91% of the prison population.

The remaining 7,600 (10%) do not have in-cell sanitation. The majority of these are at sites subject to open conditions, where prisoners have 24-hour access to sanitation facilities that are not physically integrated into their cells.

In a small number of older prisons, however, it has not proved possible to install in-cell sanitation or the cost of doing so would be prohibitively high. In such cases, a system of electronic unlocking is in place, in which prisoners are able to request via an in-cell call bell that the cell door be remotely unlocked for a limited period of time to allow them to access to shared facilities on the wing.