Written question asked by Lord Garnier (Conservative) on Wednesday, 1 April 2009, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 20 April 2009. It was answered by Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour) on Monday, 20 April 2009 on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.

Prisons: Mobile Phones

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what progress has been made on the provision of mobile telephone jammers for use in prisons in England and Wales.

Answer: We have committed to take forward mobile phone signal blocking, as we indicated in the Government response to David Blakey's report, "Disrupting the Supply of Illicit Drugs into Prisons". We are working closely with the Home Office Scientific Development Branch to trial and evaluate a range of disruption technologies.Disrupting mobile phones is one part of our three-tiered strategy to minimise the number of illicit mobile phones entering prison, and find and disrupt those that do enter. We are rolling out a range of technology to strengthen local searching and security strategies, including BOSS chairs for every prison which does not already have one, as recommended in the Blakey report.

Secondary information