HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is taking decisive action to stop mobile phones and illicit substances entering prison, and investing £100m to bolster prison security and tackle crime behind bars which fuels violence and self-harm. As part of this investment, 51 prisons across England and Wales will receive cutting edge X-ray body scanners which will assist in the detection of illicit articles secreted within prisoners entering establishments.

We have already installed a significant proportion of those planned within this financial year. As of 25 January 2021, we had installed X-ray body Scanners at 40 sites across England and Wales, which are listed below. This includes some not yet announced, which are indicated in bold. We will shortly be announcing which further sites are to be delivered by the end of March 2021.

With regards to the final part of the question ‘how much of the £100 million spend on prison security will be spent on those 24 additional x-ray scanners,’ due to the commercially sensitive nature of this information, HMPPS is unable to provide this figure.

The data collected for the National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database is done so under the Control of Patient Information notices issued by the Secretary of State for Health. Consequently, no patient consent is required to collect the data from National Health Service trusts. No patient identifiable data is shared with developers. Images and clinical data points are anonymised before they are sent from each NHS trust to the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust for collation. The Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust further verifies that any identifiable data burnt onto the images is removed. Once this step is completed, the anonymised data is uploaded on a cloud-based repository owned by NHSX, and having NHS England as the data controller.

The Research and Ethics Committee (REC) at the Health Research Authority granted ethical approval for the National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database (NCCID) on 16 April 2020.. The REC made no recommendation to establish an ethics board to oversee the NCCID. Access to data contained in the NCCID is governed by a committee of independent experts, which includes patient representatives, and is tasked with ensuring that applications comply with high ethical standards.

X-ray facilities will be returning to Hinckley and District Hospital to provide much needed services to the local population, after funding was secured from University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust.

In addition, the local area will benefit from the Government’s £7 million sustainability and transformation partnerships capital investment to refurbish Hinckley Health Centre, which includes works to accommodate diagnostics (x-ray and ultrasound) machines.