Prison Officers are some of our finest public servants, and we do not underestimate the challenges faced by everyone working in prisons. We are committed to making prisons a safe place to work and providing prison officers with the right support, training and tools to empower them to do their jobs.

Prisoners who assault staff should feel the full force of the law. We are working closely with the CPS to ensure prosecutions of prisoners who assault staff along with the strongest possible punishment being imposed. The Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act increases sentences for those who assault prison officers.

We are rolling out prison officers body worn cameras, police-style restraints and PAVA incapacitant spray to prison officers to help them do their job more safely.

We have recruited more than 4,300 new prison officers over the last two years and we’re investing £2.75 billion to transform the estate, to make prisons safer and cut crime behind bars.

This information requested is shown in the attached table.

Our reforms to probation are designed to encourage long-term rehabilitation and ultimately reduce reoffending – and the first step in this is ensuring that everyone leaving prison has access to secure and stable accommodation. We are improving support for offenders leaving prison with a £22 million investment in through-the-gate services which will help to strengthen ties with key partners, including the third sector, local authorities and the police.

At the same time we are investing £6m as part of the Government’s Rough Sleeping Strategy in pilot schemes bringing together prisons, local authorities, probation providers and others to plan, secure and sustain accommodation for offenders on their release.

We are taking decisive steps to improve prison security across England and Wales, by investing in additional staff and new technology to prevent, find and seize drugs and other illicit items.

I am pleased therefore to confirm that HMP Durham will shortly be in receipt of a new body scanner. The scanner referred to by the Honourable Member was diverted to HMP Nottingham.

Safe prisons are fundamental to the proper functioning of our justice system. Our dedicated prison officers, who support tens of thousands of prisoners every day, are vital to the safe running of our prisons. We have recruited 2,541 in the 12 months to 30 September 2016 and are taking significant action to make sure we have appropriate staffing levels. As I announced last week, we will be investing in an additional 2,500 prison officers across the prison estate.

Information on staff in post within the establishments requested for 31 March from 2010 to 2013 is contained in the attached table. Operational includes, operational support staff, prison officers and operational managers. Non-operational covers all other directly employed grades within the establishment such as administration staff, managers, psychologists, chaplains and facilities staff.

Information from 2014 onwards is published in the NOMS Workforce Statistics Bulletin available on the gov.uk website.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) does not commission accredited programmes exclusively for Indeterminate Sentence Prisoners. Programme and public protection resources are allocated based on offenders' type, level of risk and criminogenic needs in order to maximise public safety and value for money.

It is important that Indeterminate Sentence Prisoners have access to services that are appropriate to their risk and needs. NOMS has been using an evidence based approach to move investment in interventions to higher intensity longer programmes that are more likely to meet the complex needs of Indeterminate Sentence Prisoners. This approach increases the availability and access to these services across the estate.

HMP Durham, like many other local prisons, has not been commissioned to deliver accredited programmes as the primary function of the prison is to serve the courts and hold prisoners who are on remand. Where a prisoner is identified as having a need for a specific accredited programme, and has sufficient time left in their sentence to complete the programme in custody (including prisoners who are serving indefinite sentences for public protection), they would be transferred to an appropriate prison delivering the identified programme.

HMP Acklington is the former name of HMP Northumberland. HMP Northumberland was formed following the merger of two separate prisons – HMP Acklington and HMP Castington on 31 October 2011.

HMP Northumberland is commissioned to deliver two different accredited programmes. Thinking Skills Programme (TSP) which is a short non offence specific thinking skills programme and Core Sexual Offending Treatment Programme (SOTP) which is designed for medium to high risk sex offenders.

The National Offender Management Service is committed to reducing reoffending by giving prisoners the support they need to break away from a life of crime. An important factor in their rehabilitation is providing them with the opportunity to learn new skills, contribute positively to prison life and develop a strong work ethos. As part of this, prisoners have always carried out tasks under the supervision of staff to assist the running of the prison and to gain skills in preparation for release.

HMP Durham has recently added further opportunities to do this, with jobs such as the receipt and recording of routine applications; the provision of general information; non-confidential prisoner record preparation; the issuing of toiletries, and the delivery of information as part of the induction programme for new prisoners.

HMP Acklington merged with HMP Castington in March 2013 to form HMP Northumberland. From December 2013 HMP Northumberland has been operated under contract by Sodexo Justice Services. Since December 2013 prisoners have carried out some tasks previously undertaken by staff related to the stores department, prisoner property area, general cleaning, catering and electrical testing.

Payslips and P60’s are delivered by secure courier to NOMS Establishments for internal distribution to staff.

Our investigations have shown that there was no delay in the distribution of the annual P60 payslips for HMP Durham, but there was a delay in the distribution of payslips at the end of May for which my apologies are offered.

The majority of the delay was due to the pay slips initially being delivered to the wrong establishment. The payslips were redelivered on the 8^th June.

The contract management team for Shared Services have investigated the issue and are putting in place changes to mitigate against these events occurring in the future.

The National Offender Management Service takes the importation of drugs and all other items of contraband into prisons extremely seriously. Prisons deploy a comprehensive range of robust searching and security measures to detect such items at the point of entry to the prison. The data below refers to items of contraband and illegal substances discovered having entered HMP Durham.

Prisons are required to centrally report all seizures of drugs, mobile phones and firearms/ammunition. Seizures of drugs and mobile phones reported by HMP Durham for the period May 2010 to September 2014, are provided in the table below. No firearms or ammunition were discovered to have entered HMP Durham during this period. Specific records of other items of contraband are not centrally collected in a way which allows statistically accurate data to be provided.

Table 1: Seizures of drugs and mobile phones at HMP Durham May 2010 to September 2014

Notes:

Many drugs are similar in appearance and in many cases drugs seized are not categorically identified by scientific analysis. Some will have been identified using indicative reagent or Marquis tests. Many will have been identified by appearance only.

One ‘mobile phone’ find may constitute a handset containing one SIM card or media card, a handset only, or a SIM card only.

All figures have been drawn from live administrative data systems which may be amended at any time. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system.