Safety of Prison Staff

Christina Rees Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. I am delighted that we have been able to give Durham prison in her constituency an additional £220,000 in order to help deal with current problems. More broadly, she is right. Even though staff were reduced in the previous Parliament in order to meet benchmarking requirements, there has been a net increase in the number of prison staff since January 2015, and we will be making more announcements in due course about how we intend to recruit even more high-quality people into that important job.

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)]

How many times has the National Tactical Response Group been called out this year? Last year there was one call-out for every day of the year. Has this figure gone up?

[Michael Gove]

I hope the hon. Lady will excuse me as I turn to my notes in order to give her the exact figure. The last year for which we have figures was 2014-15 and the National Tactical Response Group was called out 400 times during that year, so that was just over once every day.[Official Report, 14 July 2016, Vol. 613, c. 4MC.]