Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on how many occasions emergency services have attended prisoners affected by illegal drug use by (a) prison and (b) primary healthcare provider in each year since 2010.
The information requested is not collected centrally.
In February 2013, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) (now HM Prison and Probation Service) issued guidance to prisons and immigration removal centres operated by NOMS concerning emergency ambulance call-outs. This guidance, Prison Service Instruction (PSI) 03/2013 Medical Emergency Response Codes outlines the medical symptoms in a prisoner, but not behaviours such as drug misuse, for which a prison must always call out an emergency ambulance. This PSI is mandatory in all prisons in England.