Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many times operation tornado was used in each prison in 2023, broken down by each prison it was used in.

Operation Tornado is a national mutual aid plan by which prisons support one another in the event of a serious incident or occurrence requiring a reinforcement of staff. Operation Tornado is employed by HMPPS for three main reasons:

• In response to a serious incident requiring a reinforcement of staff.
• In response to other events or crisis requiring additional staff, who may not necessarily need to be Tornado trained.
• To aid the transfer of prisoners in the event of a serious incident or the threat of one (with the GOLD commander’s agreement).

The information requested can be found in the table(s) below. For every other prison the total was 0.