Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers who volunteer as part of operation tornado there are are in each prison as of 27 February 2024.

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 attached. This information is collected every two weeks, and is dated from 22/02/2024.

A large number of specialist team callouts are for non-violent or confrontational issues and this data includes instances where a request for assistance was later deemed unnecessary.