Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the report by Empowering People Inspiring Change, The impact of lockdown to physical health, published in March 2021, what steps he is taking to ensure the adequacy of (a) communications with patients and (b) access to healthcare is maintained in prisons and youth custody facilities in England and Wales.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of communication programmes were initiated across the English secure and detained estate, including prisons and youth offender institutions, with the support of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service including using prison television broadcasts to address COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 care. Prison radio continues to feature programmes providing general medical information for patients in prisons delivered by clinical providers and a number of articles have been written for the prison magazine, Inside Times, as well as general notifications, such as leaflets translated into a number of languages posted across individual sites.

General practitioner and nurse-led services have continued to be present within all prisons in England. In response to COVID-19, telemedicine has been deployed at speed across the estate, enabling video calling for primary care, secondary care and mental health appointments within dedicated healthcare facilities. The provision of health services to those in public sector prisons in Wales is a matter for the Welsh Government.