Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether HM Prison and Probation Service has made an assessment of the safety of (a) prisoners and (b) prison officers in prisons that do not have Tornado trained staff.

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).

HMPPS aims to have 2,100 volunteers trained in readiness for Operation Tornado. Since the inception of Operation Tornado in the late 1980s, HMPPS has allocated a commitment to each prison for how many Tornado staff they should aim to have trained. HMPPS monitors the number of staff available for deployment and offer training spaces to ensure resilience to respond to serious incidents.

In the event of a serious incident, all prisons, including those who have a commitment of zero, receive the same level of support from the Operation Response and Resilience Unit and Tornado trained staff from other prisons if required.