Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 January 2016 to Question 21315, how many specially-trained dogs are used by his Department to detect illicit alcohol.

We have trained more than 500 dogs to search prisoners, visitors, prison perimeters and suspicious packages for illicit items such as drugs, weapons, alcohol and mobile phones. As part of that, we have trained more than 300 sniffer dogs to detect new psychoactive substances. Many dogs are trained to detect a range of contraband. As at 31 December 2015, 44 dogs had been licensed to detect alcohol.