Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many incidents there have been of usage of illegal highs in prisons in each of the last five years.

We do not tolerate drugs in prison. Prisoners are tested for a range of controlled drugs through our mandatory drug testing (MDT) system, which randomly tests up to 10% of the population in each prison, each month. In addition, prisoners can be subject to testing in response to specific threats. Any prisoner found through MDT to have used controlled drugs will face an internal adjudication and could receive a range of sanctions including days added to their time in custody.

We have begun a pilot to expand this testing to include new psychoactive substances and in April we plan to introduce this across the prison estate. We have also introduced new legislation to counter the smuggling of NPS into prisons and are training 300 sniffer dogs to detect NPS.

The table below shows the number of positive MDT tests for illegal drugs over the past five financial years.

Notes:

• Table shows instances where a prisoner has tested positive for a controlled drug, one of amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepine, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, opiates, methadone and buprenorphine.

• Where a prisoner is found to have used more than one substance, a separate positive will be reported for each substance found to have been used.

• Includes MDT tests arising from all prison MDT programmes including random, suspicion, at risk, frequent and reception testing