Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the new Enhanced Support Service on tackling the most challenging behaviour in prisons.

We are investing to make our prisons safer for both prisoners and staff through a preventative approach, including introducing specialist support and developing bespoke interventions. Over the next three years we will make available an Enhanced Support Service (ESS) to 18 prisons, where we find the most violent behaviour. ESS provides a multi-disciplinary team of a prison officer, mental health nurse and psychologist, to work with individuals, and address their risk of harm to self and others, intervening in the most acute situations.

There has been a positive evaluation about the impact of ESS in one prison and key learning from the evaluation showed a reduction in aggressive behaviours. We will continue to evaluate the impact of ESS on violence and self-harm.