Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to his Department's press release, £100 million crackdown on crime in prison, published on 13 August 2019, how much of the £100 million for improving prison security has been spent on the installation of 74 x-ray scanners as announced by his Department on 14 October 2021.

£6m has been spent on the installation of 74 x-ray body scanners. This sum is comprised of hardware, installation and commissioning costs combined with construction works required in prisons to accommodate the hardware. Some additional associated spend linked to MOJ project and programme resourcing has been incurred but has not been included as is not directly attributed to specific projects.

The remaining investment is for the implementation of measures across a number of priority sites to operate ‘airport style’ gate security, drugs trace detection, mobile phone blocking, an expanded counter corruption investigation team and a new ‘corruption prevention’ function and multi-agency investigations into high harm Serious and Organised Criminals.