Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many band 3-5 prison officers were temporarily transferred from other prisons to prisons in his Ten Prisons Project.

Detached duty (DD) is one of the sensible and proportionate measures we take to ensure we run safe and decent regimes in prisons and respond appropriately to any operational issues that arise. The deployment of staff between prisons on DD is a regular and normal part of prison resourcing and the number of prison officers deployed will reflect operational circumstances.

Of the 10 prisons in the 10 Prisons Project, only one prison – HMP Wormwood Scrubs - received band 3-5 prison officers from other establishments between August 2018 and August 2019. The table below shows the number and cycle of staff deployed to Wormwood Scrubs during the life of the project. Detached duty is allocated on a cycle (four week average) rather than on a month-by-month basis.