Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the effect on the uptake of physical visits since those visits were restarted of prison policies on (a) contact between parents and children, (b) length of visits, (c) use of punishment against parents in prison who violate rules against contact with their children.

Under the National Framework for Prison Regimes and Services it is for Governors to set out how visits run in their prison in a Covid secure manner using available resources and public health guidance.

Governors are empowered to decide how long visits should last, recognising issues such as additional movement and cleaning times that may be needed to ensure visits remain Covid secure for the men, women and children in our care, their visitors and staff.

Current policy is visits should last for a minimum of 45 minutes in prisons, where it is safe to do so in an adapted Covid safe manner. All visitors are required to maintain social distancing if not part of the same household, in line with public health guidelines.

The remedial action taken for any breaking of contact rules on visits (which are set out on GOV.UK and at the time of booking for the purposes of protecting visitors, residents and staff) is a matter for local discretion and based upon the nature and seriousness of each case.

We have kept our policies under constant review to ensure that lessons learned are taken into account going forward. We will continue to make adaptions if required to ensure safe operating procedures, particularly when considering the regime we offer during the winter period.