Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why Andy Coulson is being held in a top security prison.

Mr Coulson was initially located in the prison that served the court his case was being heard in. Belmarsh is a multi-functional prison; one of its roles is to hold all prisoners remanded or convicted from a number of courts.

Prisoners are assigned a security category once they have been sentenced. A prisoner cannot be allocated to a prison of the appropriate category until their risks and sentence management targets have been assessed. Once this assessment was completed Mr Coulson was allocated to a Category D prison. He was transferred to the Category D establishment on 2 September 2014.