Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government on how many occasions pelargonic acid vanillylamide (PAVA) incapacitant spray has been (1) drawn, or (2) drawn and deployed, in prisons in 2022 and 2023; and what was the (a) ethnicity, (b) religion, and (c) disability status, of the prisoner involved.

The requested information, by prisoner ethnicity and religious affiliation, is provided in the tables below:

PAVA incident reports by ethnic group (2022, 2023)

PAVA incident reports by religion group (2022, 2023)

The Use of Force Policy Framework sets out the context in which force is used lawfully by trained prison staff as well as setting out a professional standard for using force.

All prison officers trained in how to use PAVA undergo regular refreshers which cover the lawful use of force in the custodial setting.

HMPPS is closely monitoring the use of PAVA in all sites at senior levels.

These figures have been drawn from HMPPS Management information. Care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, but the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. We do not provide exact data when the figure is five or fewer, as this risks identification of individuals. In these cases, the figure has been replaced by the symbol *. This approach is in accordance with our standards on data disclosure.

Information relating to the use of PAVA spray on prisoners with disabilities is recorded in a number of formats. To be able to identify all such cases, it would be necessary to review all potentially relevant records, and this could not be done without incurring disproportionate cost.