Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to take action against the management and guards of Wetherby Young Offenders Institution who permitted male officers to forcibly strip girls there, as reported by His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons in December 2023.

There is no plan to take formal action against staff members who were responding to an emergency to preserve life.  In emergencies, the first priority of staff is always to safeguard the life and safety of those in their care.

This incident was not a strip search as erroneously reported but the removal of clothing from a child who was using it to create ligatures and self-strangulate. She was placed into anti-ligature clothing to prevent causing further harm to herself.

Following the incident highlighted by H M Inspectorate, a learning review has been conducted by the Youth Custody Service’s Safeguarding Team. It focused on four main themes:

• protecting the well-being of children and staff during and after incidents

• further training and guidance for staff in incident management of girls

• integrated care management to ensure all departments work effectively with a child

• management of resources to ensure there is an appropriate gender balance of staff on night duty.

The Youth Custody Service (YCS) will oversee the action in response to the learning review. This includes the provision of additional support to HMYOI Wetherby in its management of exceptionally complex high-risk, high-harm girls, the development of specific gender-responsive operating guidance, and effective use of available resources to support children.

The YCS has revised the Minimising and Managing Physical Restraint syllabus, which is the behaviour management and restraint system used to provide youth estate staff with the ability to identify behaviour that causes concern and use de-escalation and diversion strategies to minimise the use of restraint through the application of behaviour management techniques. This has been rolled out at HMYOI Wetherby.