Clause 3 - Drug offence searches: England and Wales
Drugs Bill
9:10 am
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Chesham and Amersham, Conservative)
I appreciate that the Minister has been making inquiries as to what happens in prison. However, she has raised a few points about people who work in prisons. I should like, briefly, to explore with her what rights prison officers have to search other people working in a prison who are suspected of having brought in drugs.
One of the most serious issues that I have found on visiting prisons has been that visitors often bring in drugs by concealing them not on themselves but on children attending prison on family visits. One of the biggest problems for prison officers is their feeling that they should inspect babies' clothes and nappies, because they are vehicles by which drugs can be brought into prisons. What have the Minister's inquiries revealed on those two fronts?