Richard Ottaway

Mandatory?

— from debate entitled “Drug Misuse (Prisons)”

The three speeches/headings immediately before

  1. 1 earlier: Jack Straw

    I established a review under Mr. David Blakey, the former chief inspector of constabulary and former chief constable of West Mercia, which was published at the beginning of last year. I commend that review to the hon. Gentleman. As long as there are some drugs in prison that should not be there, none of us should be satisfied about the environment in prison. This is not an issue that I, the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), the managers of the Prison Service or the staff take remotely lightly. It is very serious. The performance of prisons varies, including between similar categories of prison, and we are constantly searching for ways to improve performance, including searches of both staff and visitors—

  2. 2 earlier: Richard Ottaway

    Clearly, the Secretary of State will have to agree that whatever initiatives he has introduced are not working. Any reasonable person would ask how these drugs are getting in in the first place. Will he now instigate a review of how drugs are getting into prisons, and will he consider making searches of visitors and prison staff mandatory?

  3. 3 earlier: Jack Straw

    There are substantial penalties. One measure that I introduced at the beginning of 1999, when I was Home Secretary, significantly tightened up the checking and vetting of visitors to prisons, who are one of the major sources of the drugs that are smuggled in, and the penalties for such visitors if they transgressed the rules, as well as imposing clear penalties on prisoners who receive drugs or who conspire with visitors in that respect. This is a challenge—there is no question about it—not least because prisoners seek to conceal both drugs and mobile telephones in an obscene way in their body orifices. Detecting the smuggling of drugs and mobile telephones into prison is difficult, and so we have tightened controls and introduced these body orifice scanners.

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