Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many complaints by prison officers have been made against fellow officers on the grounds of (a) sexual discrimination, (b) sexual harassment, (c) homophobic behaviour and (d) racial discrimination in each of the last 10 years; what proportion of these complaints were upheld; what proportion of those making such complaints received compensation payments; and how much each received.

Shahid Malik (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Dewsbury, Labour)

According to the information held centrally by the National Offender Management Service, in the period from 1 January 2005 to 31 October 2008, at least 82 formal investigations were commissioned into allegations of a sexual or sexist nature and at least 151 formal investigations were commissioned into allegations of a racial or racist nature. Over that same period, there were at least 34 proven cases of sexual harassment and at least 79 proven cases of racial harassment.

However, the information available centrally is not complete. It does not distinguish between types of sexual, sexist, racial or racist behaviour, nor identify homophobic behaviour. Nor does the available information identify how many of these cases resulted from complaints by prison officers against other prison officers.

In order to provide the complete and specific information requested and for the period before 2005, it would be necessary to carry out comprehensive data gathering and analysis across the prison estate. This would incur disproportionate cost through contacting and scrutinising case files with each of the 138 prisons across the Service.

Prison Service Order 8460 (Conduct and Discipline) does not provide a facility for compensation awards to be made to complainants whose allegations have been substantiated as a result of internal disciplinary proceedings.