The hon. Member for West Ham has highlighted two matters in her Amendment, both of which relate to reporting. I am very grateful for her having raised these very important matters, but I would like to reassure her that the amendment is not necessary, because sufficient procedures are already in place to measure and record what work will be done.

I would like to highlight, as the hon. Lady has, that making sure treatment is available is critical, and the first step is this one: identifying what substances are out there. The second step is identifying those people who we need to help, and the third is to give treatment. I hope that in the points I raised in response to her earlier speech, I have identified the considerable measures that we are taking to support people in their treatment, including the significant sums we are giving to rough sleepers—of course, there is an overlap there with prison leavers—and the RECONNECT service that the NHS links up with those treatments within prison and in the community.

I would like to go through the substance of the amendment. Through proposed new Clause 1, the hon. Lady is seeking to expand the current scope of reporting by obligating an assessment of value for money after a year, so I will identify the structures that are already in place. As I said, the key objective is to ensure that people are identified, so that they can get treatments, and the effectiveness of that objective is continually reviewed as part of the national prison drugs strategy, which we published in April last year.

The Department also released an annual assessment, with accompanying statistics, as part of HMPPS’s annual digest. This provides a number of the items that the hon. Lady has enumerated in her amendment, including the number of tests conducted, the number of positive tests, and the number of psychoactive substances found. Furthermore, we believe that the contract for providing the drug testing service is effectively managed and reviewed by operational and commercial teams through regular formal contract meetings. To understand the capabilities of the various testing providers, HMPPS has undertaken extensive market engagement with potential suppliers, and it will do so again during future contract tendering processes.

In relation to the specific points the Shadow Minister made about value for money, I can reassure her that the provisions in the Bill would contribute to value for money through drug testing in prisons and ensuring that complete information is routinely gathered relating to the misuse of substances in custody. This, as I said, will enable us to make the right operational responses, as well as ensure that we get the right interventions. I believe that there is scrutiny for drug testing in prisons, supported by existing processes, and we should not rush into legislating on this issue.

I would, of course, be happy to write to the hon. Lady when the annual digest is published—I believe the next one is due in July—to draw her attention to those matters, so that she gets that material as quickly and speedily as possible. Of course, I am always happy to engage with her when she has questions, so that we can resolve any issues that she feels have not been fully dealt with. I ask her to withdraw new clause 1.

10.30 am

In new clause 2, the hon. Lady is asking that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs make biannual reports to Parliament on substance testing in prisons—that is quite similar to new clause 1. As I have explained to the Committee, the effectiveness of drug testing is continuously reviewed and the contract in which it sits is already scrutinised.

Officials at the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs have advised us that the council is not set up for the type of role proposed in the new clause, which appears to be about reporting on the operations and performance of the substance testing system. The council’s role is to provide independent science advice to the Government. That may involve, for example, synthesising advice based on evidence collected on misuse and societal harms. Its role is not to report on the objectives of specific drug testing programmes. I can reassure the shadow Minister, however, that the ACMD already has a role in making recommendations for action, but more broadly, under its role in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The new clause would broaden those functions beyond their current scope.

I will address a few of the specific points that the hon. Lady made and I hope that I can alleviate some of her concerns. She identified and mentioned the significant investment that we are making in security—the £100 million investment to which I referred earlier when addressing the main clauses. In the course of that significant programme and of ensuring that we have funding from the Treasury for it, we have identified where we think, having done some work, the best value for money is. That is why we are pursuing those measures in the course of our programme.

The hon. Lady talked about the impact of covid on drug testing and the importance of lessons learned. I completely agree with her about the importance of looking at what we have learned in this period, and we are undertaking a broad study on that, with input from a wide range of people, including service users, third parties, and HMPPS itself. We suspended drug testing between April and June because of the social distancing measures and the lockdown within prisons, but under our current national framework prisons can reintroduce testing. Where that is done, prisons must take account of social distancing and cohorting measures. At the moment, it is too early to evaluate the impact of the changes on the drug testing programme, but we will of course be looking at all those issues in due course.