HC Deb 11 February 1993 vol 218 cc1105-6
12. Mr. Hoyle

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will set up an inquiry into disturbances at the Wolds prison.

Mr. Peter Lloyd

Regular reports are made by the Home Office controller based at the Wolds and details of all incidents are reported to prison service headquarters. None of these has merited a separate inquiry.

Mr. Hoyle

Will the Minister at least hold an inquiry into the alarming number of assaults occurring at the Wolds private prison? Is he aware that figures released by his Department show that in the state sector the average number of assaults is six per prison per year? In an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms. Ruddock), he said that eight assaults had occurred at the Wolds in a single month. Does that not show the folly of prison privatisation and the stupidity of extending it? Is it not made even more damning by the fact that, while the state sector prisons are very often overcrowded and underfunded, the Wolds is a state-of-the art prison with facilities which are only dreamt about in the public sector?

Mr. Lloyd

Of course I look at the figures very thoroughly, and I find that the Wolds is punctilious in reporting every incident. All such incidents are recorded and put in the figures. The Wolds figures are before adjudication, whereas the figures from the rest of the prison service are after adjudication, so I do not think that they provide a fair comparison. I am very happy with the way in which the Wolds is conducted, but I look very carefully at the figures that come to me.

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