HC Deb 21 November 1991 vol 199 c268W
Mr. McMaster

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the criteria he uses to determine which penal establishments have outgoing mail from prisoners routinely read; and if he will make a statement.

Mrs. Rumbold

My right hon. Friend announced on publication of the Woolf report that routine reading of prisoners' mail would be abolished save in dispersal prisons and for certain other limited categories of prisoners. A copy of circular instruction CI 10/1991, which gave effect to this, is in the Library. The circular instruction also sets out the circumstances in which the governor may reinstitute routine reading for a temporary period.