§ Mr. Gouldasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he proposes to introduce legislation to give statutory effect to his reply on hunger striking on 22nd November 1976, Official Report, column 920.
§ Mr. Merlyn ReesI have nothing to add to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Minister of State to a Question by the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) on 2nd August 1976—[Vol. 916, c. 533.]
§ Mr. Gouldasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners went on hunger strike in British prisons in 1976; and how many were forcibly fed.
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§ Mr. Merlyn ReesAs explained by my hon. Friend the Minister of State in the answer given to a Question by the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) on 19th November last—[Vol. 919, c. 753]—there is no objective definition of the term "hunger strike". Food refusal in prison has, in practice, ranged from the return of a meal on one day to persistent action involving the total refusal of all nourishment over a very long period. Instances of food refusal as a temporary means of protest, often abandoned after a few days, are unlikely by their very nature to involve a doctor in any decisions about admission to prison hospital for observation, or any clinical judgment about artificial feeding. For these reasons, such incidents, although carefully monitored and recorded locally, are not, and cannot sensibly be, collated in statistical form. Information is not, therefore, available in the form requested.
Information about admissions to hospital in such cases has been collected from 1st October 1976. Since that date there have been 16 admissions to prison hospitals because of food refusal but none has involved artificial feeding.