§ Mr. Barry FieldTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the prison service will make available the supplies recommended to prisoners in his new video on AIDS.
§ Mr. Douglas HoggThe videofilm "AIDS Inside and Out"' is part of a new educational resource package which aims to give prisoners essential information about AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus. It advises how they can avoid risk to themselves and others not only while they are in custody but after their release. In the latter context the contribution which condoms can make to safer sexual practice is explained; and drug misusers are advised112W that if they cannot avoid injecting when they leave prison they should use only clean needles and never share injecting equipment.
Because of the special circumstances in prisons it would not be right to make drug injecting equipment available to prisoners for unsupervised use. Nor are we persuaded that it would be right to change the policy of not including condoms among the items which prisoners may have in their possession.