§ Mrs. RocheTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prison cells currently have access to sanitation; and what proportion this is of all prison cells.
§ Mr. Peter LloydResponsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from A. J. Butler to Mrs. Barbara Roche, dated 26 May 1994:
The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the number of prison cells which have access to sanitation.A significant number of prisoners are held in non cellular accommodation, in units which we describe as cubicular. A small 273W number are held in dormitories, although this type of accommodation is being phased out. Our data, therefore, about work to achieve 100 per cent. access to sanitation is provided solely on the basis of prison places, without differentiating between cellular and non-cellular accommodation. Also, the programme is monitored in terms of work to be done.At the end of April there were still just over 4,000 cells in use without access to sanitation. Some 700 of these are being modernised in the course of projects which are already underway and the remainder in projects which are scheduled to start between now and February 1996. 91 per cent. of prison places in use now have full time access to sanitation.The Prison Service continues to give very high priority to the sanitation programme. Our aim is to ensure that at least 95 per cent. of prisoners have access to sanitation by the end of 1994/95 and that 100 per cent. is achieved by February 1996, in line with the recommendations of the Woolf report.