§ Mr. George HowarthTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many mandatory drug tests were carried out on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays; and how many tests were performed in total in each month since weekend testing began. [15975]
§ Miss WiddecombeResponsibility 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.
523WLetter from Richard Tilt to Mr. George Howarth, dated 18 February 1997:
The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the number of mandatory drug tests carried out on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Mandatory drug testing (MDT) data are not held in a form which allows us readily to provide the information requested.
In addition, a number of errors have come to light concerning the MDT data. Independent research has been commissioned to investigate these errors and it may take a little while before we are able to provide detailed figures, in which we have full confidence.
However, I should like to stress that we do not anticipate the effect of these errors to be particularly large on the overall statistics. Bearing in mind these commetns we can give an estimate for random mandatory drug tests carried out on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Around 6,100 such tests were conducted in the period between 1 April 1996 and 31 October 1996, out of an estimated total of 32,000 random tests undertaken.