Source · Select Committees · Justice Committee
Recommendation 163
163
Acknowledged
Speed up plans to introduce wastewater-based drug surveillance across the entire prison estate.
Conclusion
The MoJ and HMPPS must speed up plans to introduce wastewater- based surveillance to identify new substances across the entire prison estate. If successful, this wastewater surveillance should be deployed in all prisons to monitor drug usage trends within two years of the pilot. (Recommendation, Paragraph 23)
Government Response Summary
The government states it continuously reviews drug testing panels and prioritises drug detection as a key R&D priority, focusing on identifying future solutions for frontline staff. However, it does not commit to speeding up plans for wastewater-based surveillance or deploying it across all prisons within two years as recommended.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
We review our drug testing processes on an ongoing basis to ensure they effectively monitor the constantly changing chemical composition of psychoactive substances. As the Committee recognises in their report, the scale of the challenge and the pace of change is high. There is a high volume of new psychoactive substances (NPS) observed in the EU market, with over 1,000 being monitored by the EU Drugs Agency at the end of 2024, including more than 270 synthetic cannabinoids. To respond to this, we regularly review drug testing panels across all testing modalities and draw on data from multiple sources, including our own testing results, quarterly prevalence studies by our testing supplier, and wider intelligence from cross-government partners and international agencies. These insights help us to identify the most likely emergent substances in prison drug markets and prioritise adding them to our testing capabilities. They also inform our contractual drug panel review meetings with our supplier every six months, where decisions are made on a case- by-case basis, considering cost, supplier capability, and evidence of prevalence. As a result of this established process, we have expanded our panels to include the most common synthetic cannabinoids and introduced testing for synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and nitazenes. Drug detection is a key research and development priority for HMPPS, and our efforts, working with wider partners, will focus on identifying and testing future solutions that provide frontline staff with reliable, indicative testing results in near-real time. Our long-term aim is to find new detection methods that show increased resilience to future drug threats and are easy to use for frontline staff. Where an individual is tested to identify drug consumption, determining purity or potency is not possible from a urine sample, and it is too complex and unreliable to estimate the dose consumed. Testing of seizures provides a more feasible option but faces numerous technical, safety and commercial challenges. We are exploring the feasibility of additional testing mechanisms for high-priority seizures and whether these could contribute to the wider assessment of risks across the estate.