Select committee: Justice Committee
Recommendation 195
6th Report - Tackling the drugs crisis in our prisons
Published 31 Oct 2025
Addressed to Ministry of Justice
Justice Committee Tackling drugs in prisons All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Individuals identified as key OCG operators must be managed under enhanced security protocols and, where possible, segregated from the general prison population to prevent them from exploiting vulnerable prisoners and staff to maintain their “clean profile”. The practice of merely transferring these individuals between prisons, which leads to spikes in violence and drug use in the prison to which they are transferred, is ineffective. (Recommendation, Paragraph 114)
From: Justice Committee, 6th Report - Tackling the drugs crisis in our prisons (HC 557), 31 October 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 9 January 2026 (deadline 31 December 2025).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the report and says that "Most recommendations are accepted fully or partially", with a different approach and a stated rationale where it does not accept them.
- It accepts the recommendation on staff exposure to drugs and the recommendation on mandatory specialist training, saying it is broadening and accelerating training under the Enable Programme and will carry out a training needs analysis in early 2026.
- On drug testing it partially accepts the call to raise random mandatory testing rates, saying the Ministry of Justice "commit[s] to reviewing our drug testing regime, as a whole" rather than relying on one form of testing.
- It rejects the proposals for delegated Governor authority to repair security infrastructure within a mandatory timeframe, and for segregating individuals solely on the basis of organised crime group involvement, which it says "would not be allowed under current legislation".
- It commits to provide the Committee with an update on purposeful activity "by April 2026", and says the revised National Substance Misuse Service Specification will be published by the end of Summer 2026.