Select committee: Justice Committee
Recommendation 200
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)
The MoJ and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) must mandate an overhaul of the current commissioning model for prison-based substance misuse treatment services. We agree with Dame Carol Black that these services must be commissioned directly and separately from general healthcare contracts to ensure specialist focus and dedicated resources. The new model must require direct and active involvement from prison governors and relevant local authorities in the design, delivery and oversight of substance misuse services, ensuring they are user-centred, recovery-focused and align with community provision to ensure equivalence of care. (Recommendation, Paragraph 127)
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.