Prison officers are turning off a drugs scanner and letting people enter prison without checking them out claims Shadow Home Affairs spokesman Patricia Gordon-Pamplin.

She said a delivery person had told her that when they took an oven to Westgate this week prison officers had only given him a cursory check, said Mrs. Gordon-Pampin.

She said had heard that there was rampant drug use in prison from former Treatment of Offenders Board chairman Austin Thomas.

But Minister Terry Lister had not lived up to promises to make sure everyone coming to prison was scrutinised and so addicts were losing the chance to reform, said Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin.

"Sometimes people on work release use the same methods as couriers use in bringing drugs into the country by swallowing drugs. Sometimes when the Ion Scan is meant to be in operation it is being turned off," she said referring to the ultra-sensitive drug sniffing machine.

She has called for an independent agency to monitor the Ion Scan which can pick up traces of drugs on people.

She said: "There should be a reward system for each detection which leads to a conviction."

Prisoners caught dealing drugs should get ten year's extra time while officers caught for that offence should be jailed for 15 years, Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin told The Royal Gazette.

She said she was frustrated Government was finding it so difficult to stop the flow of drugs into prison. She said: "We are talking about a controlled environment."

Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin also called for sniffer dogs to be permanently placed at all prison establishments after claiming prisoners were tipped off when the dogs were coming.

Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister denied this when he spoke to The Royal Gazette and said his opposite number was looking to grab headlines.

He said he was satisfied the Ion Scan was working because testing of inmates for drugs had shown fewer narcotics were showing up.

Mr. Lister said there was no reason to farm out ion scanning to another agency because that would indicate the system had fallen apart and no-one was trustworthy which he said was not the case.

Speaking in the House on last night Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin said: "If dogs are at the airport they can't be at Westgate, if they are at Westgate they can't be at the prison farm.

"There is a train you can drive through the loopholes in security. It is not unreasonable to see we have dogs that live on site 24/7. I want to see a concerted real effort to stamp out that scourge."

Former Home Affairs Minister Paula Cox said the Prisons and Police Commissioner regularly shared intelligence and there was a coalition of professionals who discussed prison security.

Government backbencher Delaey Robinson said prison was full of both drug addicts and drug pushers.

"You have a mixture of people who want drugs and make a living out of supplying drugs. It makes it much more difficult to keep drugs out of that prison than in other places on the island."

He said drugs would never be eliminated on the island and it was naive to think they could.

He said authorities believed they caught ten to 20 percent of the drugs which came in.

"You can see how many times you would have to increase the budget before you got down to only ten percent of drugs getting through. That's a ridiculous proposition."

He said so many people would have to be employed that Government would end up employing drug users.

Opposition Legislative Affairs spokesman John Barritt said Mr. Robinson's speech was an example of why the Government was labelled as being soft on crime. He also attacked Government for refusing to submit to random drug tests themselves to set an example and he said people didn't want excuses for why drugs were ending up in prison.

Government MP Neletha Butterfield said Government was due to buy a third ion scanner to cover the Co-ed facility and the prison farm in St. George's.

She said to the opposition had asked what was being done and she was telling them that Government was taking action.

Opposition MP Trevor Moniz hit back at Director of Public Prosecutions Khamisi Tokunbo who had said attacks on the prosecution department were personally or politically motivated.

Mr. Moniz denied this and said the country was desperate to see results. He said Mr. Tokunbo had tried to evade responsibility for failings in his department. "The truth is everyone has to do their jobs. It doesn't appear people are doing their jobs.

"Every day you read of another acquittal. There was one recently with a sexual assault case where a woman's jaw was broken." He said there was no conviction. "It must be okay to break ladies' jaws."

He said a number of people were upset about violence in the community including Transport Minister Dr. Ewart Brown who had spoken out on the matter to the press.

Mr. Moniz said it was time proper statistics were produced on how well prosecutors were doing. He said Mr. Tokunbo had claimed an 80 percent success rate but had no hard figures to back it up.