Prison officers have urged the Justice Secretary to “listen to staff on the front line” and allow the use of electric stun guns in the UK’s most dangerous jails.
Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA), will make the demand when he meets Shabana Mahmood on Wednesday.
The meeting comes after guards at HMP Frankland in County Durham were attacked with hot oil and homemade weapons by Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi.
“All we’re asking for is for the Government to be reasonable with us,” Mr Fairhurst told the BBC, saying officers needed more options if extendable batons and synthetic pepper spray fail to deal with a situation.
“This is what I’ll be asking the Secretary of State for Justice on Wednesday – if you’re against tasers, why are you against tasers?
“What’s it going to take for people to listen to us on the front line? We need protections in place to protect ourselves from extreme levels of violence.”
The Prison Service said it will investigate whether frontline staff should be given protective body armour following Abedi’s attack earlier this month when four officers were injured.
Mr Fairhurst told the BBC the lack of equipment was making the recruitment and retention of prison staff more difficult.
He said: “We’re in an enclosed environment, and we’re facing people armed with homemade knives. What do we do next? We haven’t even got stabproof vests, so we need Taser as an option, a tactical option, to deploy to save our lives really.”
Responding to concerns the proposals would undermine rehabilitative approaches to the prison system, Mr Fairhurst said: “It’s very easy for an academic to say that when they’re not on the front line, wearing a white shirt for protection and facing extreme levels of violence from terrorists.”
The Ministry of Justice has pledged to carry out a review following the incident also suspended access to kitchens in separation units in prisons, where the attack is believed to have taken place in Frankland.
Ms Mahmood said: “It is clear there are further questions to answer, and more that must be done.
“This will look into how this was able to happen, and what we must do to better protect our prison officers in the future.
“This review will look specifically at this attack, but also more widely at how separation centres are run.”
