Security scare at Belmarsh

Mobile phones were smuggled into a jail housing some of Britain's most violent criminals, a report has found.

Security at Belmarsh prison in south-east London was so poor that four mobiles were discovered during searches in May, according to the Chief Inspector of Prisons.

Belmarsh has a unit that is home to high-risk inmates and also holds seven suspected terrorists detained without trial under emergency legislation.

Anne Owers said in her report into Belmarsh that it suffered from a "combination of too many prisoners and too few staff".

Prisoners are banned from using mobiles because of fears they could be used to co-ordinate escapes or run crime empires. But one prisoner at Belmarsh was able to conceal a mobile in his underpants during a strip search.

Ms Owers's report said: "Routine security safeguards were not being carried out thoroughly."

A Prison Service spokeswoman said: "We constantly review our security procedures to ensure they are robust. Mobile phones present a problem because they are small, made of plastic, and are being smuggled into prisons internally, but we do not have the authority to do intimate searches on people entering prisons."

Belmarsh housed Lord Archer for the first 22 days of his four-year sentence for perjury, and now has train robber Ronnie Biggs in its hospital wing.