Providing methadone to prisoners is not clogging up prisons or preventing more spaces being freed up to reduce overcrowding, prison chief Mike Ewart said today.

Ewart was reacting to media coverage in the wake of his appearance before the Justice Committee last week.

Comments he made regarding the provision of health services like methadone prescriptions were used in a number of articles which suggested some Scottish jails, in particular Barlinnie, had free space which was being prevented from use by the need to dispense methadone to drug addicted inmates.

Speaking exclusively to Holyrood, Ewart said:

“The point that I made is that the provision of methadone, like the provision of meals, access to visits, recreation and so on were part of the operational constraints that meant the capacity of any establishment was not just the physical capacity of the building.

“So when I heard that somebody was saying that methadone legislation meant that we couldn’t put in another 1400 places, well, that’s simply not compatible with what I said. I can’t draw an inference from what I say that would to that conclusion at all.”

Ewart appeared again today at the Justice Committee although gave far less evidence than last week.

Instead, during an often heated session, Minister for Community Safety Fergus Ewing accused the Westminster Government of “financial jiggery pokery” over its refusal to consider Barnett consequential funding of £120m for Scotland after providing £1.2bn to English and Welsh prisons to reduce overcrowding.

Ewing also demonstrated that Labour claims that there were unused prison spaces at HMP Kilmarnock were incorrect.