AS MANY as five HMP Bedford staff members were hospitalised at the weekend as further violence erupted at the crisis-hit jail, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) said today.

The union said that the warders needed hospital treatment after a major disturbance at Bedford before “riot squads with the support of dog sections and local staff … regained control.”

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has denied that a riot squad was deployed, saying that there was no threat to the wider public and that four members of staff had been hospitalised.