London, Dec 5 (IANS): The government's ban on sending books to prisoners in England and Wales is unlawful, the high court declared Friday.

Under the current rules, prisoners are prevented from receiving parcels unless they have "exceptional circumstances", such as a medical condition, BBC reported.

"I see no good reason in the light of the importance of books for prisoners to restrict beyond what is required by volumetric control and reasonable measures relating to frequency of parcels and security considerations," Justice Collins said.

"In the light of the statement made about the importance of books, to refer to them as a privilege is strange," he added.

The legal challenge was brought by Barbara Gordon-Jones, a life sentence prisoner at Send Jail in Surrey.

The book ban was introduced in November last year in England and Wales, as part a scheme which limits what prisoners can receive in parcels.

Prisoners had argued that books sent to them in parcels can be key to their rehabilitation.

Prisoners are still able to read books borrowed from a prison library -- and last month the justice ministry relaxed restrictions on the number of books they could keep in their cells.

But it has been claimed that prison libraries are often inadequately stocked, and can be hard to access because there is not always staff available to take prisoners to the book shelves.