Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government which provisions of the Sentencing Bill will not apply to Northern Ireland, and why.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The issue of justice is one that is a transferred matter under the devolution settlement. Ministry of Justice officials have engaged officials in the Northern Ireland Executive in relation to a range of Bill measures and amendments that apply in Northern Ireland. A Legislative Consent Motion is not required with respect to Northern Ireland.
Provisions that will apply to Northern Ireland include sentences with fixed licence period, deportation of foreign criminals and the Service Justice System.
The Explanatory Notes for the Bill contain a comprehensive table which outlines the parts of the Bill which apply to Northern Ireland and which do not. This is available on the Bill Page on the Parliament website.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of a centralised Probation service.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
A unified Probation Service operates throughout England and Wales, under the leadership of the Chief Probation Officer, who provides both professional guidance and system oversight for probation staff.
We recognise that probation works best when delivering in partnership, and Regional Probation Directors and their teams have significant flexibility to collaborate with local partner agencies. Examples of that local collaboration and innovation include joint delivery of Integrated Offender Management with police forces and co-commissioning of services for offenders with metro mayors.
The probation service needs investment and strong leadership – which we are delivering. It is our assessment that further structural changes at this time would be disruptive and detrimental.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which prisons have humanist pastoral support provided through prison chaplaincy services.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
We recognise and respect the right of prisoners to register and practice their faith or belief while in custody. Chaplaincy plays a critical and unique role in the work of prisons and the life of prisoners. It not only provides advice on faith and belief matters but also offers pastoral care regardless of an individual’s faith or belief, in support of HM Prison and Probation Service’s commitment to decency, safety and rehabilitation.
Specifically Humanist/Non-Religious pastoral support is available from chaplains at the following prisons:
Aylesbury
Bullingdon
Channings Wood
Dovegate
Durham
Frankland
Highpoint
Isis
Pentonville
Stafford
Wayland
Wormwood Scrubs
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much was spent on community payback services in (a) Greater Manchester (b) Oldham for each year from 2015 to date.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The data below shows the annual spend for Community Payback services in the Greater Manchester Probation Region since 2021.
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
| £m | £m | £m | £m |
Greater Manchester Unpaid Work | 1.40 | 3.93 | 4.70 | 4.46 |
To note:
Data cannot be broken down below regional level.
Data prior to July 2021 is unable to be reported on, due to probation regions being under the management of Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). The unification of CRCs and the National Probation Service (NPS) in England and Wales took place on 26 June 2021, marking a significant restructuring of the probation system.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to help increase public confidence in sentencing.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
In October 2024, we commissioned the Independent Sentencing Review, led by former Lord Chancellor Rt. Hon. David Gauke. The Review was tasked with re-evaluating the sentencing framework to ensure that there is always a place in prison for dangerous offenders and victims will always know that justice will be done. It also aimed to ensure that sentences are consistent and make sense to victims and the public.
The Sentencing Bill, currently being considered before Parliament, implements many of the Review’s recommendations. The Bill represents a once in a generation change to our criminal justice system, making significant changes to the sentencing framework, the way in which offenders are managed and serve sentences in the community. It also aims to create a justice system that better serves victims.
When sentencing, courts must follow any relevant sentencing guidelines, issued by the Sentencing Council, unless not in the interests of justice to do so. The guidelines provide a structured approach for sentencers to follow and are designed to help enhance consistency and transparency in sentencing decisions.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of sentencing guidelines in preventing reoffending among repeat offenders.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Sentencing Council for England and Wales is a non-departmental public body set up to promote greater transparency and consistency in sentencing, whilst maintaining the independence of the judiciary. Its primary role is to issue guidelines on sentencing, which the courts must follow unless it is in the interests of justice not to do so.
There are a range of matters to which the Council must have regard when producing guidelines, one of which is the relative costs and effectiveness of sentences in reducing reoffending. In order to help inform the way in which it has regard to such matters, the Council, as part of its strategic objectives for 2021-26, committed to reviewing the evidence on the effectiveness of sentencing and has published two independent literature reviews: The Effectiveness of Sentencing Options on Reoffending (2022) and Reconceptualising the Effectiveness of Sentencing: four perspectives (2024). The 2022 review brought together evidence on factors associated with reoffending and desistance; the (direct and indirect) costs of different types of sentences currently available in England and Wales and how sociodemographic characteristics impact these issues. The 2024 review focused on the effectiveness of sentencing from the perspectives of offenders, the general public, victims and sentencers.
The Council monitors and evaluates all definitive guidelines, as per its statutory duty to do so. These evaluations assess the impact the guideline has had on sentencing outcomes and seek to determine whether the guideline has been implemented as intended, so that any issues can be identified and rectified. These evaluations use a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods.
The guidelines, strategic objectives, literature reviews and evaluations can be found online at the Council’s website: https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of geographical variations in sentencing outcomes across courts in England and Wales.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the independent judiciary. When deciding what sentence to impose, courts must consider the circumstances of the case, including the culpability of the offender, the harm they caused or intended to cause, and any aggravating and mitigating factors, in line with any relevant sentencing guidelines, developed by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales.
The Ministry of Justice publishes detailed breakdowns of sentencing outcomes, including by Police Force Area on the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to publish sentencing outcome data broken down by court area.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the independent judiciary. When deciding what sentence to impose, courts must consider the circumstances of the case, including the culpability of the offender, the harm they caused or intended to cause, and any aggravating and mitigating factors, in line with any relevant sentencing guidelines, developed by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales.
The Ministry of Justice publishes detailed breakdowns of sentencing outcomes, including by Police Force Area on the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly.
Asked by: Lord Kempsell (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether there is capability in the Prison and Probation Service incident reporting system to categorise a prison incident as faith or ideology related; and if not, how the Prison and Probation Service collects data on prison incidents that are motivated by faith or ideology at a local and national level.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service does not hold a central record of whether prison incidents are motivated by faith or ideology. If a prison identifies that an incident was motivated by such a factor, this will be managed locally. Terrorist offenders are managed through a specialist, multi-agency process, which assesses offenders in terms of their individual risk.
Asked by: Siân Berry (Green Party - Brighton Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of job vacancies in key professions within his Department’s responsibilities, including contractor organisations.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Ministry of Justice has not undertaken a central assessment of trends in job vacancies across key professional groups. Workforce planning is devolved to individual business groups, which are responsible for assessing their own staffing requirements and monitoring vacancy levels in line with operational priorities. This includes oversight of contractor organisations supporting the department, who are similarly responsible for overseeing their own workforce needs. Through established governance and performance-management arrangements, the department maintains oversight to ensure that services continue to be delivered effectively.
However, the ONS publishes information on the number of vacancies from the Vacancy Survey. These headline accredited official statistics are published monthly on a rolling three-monthly basis at UK-level, by industry sector, and by size of business, as part of the ONS's Vacancies and jobs in the UK release.
Further insights into labour demand are provided in the ONS's Labour demand volumes by Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2020), UK dataset, which includes official statistics in development sourced from Textkernel data. These tables are published monthly and contain the number of online job adverts split by local authority and occupation (SOC 2020).
Be advised the ONS caution use of these alternative data sources because the data is not seasonally adjusted or directly comparable to their headline estimates.