Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Crown Court hearings have been delayed due to a (a) failure to deliver a prisoner and (b) a delay in bringing a prisoner to a court by (i) Serco and (ii) other providers of escort services.
Answered by Gareth Bacon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The number of contractual delays at the Crown Court attributable to the two PECS suppliers, in each month from September 2023 to February 2024, is shown in the table below.
Contractual delays include both failure to deliver a prisoner, and delay in bringing a prisoner to court. In contractual terms, a delay occurs when a prisoner who is at that time the responsibility of a PECS supplier, is not available in the courtroom at the required time so that courtroom business is delayed by 15 minutes or more. Whenever a delay occurs, its cause is investigated by the PECS Management Team in His Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service. During the period for which data have been provided, there were no instances of failure to deliver a prisoner: all recorded instances are attributable to delay in bringing a prisoner to court.
PECS contractual delays to Crown Court hearings, September 2023 to February 2024
Serco | Total moves to Crown Court | Number of contractual delays | Performance % |
Sep 2023 | 4872 | 5 | 99.90 |
Oct 2023 | 4651 | 8 | 99.83 |
Nov 2023 | 5408 | 17 | 99.69 |
Dec 2023 | 3803 | 20 | 99.48 |
Jan 2024 | 5136 | 14 | 99.73 |
Feb 2024 | 4733 | 7 | 99.86 |
GEOAmey | Total moves to Crown Court | Number of contractual delays | Performance % |
Sep 2023 | 4904 | 2 | 99.96 |
Oct 2023 | 5169 | 3 | 99.95 |
Nov 2023 | 5559 | 2 | 99.97 |
Dec 2023 | 4419 | 1 | 99.99 |
Jan 2024 | 5586 | 1 | 99.99 |
Feb 2024 | 5223 | 1 | 99.99 |
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there have been in Greater London for (i) dangerous cycling in contravention of section 28, (ii) careless and inconsiderate cycling in contravention of section 29 and (iii) cycling when under the influence of drink or drugs in contravention of section 30 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 in each of the last three years for which information is available.
Answered by Gareth Bacon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes information on the number of prosecutions and convictions in England and Wales for the following offences:
13711 - Reckless and dangerous driving by pedal cyclist - Contrary to section 28(1) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and Schedule 2 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988.
13712 - Careless driving by pedal cyclist - Contrary to section 29 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and Schedule 2 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988.
13713 - Pedal cyclist driving under the influence of drink or drugs - Contrary to section 30 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and Schedule 2 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988.
These can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Prosecutions and convictions’ tab and using the HO Offence Code filter to select the above offences in the Outcomes by Offence data tool.
The police force area filter enables you to select specific areas, in this case, select ‘Metropolitan’.
Asked by: Richard Fuller (Conservative - North East Bedfordshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average holding time was for phone calls to the probate office contact line in each year since 2019.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The average holding time (Average Speed of Answer (ASA)) for phone calls to the Probate office contact line in each year since 2019 is as follows:
2021 = 17 minutes 28 seconds
2022 = 33 minutes 23 seconds
2023 = 12 minutes 17 seconds
HMCTS does not hold ASA data prior to 2021 due to a change in system in Spring 2021.
HMCTS has recruited over 100 additional staff, between June 2022 and June 2023, to improve both telephone response times and increase the overall volume and speed of grants being issued.
In addition, HMCTS have undertaken additional staff training to ensure probate call agents can resolve more queries at the first time of contact and issue the grant wherever possible.
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of (a) closures of magistrates courts and (b) trends in the recruitment of magistrates on case capacity in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The decision to close any court only happens following full public consultation, and only when effective access to justice can be maintained. Courts that have closed were either underused, dilapidated or too close to another existing HMCTS location in the same local area.
In recent years there has been considerable recruitment of magistrates in Greater Manchester, both for the Adult Court and the Family Court, and current magistrate numbers are sufficient to manage the volume of work in Greater Manchester.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of, and what action they are taking to reduce, overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
In prisons where we have crowding in place, a rigorous cell certification process is undertaken that ensures the use of cells is subject to formal assessment of safety and decency.
We continue to pursue the package of longer-term measures the Lord Chancellor announced on 16 October 2023 to reform the justice system and continue to address the prison capacity challenges. The measures include: the extension of the Early Removal Scheme, introducing a presumption to suspend sentences of 12 months or less, curtailing the licence period for IPP sentences and extending the use of Home Detention Curfew. On 11 March, the Lord Chancellor announced the next steps in our plan, to allow us to go further and faster in removing foreign national offenders (FNOs). This includes expediting prisoner transfers with our priority partners such as Albania, and the creation of a new taskforce across the Home Office and Ministry of Justice to change the way we process FNO cases radically.
To meet pressing demand, we are building c.20,000 modern, rehabilitative prison places – the biggest prison build programme since the Victorian era. We have already delivered c.5,900 of these, including through our two new 1,700 places prisons, HMP Five Wells and HMP Fosse Way, and c.590 Rapid Deployment Cells across 11 sites. By the end of 2025, we are on track to have delivered around 10,000 places in total.
The Government will continue to monitor the evolving situation with demand for prison places carefully, so that we can make sure we have the right approaches in place to maintain the capacity required for a safe and effective criminal justice system.
Asked by: Jerome Mayhew (Conservative - Broadland)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to tackle the backlog in the courts.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We remain committed to tackling the outstanding caseloads across our courts and tribunals and have introduced a range of measures to achieve this aim.
Over 90% of all criminal cases are heard at the magistrates’ court, where we heard 100,000 cases a month on average across 2023. While the outstanding caseload in the magistrates’ courts has slightly increased in recent months due to an increase in the number of cases coming to court, the caseload remains well below its pandemic peak and stood at 353,900 at the end of September 2023, and cases continue to be progressed quickly. To aid our efforts in the magistrates’ courts, we invested £1 million in a programme of work to support the recruitment of more magistrates. We aim to recruit 2,000 new magistrates this year, and similar numbers for each of the next couple of years.
At the Crown Court, we remain committed to reducing the outstanding caseload. Last financial year we sat over 100,000 days and this financial year, we plan to deliver around 107,000 sitting days and recruit more than 1,000 judges across all jurisdictions. Judges have worked tirelessly to complete more cases, with disposals up by 9% during Q3 in 2023 compared to Q4 in 2022 (25,700 compared to 23,700).
We are also investing in our criminal courts. In August 2023, we announced we are investing £220 million for essential modernisation and repair work of our court buildings across the next two years, up to March 2025. We have also continued the use of 20 Nightingale courtrooms into the 2024/25 financial year, to allow courts to work at full capacity.
In the Family Court, we are working with the Department for Education and other partners on the Family Justice Board to tackle the longest running cases and increase the proportion of public law cases that conclude within the 26-week timeline. The Department for Education are also investing an extra £10m to develop new initiatives to address the longest delays in public law proceedings.
We announced in the Spring Budget an additional £55m to improve productivity, support earlier resolution of family disputes and reduce the number of cases coming to court. This includes creating a digital advice tool for separating couples, piloting early legal advice and supporting the expansion of the private law Pathfinder model. We are also investing up to £23.6m in the family mediation voucher scheme, which we intend will allow for its continuation up to March 2025. As of March 2024, over 26,000 families have successfully used the scheme to attempt to resolve their private law disputes outside of court.
With regards to civil cases, we are taking action to ensure those that do need to go to trial are dealt with quickly. We have launched the biggest ever judicial recruitment drive for District Judges, are digitising court processes and holding more remote hearings, and are increasing the use of mediation. The requirement for small claims in the county court to attend a mediation session with the Small Claims Mediation Service will start this spring and is expected to help parties resolve their dispute swiftly and consensually without the need for a judicial hearing.
With regards to tribunals, we continue to work with the Department for Business and Trade on further measures to address caseloads in the Employment Tribunal, where the deployment of legal officers, recruitment of additional judges and a new electronic case management system have helped the Tribunal to manage its caseload which remains below its pandemic peak.
Asked by: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which prisons have used prison officers on detached duty in 2023; and how many (a) officers were deployed to each prison and (b) times those officers were deployed.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
During 2023, 21 prisons received Band 3 officers on National Detached Duty. The table attached shows the average number of detached duty staff deployed at each site in each month.
It is not possible, without incurring disproportionate cost, to provide the remaining information requested, as this would require a detailed examination of individual records.
We are doing more than ever to attract and retain the best staff, including boosting salaries and launching our first-ever nationwide advertising campaign. These efforts are working - we have over 4,800 FTE additional officers between March 2017 and December 2023, and retention rates for prison staff are improving.
We have committed to recruiting up to 5,000 additional prison officers across public and private prisons by the mid-2020s.
Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to reform the criminal justice system to help tackle violence against women and girls.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
This Government has introduced a comprehensive legislative framework to prevent violence against women, including our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
We have pioneered the creation of new offences including coercive control, non-fatal strangulation and intimate image abuse; more than doubled the number of adult rape cases reaching court compared to when we commissioned our End-to-End Rape Review; and made sure that sentences for adult rape are almost 40% longer than they were in 2010.
And through our Sentencing Bill, we will ensure that rapists and serious sexual offenders spend the entirety of their custodial sentence behind bars, without possibility of parole.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to reform the criminal justice system to help tackle violence against women and girls.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
This Government has introduced a comprehensive legislative framework to prevent violence against women, including our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
We have pioneered the creation of new offences including coercive control, non-fatal strangulation and intimate image abuse; more than doubled the number of adult rape cases reaching court compared to when we commissioned our End-to-End Rape Review; and made sure that sentences for adult rape are almost 40% longer than they were in 2010.
And through our Sentencing Bill, we will ensure that rapists and serious sexual offenders spend the entirety of their custodial sentence behind bars, without possibility of parole.
Asked by: Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to tackle violence against women and girls through the criminal justice system.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
This Government has introduced a comprehensive legislative framework to prevent violence against women, including our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
We have pioneered the creation of new offences including coercive control, non-fatal strangulation and intimate image abuse; more than doubled the number of adult rape cases reaching court compared to when we commissioned our End-to-End Rape Review; and made sure that sentences for adult rape are almost 40% longer than they were in 2010.
And through our Sentencing Bill, we will ensure that rapists and serious sexual offenders spend the entirety of their custodial sentence behind bars, without possibility of parole.