Asked by: Lord McCabe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether victims of assault are entitled to compensation in circumstances where the perpetrator did not complete their court-mandated rehabilitation programme.
Answered by Alex Chalk
Where a person is convicted of an offence, criminal courts in England and Wales may make – and in some circumstances are required to consider making – a compensation order in cases involving personal injury, loss or damage.
Community orders consist of one or more requirements decided by the court. These can include rehabilitation activity requirements, treatment requirements or programme requirements, which specifically address offender needs.
Where an offender fails to comply with any requirement of a community order, the court has wide powers: it can amend the order to make the requirements more onerous, impose a fine, or revoke the order and resentence the offender to any sentence that would have been available for that offence.
Sentencing in individual cases is entirely a matter for the independent courts taking into account the circumstances of the case.
Asked by: Lord McCabe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he enable local registry offices to permit wedding ceremonies to be held outdoors in the grounds of approved premises if covid-19 social distancing regulations cannot be complied with inside the premises.
Answered by Alex Chalk
The Government announced in June 2019 that the Law Commission will conduct a fundamental review of the law on how and where people can legally marry in England and Wales. This is an important and complex social policy reform and requires careful thought and consideration.
The Law Commission published its consultation paper on 3 September 2020 and the Government, following the final report, will decide on provision on the basis of the Law Commission’s recommendations.
In parallel, the Government made clear when it announced the Law Commission project that it would also, as an interim measure, undertake work to allow more civil weddings and civil partnerships to take place outdoors through secondary legislation. This work is ongoing.
The Government has published guidance on planning COVID-19 secure marriages and civil partnerships at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-small-marriages-and-civil-partnerships/covid-19-guidance-for-small-marriages-and-civil-partnerships.
Asked by: Lord McCabe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to help improve communications between (a) probate registry offices and (b) solicitors.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
As part of the £1bn HMCTS reform programme a new online service has been introduced for use by probate professionals. The service is available 24 hours a day and enables professionals access to real time information about the progress of their digital case without the need to contact HMCTS.
In addition to the online system, as of March 2020, all calls are now answered by the Courts & Tribunals Service Centres which are equipped with modern technology to monitor performance levels and make improvements to the service being offered.
HMCTS also regularly meets with a variety of probate legal professional representative bodies to consult and update on forthcoming changes whilst gathering and responding to feedback.
Asked by: Lord McCabe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what comparative assessment he has made of the average length of waiting time for applicants to receive a grant of probate (a) before and (b) after the introduction of HM Courts & Tribunals Service new case management system.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The introduction of a new digital case management system in March 2019 changed the business process for accounting for the receipt date of applications which need to be held due to errors or missing documentation. The change enabled more transparent and accurate reporting of waiting times and these timings are now included in published official statistics.
It also coincided with legislative change to the probate application process which removed the need for applicants to travel to town centre locations to swear an oath before a court officer or a commissioner for oaths. The receipt date was previously recorded from the date an application had been checked whereas it is now recorded from the date of first receipt by the probate service.
The figures since the introduction of the new digital case management system are therefore not directly comparable to the old system.
The current waiting times are published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly (Table 26).
Asked by: Lord McCabe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the effect of the closure of the Birmingham probate registry office on the processing times for probate claims.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The closure of Birmingham probate registry office in August 2019 coincided with the opening of a Courts and Tribunals Service Centre (CTSC) in Birmingham. The result is a current net increase of 51 full time equivalent staff employed in probate offices and there has been no direct effect from the closure on waiting times.
Asked by: Lord McCabe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the announcement on 15 May 2020 to introduce video calling in the absence of family visits to prisons, when his Department plans to roll out video calling to the remainder of prisons in England and Wales.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
We have introduced temporary emergency video calling in recognition of the
importance of maintaining family contact while social visits have been temporarily suspended in
prisons in England and Wales. We have published information regarding the provision of video
calls on GOV.UK and made clear we will continue to expand secure video calling to more establishments during this time. Details of which prisons are operating live services for families and friends can be accessed via the following link;
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/visit-a-prisoner-using-a-video-call
At the appropriate time, we will consider future options for video calling beyond
Covid-19 restrictions.