Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether police forces receive training on methods of removing those who obstruct public highways and thoroughfares.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The actions being taken by the Insulate Britain (IB) group to block the M25 have caused major upheaval and disruption to the public. That is why we intend to use the PCSC Bill to increase the maximum penalty for obstruction of a highway from the current £1,000 fine to an unlimited fine, six months’ imprisonment, or both.
The police have extensive training programmes for dealing with public order, this includes tactics for removing those who are obstructing public highways and thoroughfares.
Each public order trained officer receives a concentrated training refresher at least once a year. Police forces have specialist “protester removal teams” who are trained to quickly and effectively remove those who are obstructing public highways and thoroughfares, and who will receive even more regular training.
Individual training packages are determined by police forces with guidance provided by the college of policing.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the new edition of the Equal Treatment Bench Book, published in February 2021 and the Answer of 29 June 2021 to Question 19486, what legal advice was used to inform the information and guidance provided in Chapter 12 on Transgender People.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
No assessment of the effect of the Equal Treatment Bench Book is made by the Ministry of Justice. To preserve the independence of the judiciary, the Lord Chief Justice (LCJ), the Senior President of the Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner have statutory responsibility for judicial training. These responsibilities are exercised through the Judicial College, which also produces the Equal Treatment Bench Book.
Fair treatment is a fundamental principle embedded in the judicial oath and the Equal Treatment Bench Book is compiled by the judiciary to provide general guidelines for judicial office holders to apply as appropriate in any particular case. It is reviewed by a judicial editorial panel, with content from judicial experts and information from subject experts. The identities of the principal contributors appear in the Acknowledgments. The external documentary sources relied upon by the editors of the Bench Book are set out in full in the footnotes.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to page 330 in Chapter 12 of the Equal Treatment Bench Book, what evidence exists to support the claim that It is important to be alive to the fact that the gender history of a person may be something an opponent litigant may seek to use in order to place pressure on them.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
No assessment of the effect of the Equal Treatment Bench Book is made by the Ministry of Justice. To preserve the independence of the judiciary, the Lord Chief Justice (LCJ), the Senior President of the Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner have statutory responsibility for judicial training. These responsibilities are exercised through the Judicial College, which also produces the Equal Treatment Bench Book.
Fair treatment is a fundamental principle embedded in the judicial oath and the Equal Treatment Bench Book is compiled by the judiciary to provide general guidelines for judicial office holders to apply as appropriate in any particular case. It is reviewed by a judicial editorial panel, with content from judicial experts and information from subject experts. The identities of the principal contributors appear in the Acknowledgments. The external documentary sources relied upon by the editors of the Bench Book are set out in full in the footnotes.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference t to Chapter 12 of the Equal Treatment Bench Book, what assessment he has made of the effect on victims of violent and sexual assault of instances where those victims are instructed to use preferred pronouns instead of referring to their alleged attacker as a member of the sex that they experienced them to be.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
No assessment of the effect of the Equal Treatment Bench Book is made by the Ministry of Justice. To preserve the independence of the judiciary, the Lord Chief Justice (LCJ), the Senior President of the Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner have statutory responsibility for judicial training. These responsibilities are exercised through the Judicial College, which also produces the Equal Treatment Bench Book.
Fair treatment is a fundamental principle embedded in the judicial oath and the Equal Treatment Bench Book is compiled by the judiciary to provide general guidelines for judicial office holders to apply as appropriate in any particular case. It is reviewed by a judicial editorial panel, with content from judicial experts and information from subject experts. The identities of the principal contributors appear in the Acknowledgments. The external documentary sources relied upon by the editors of the Bench Book are set out in full in the footnotes.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
What assessment his Department has made of the future of the provision allowing both sets of abortion pills to be taken at home.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has undertaken a public consultation on whether to make permanent the current temporary measure for home use of both pills for early medical abortion. We are considering all evidence submitted and plan to publish our response later this year. The temporary measure will be kept in place until a decision has been made.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, published in 2019, that neonatal stabilisation may be considered from 22 weeks gestation.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The Department has considered the ‘Framework on Perinatal Management of Extreme Preterm Birth before 27 Weeks of Gestation’ published by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine.
MBRRACE-UK published guidance in November 2020 to support health care professionals in the assessment and documentation of signs of life in extremely preterm births to support consistent decision making about birth classification.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the research by Hakansson et alia, published in the journal Pediatrics in July 2004, on increases in the number of babies born at 22 weeks gestation that can survive outside the womb and the increase in that number with proactive perinatal care, what plans his Department has to review the time limits on abortion in the UK.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is for Parliament to decide whether to make any changes to the law on abortion. As with other matters of conscience, abortion is an issue on which the Government adopts a neutral stance and allows hon. Members to vote according to their moral, ethical or religious beliefs.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what maintenance or other works have been undertaken on the defence estate in the last six months.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
This information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost, as across every Ministry of Defence site maintenance tasks are carried out on a daily basis.
For example, Amey, who are responsible for the maintenance of Service Family Accommodation, carry out approximately 250,000 maintenance tasks per year under the National Housing Prime contract.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference the advice of Chapter 12 of the Equal Treatment Bench Book, what assessment has been made of the potential effect of the advice that the court may consider making reporting restrictions under section 4 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 to prevent disclosure of a transgender person’s previous name and transgender history or it may direct a private hearing on the freedom of the press.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
To preserve the independence of the judiciary, the Lord Chief Justice, the Senior President of the Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner have statutory responsibility for judicial training, under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, and Coroners and Justice Act 2009 respectively. These responsibilities are exercised through the Judicial College and are outside the remit of the Ministry of Justice which means that no assessment is undertaken by the Ministry of Justice of its effect.
The Equal Treatment Bench Book (ETBB), reviewed by a judicial editorial panel, with content from judicial experts and other subject experts including academics and external bodies, is a general guidance document designed to encourage effective communication between all court users. It is not legally binding on judges or court users, who are free to decide what is appropriate in any given set of circumstances.
The content referred to in chapter 12 reflects the current law in the Gender Recognition Act 2004 regarding the revealing of transgender history of applicants for a Gender Recognition Certificate. It is for individual judges to balance reporting restrictions with the requirements of open justice in any particular case involving a transgender person where transgender history is not at all relevant to the subject of the proceedings.
Asked by: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he made of (a) the historical importance of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and (b) its potential viability as a commercial operation as part of his decision on the Whitechapel Bell Foundry site.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
The decision to grant planning permission for the proposals at Whitechapel Bell Foundry was published on 13 May. The Secretary of State did not make this decision. In reaching his decision, the Minister of State for Regional Growth and Local Government took into account a wide range of issues, based on the detailed findings of the Planning Inspector who held a public local inquiry into the case. The published decision letter sets out in detail the full reasoning and conclusions and, like all decisions, is published on the gov.uk website.
As the decision is final, unless challenged through the courts, the Government has no further jurisdiction in this matter and I am unable to give any further comment on the merits of the proposals.