Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department provided Lewisham Council with an impact assessment on the discontinuation of funding for the Household Support Fund from March 2024.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The government is providing an additional £500m to enable the extension of the Household Support Fund, including funding for the Devolved Administrations through the Barnett formula to be spent at their discretion. This means that Local Authorities in England will receive an additional £421m to support those in need locally through the Household Support Fund.
The funding will be available to Local Authorities in England from 1 April 2024 and will run until 30 September 2024.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of opening an independent public inquiry into the death of Zane Gbangbola during flooding in 2014.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Surrey Senior Coroner has already carried out a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding Zane Gbangbola’s death, taking into account a considerable amount of evidence. The Coroner, as an independent judicial office holder, drew his own conclusions based on this evidence.
If there is a belief that the evidence was not considered properly during the original inquest, or that there is new evidence available, the correct process is for an application to be made to the Attorney General asking her to apply to the High Court to quash the inquest and order a fresh investigation. The High Court would take this course of action if it believed that it would be in the interests of justice.
I believe that this remains the proper process to follow. An assessment of the merits of an inquiry should be made at the appropriate time if, and when, the legal processes have been exhausted.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase the provision of school-aged childcare.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is investing £289 million in a new wraparound childcare programme to support local authorities to work with primary schools and private providers to set up and deliver more wraparound childcare before and after school in the term time.
This is the first step in the government’s ambition for all parents of primary school children who need it to access childcare in their local area from 8am to 6pm. Successfully meeting this objective will go some way to ensuring that parents have enough childcare to work full time, more hours and more flexible hours.
The department is also providing over £200 million of funding a year for the continuation of the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, with all local authorities in England to deliver in the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays. The HAF programme provides heathy meals, enriching activities and free childcare places to children from low income families, benefiting their health, wellbeing and learning. In summer 2022, the programme reached around 600,000 children across England, including over 475,000 children eligible for free school meals across England. The department is working to ensure that the creation of new or expanded wraparound childcare provision can also help to support the delivery of sustainable holiday childcare provision, wherever possible.
The investment in wraparound childcare for primary school pupils announced by the Chancellor at the Spring Budget is part of wider transformative reforms to childcare for parents, children, and the economy. By 2027/28, this government will expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year on free hours and early education, helping working families with their childcare costs. This represents the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an assessment of trends in the level of accessible school-aged childcare on the number of parents returning to the workforce.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No assessment has been made by this department.
The Government recognises that childcare can affect parents’ decisions to take up paid work or increase their working hours. That is why, as announced at the Spring Budget, we are investing billions in additional childcare support for parents of toddlers, investing in wraparound childcare in schools, and increasing financial support for, and expectations of, parents claiming Universal Credit.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people who were convicted of murder were released at the end of their original tariff in each of the last five years; how many people who were convicted of murder were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the past 5 years; and how many people who were convicted of domestic homicide were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the last five years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Figures for question 1 are in Table 1. These are the number of first-time releases at the end of the original tariff following a mandatory life sentence.
Table 1. The number of people convicted of murder who were released at the end of their original tariff in each of the last five years:
| Release Year | ||||
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
Count | 264 | 230 | 236 | 193 | 197 |
Figures for question 2 are in Table 2. These are the number of recalls in the last five years for offenders who at the time of recall had a conviction for murder. The power to recall is a vital public protection measure and all individuals supervised under licence in the community are liable to recall to prison if they fail to comply with their licence conditions.
Table 2. The number of people convicted of murder who were recalled to prison after they were released in each of the last five years:
| Licence Revocation Year | ||||
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
Count | 168 | 195 | 188 | 196 | 219 |
For question three, which relates specifically to those offenders convicted of domestic homicide, the data is not routinely available and the work to identify such cases would exceed the appropriate cost limit under the request for the provision of data.
Notes:
2. Lifer Migration; These are prisoners who were sentenced prior to the introduction of the Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD), there records were migrated from paper files when the database was introduced in 2009.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will publish a list of all (a) maintenance contracts, (b) contractors and (c) contract (i) costs and (ii) lengths across the prison estate.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Maintenance contracts for the prison estate with the details requested are set out in the table below:
Maintenance Contract | Contractor | Current Annual Contract Cost | Contract Length |
Prison FM Contract- 1305 | Amey Community Ltd | £55.5m | June 2015 to March 26 |
Prison FM Contract - 1306 | Amey Community Ltd | £49.7m | June 2015 to March 26 |
Prison FM Contract - 12631 | Mitie Care & Custody Ltd | £3.5m | February 2012 to March 26 |
In addition to the contracts shown in the above table, maintenance activities are also undertaken by the Ministry of Justice’s wholly owned company, GFSL, who operate under a Memorandum of Understanding. GFSL provide maintenance for around 50 prison establishments across the South of England with an annual value of £88.3m.
All suppliers play a critical role in maintaining capacity and ensuring our prisons are safe and decent.
We ensure value of money by regularly benchmarking different elements of the service.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he expects to hear the results of his Department's survey on the number of buildings in the prison estate that include reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Departments have been asked to report on the current picture of suspected and confirmed RAAC in their estates as soon as possible. This will be updated on a regular basis as new buildings are identified and surveying and remediation are carried out.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners have been released at their Sentence End Date in each of the last 10 years for which data is available.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Prisoners(1) released on their Sentence End Date (SED) each year, 2013 to 2022, in England and Wales
Year Releases
2013 1,854
2014 1,179
2015 680
2016 1,849
2017 2,068
2018 2,228
2019 1,871
2020 1,346
2021 1,219
2022 1,427
1. Prisoners released from determinate sentences only.
Note: In 2015 we made large-scale improvements to our data processes, therefore data for pre-2015 is not directly comparable.
Data sources and quality
The figures in this table have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Source: Prison NOMIS
PQ 195128 (Ministry of Justice; Data and Analysis (Directorate))
For majority of sentences, a prisoner is required to serve part of the sentence in custody, with a period served in the community subject to licence. A prisoner may, however, be released at the expiry of their sentence as a result being recalled to custody from licence following initial release, or if enough additional days at adjudication have been awarded to defer release until the end of the sentence. Also, standard determinate sentences imposed for certain terrorist/terrorist connected offences, require the offender to serve the sentence in full (where parole is not granted earlier).
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what commercial companies were involved in working with HM Prison Service to train prisoners for employment as of 18 July 2023.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As of 18 July, 87 organisations were actively involved in working with HM Prison & Probation Service in training prisoners.
The New Futures Network is the team in HM Prison & Probation Service responsible for working with businesses to secure jobs for prison leavers. Information about the commercial relationships it has developed is available at this link: New-End-of-year-sales-21-22.pdf (newfuturesnetwork.gov.uk).
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners gained vocational qualifications in each of the last 12 years.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This information could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Since 2019, the Ministry of Justice has centrally recorded the number of educational courses completed by prisoners, however the information collected does not differentiate between vocational qualifications and other types.
Statistics on the number of course completions are published on gov.uk, in table 2.3 here: