Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many drug seizures took place in prisons from March (a) 2021-22 and (b) 2022-23 in each institution.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
In the 12 months to March 2023, the number of incidents where drugs were found in prisons decreased to 14,724 from 17,700 in the previous 12-month period, a decrease of 17%.
The accompanying table contains data on all drug finds in each prison across the 2021-22 and 2022-23 period.
This fall follows action by this Government. Our £100m Security Investment Programme to reduce crime and prevent drugs entering prisons completed in March 2022. This funded a range of security measures, including X-ray body scanners across the entire closed male estate. Since July 2020, these have resulted in over 10,000 positive scans, many finding multiple contraband items, preventing drugs and mobile phones and other illicit items from entering prisons. We are going further this year with £25m investment to restrict drug supply into prisons, including installing x-ray baggage scanners at 42 high priority sites, and enhancing our mobile blocking technology.
Alongside this, the Ministry of Justice is investing £120m over the next three years to get more offenders engaged in treatment, and support them towards abstinence. With this investment, we will enhance testing regimes in prison, expand the use of Drug Recovery Wings where prisoners commit to remain drug-free and undergo regular voluntary drug tests, support prisoners to engage with community treatment ahead of their release and increase the use of intensive drug rehabilitation requirements for those on community sentences.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of (a) ordinary and (b) named-day written questions their Department answered on time in 2022.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
In 2022, the Ministry of Justice answered 94% of ordinary and 89% of named day Written Parliamentary Questions on time.
Please note that these figures have been pulled from the Ministry of Justice’s internal data and may not be a fully accurate representation of the Department’s timeliness.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps their Department is taking to reduce the time taken to respond to (a) written parliamentary questions and (b) correspondence from Members of Parliament.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
All departments have access to regular training led by the Parliamentary Capability Team through the Government Campus. The Ministry of Justice attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of Parliamentary Questions (PQs) and correspondence, and officials remain committed to providing the highest level of service. To complement the work of the Parliamentary Capability Team, the Ministry of Justice also runs tailored training sessions for MoJ staff specific to PQs and correspondence to drive up the quality and timeliness of our responses. These sessions have been delivered 7 times since July.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time taken was to register a Power of Attorney with the Office of the Public Guardian in (a) 2019, (b) 2020, (c) 2021 and (d) January to July 2022.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The average time taken to register a Power of Attorney with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) was as follows:
a) April 2019 – March 2020 – 40 days
b) April 2020 – March 2021 - 58 days
c) April 2021 – March 2022 – 69 days
d) 01 April 2022 – 31 July 2022 – 85 days
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of converting existing Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences into determinate sentences and allow IPP prisoners to be released on licence for a period commensurate with their original minimum tariff.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government’s long held view is that retrospectively abolishing the IPP sentence would give rise to an unacceptable risk to public protection. Converting IPP prisoners into determinate sentence prisoners, even with a potentially lengthy licence period, would mean that many potentially dangerous offenders would be immediately released into the community with no prior risk assessment.
Our primary responsibility is to protect the public. HMPPS remains committed to safely reducing the number of prisoners serving IPP sentences in custody by providing them with every opportunity to progress towards safe release by the Parole Board.
The IPP Action Plan remains the best way of achieving this and it is working. The number of IPP prisoners who have never been released stood at 1,554 in March 2022, down from over 6,000 at its peak.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of time was between the end of a Imprisonment for Public Protection minimum tariff and a parole hearing in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020 and (d) 2021.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Ministry of Justice holds some of the data required, as follows.
As of 31 December 2021, there were 1,602 prisoners serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) in custody who have never been released.
The number of prisoners serving sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection who have served more than: three years over their minimum tariff is 1,422; five years over their minimum tariff is 1,250; and ten years over their minimum tariff is 583.
The number of prisoners serving an IPP sentence who were given a tariff of under 3 years was 584, and the number who were given a tariff of under 5 years was 1,076.
By law the Secretary of State must refer a prisoner’s case to the Parole Board at the end of his minimum tariff period and, if not released, at least every two years from the previous Parole Board decision. The Parole Board is a body independent of Government and is responsible for the listing of cases referred to it. Ministers or officials may not intervene in this process. The data required to provide an answer on the average length of time between the end of a Imprisonment for Public Protection minimum tariff and a parole hearing in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020 and (d) 2021, could be provided only at disproportionate cost, as central data is not stored in a way that it can be filtered by the required fields.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people there are in prison serving sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection; and how many of those were given minimum tariffs of under (a) three and (b) five years.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Ministry of Justice holds some of the data required, as follows.
As of 31 December 2021, there were 1,602 prisoners serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) in custody who have never been released.
The number of prisoners serving sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection who have served more than: three years over their minimum tariff is 1,422; five years over their minimum tariff is 1,250; and ten years over their minimum tariff is 583.
The number of prisoners serving an IPP sentence who were given a tariff of under 3 years was 584, and the number who were given a tariff of under 5 years was 1,076.
By law the Secretary of State must refer a prisoner’s case to the Parole Board at the end of his minimum tariff period and, if not released, at least every two years from the previous Parole Board decision. The Parole Board is a body independent of Government and is responsible for the listing of cases referred to it. Ministers or officials may not intervene in this process. The data required to provide an answer on the average length of time between the end of a Imprisonment for Public Protection minimum tariff and a parole hearing in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020 and (d) 2021, could be provided only at disproportionate cost, as central data is not stored in a way that it can be filtered by the required fields.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people there are in prison serving sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection; and how many of those people have served more than (a) three years, (b) five years and (c) ten years over their minimum tariff.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Ministry of Justice holds some of the data required, as follows.
As of 31 December 2021, there were 1,602 prisoners serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) in custody who have never been released.
The number of prisoners serving sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection who have served more than: three years over their minimum tariff is 1,422; five years over their minimum tariff is 1,250; and ten years over their minimum tariff is 583.
The number of prisoners serving an IPP sentence who were given a tariff of under 3 years was 584, and the number who were given a tariff of under 5 years was 1,076.
By law the Secretary of State must refer a prisoner’s case to the Parole Board at the end of his minimum tariff period and, if not released, at least every two years from the previous Parole Board decision. The Parole Board is a body independent of Government and is responsible for the listing of cases referred to it. Ministers or officials may not intervene in this process. The data required to provide an answer on the average length of time between the end of a Imprisonment for Public Protection minimum tariff and a parole hearing in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020 and (d) 2021, could be provided only at disproportionate cost, as central data is not stored in a way that it can be filtered by the required fields.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what his Department's average response time was to an enquiry from a hon. Member to the MP (a) hotline and (b) account management team in (a) 2019, (b) 2020 and (c) 2021.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of correspondence from MPs, either directly or on behalf of their constituents.
The Ministry of Justice does not have a MP hotline.
The Ministry of Justice does not have an account management team, and the Ministry of Justice does not hold information on the average response time to enquiries from MPs, as correspondence performance is monitored by the percentage of correspondence responded to within the target response time set by the Department.
Data on the timeliness of responses to correspondence from MPs and Peers for 2019 and 2020 is published on Gov.uk here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers.
Data for 2021 will be published by the Cabinet Office in due course.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to increase the number of legal aid providers in Wales.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Government has taken steps to review the long-term sustainability of the Criminal Legal Aid market across England and Wales. In 2020 we injected up to £51m per annum into Criminal Legal Aid, in areas of work that practitioners told us mattered the most. In December 2021 the report for the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review was published, which considered a number of issues including the sustainability of the whole Criminal Legal Aid system so that it can meet demand now and into the future. It is our aim to publish the Government response no later than the end of March 2022 alongside a consultation on our related policy proposals.
In addition, MoJ continues to consider the provision of civil legal aid across England and Wales, recognising that we need to take a whole system approach. The department has been engaging with representative bodies and providers within the sector to increase our understanding of the challenges providers currently face. The Legal Aid Agency also continue to keep legal aid provision under constant review, ensuring access across England and Wales and taking immediate action whenever this could be threatened.