Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) employment and support allowance and (b) personal independence payment appeals there have been in the South East Wales District in each year since 2010; and how many such appeals were successful.
Answered by Phillip Lee
The table below contains the requested information.
Appeals in the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) in South East Wales1 for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)2 and Personal Independence Payment (PIP)3
Year | Benefit Type | Receipts | Clearances at Hearing Found in Favour of Appellant |
2009-104 | ESA | 5486 | 907 |
| PIP | 0 | 0 |
2010-114 | ESA | 6254 | 1,809 |
| PIP | 0 | 0 |
2011-124 | ESA | 8087 | 2,892 |
| PIP | 0 | 0 |
2012-134 | ESA | 14835 | 5,543 |
| PIP | 0 | 0 |
2013-144 | ESA | 7130 | 5,545 |
| PIP | 10 | ~5 |
2014-154 | ESA | 2183 | 1,241 |
| PIP | 1478 | 311 |
2015-164 | ESA | 2570 | 1,501 |
| PIP | 2622 | 1,729 |
2016-174 | ESA | 3413 | 1,922 |
| PIP | 3268 | 1,750 |
1 SSCS data are attributed to the hearing venue nearest to the appellant’s home address. South East Wales is identified as those appeals which are attributed to the Cardiff, Cwmbran, Langstone, Newport, Llwynypia, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport, Pontypool, Pontypridd venues.
2 Includes ESA and ESA (Reassessments).
3 PIP replaced Disability Living Allowance for people aged 16 to 64 and rolled out from 8 April 2013. It was trialled in areas of the North of England and gradually rolled out across other regions. As such there were fewer than five appeals cleared in the South East Wales district in 2013-2014.
.
4 By financial year - from April to March.
5 Denotes appeals types where fewer than five cases were involved and therefore data are statistically unreliable.
Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and are the best data available. The data are a subset of official statistics extracted from the case management system on a different date.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, further to the Answer of 17 July 2013 to Question 163024, on Courts: Wales, what data his Department now centrally collates on litigants in person.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
The Ministry of Justice does not collect information centrally on Litigants in Person in civil related court cases or family court cases.
For both civil (non-family) and family court cases, quarterly figures are published broken down by legal representation. These can be found at http://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-justice-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2015.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many private family law cases there were in the (a) Gwent and (b) Wales civil and family tribunals cluster between April 2013 and April 2014; and in how many such cases both parties had legal representation.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
For family court cases Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly figures on the number of disposals and the average time taken for their disposal by case type, and by the legal representation of the parties. The latest figures up to quarter 2 (April to June) 2015 can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2015
Breaking down the parties representation figures for Wales nationally and for Gwent locally, private law disposals in Family Proceedings Courts and County Courts are as below:
Representation | Wales | Gwent |
Financial Year | Financial Year | |
Both | 2,665 | 536 |
Other | 3,962 | 635 |
Total | 6,627 | 1,171 |
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assurance he has received from Steria that work and jobs at the Newport shared services centre will not be off-shored.
Answered by Mike Penning
How Sahared Services Connected Limited manage their workforce is an operational issue for them as employers. Newport Shared Services staff are no longer civil servants.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answers of 12 January 2015 to Questions 220031 and 220032 on shared services staff in Newport, which departments have signed up to the arrangement.
Answered by Mike Penning
The Government departments listed below are currently signed up to the arrangement.
HMRC and its associated departments;
Home Office and its associated departments;
Intellectual Patent Office;
Health and Safety Executive;
Business Innovation and Skills;
Insolvency Service; and
Office of National Statistics.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many applications for legal aid the Director of Legal Aid Casework has (a) granted and (b) refused for adoption cases in (i) Wales and (ii) Newport East constituency.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
In the financial year 2013/14, there were 449 applications for Legal Aid funding for adoption proceedings in Wales. Of these, 439 have been granted, and none have been refused to date. None of these applications were received from the constituency of Newport East.
In determining this response, location has been determined according to the location of the office of the provider of Legal Aid.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when eligibility for Stage 2 surplus status for redeployment within the Civil Service ends for staff employed at the Ministry of Justice Shared Services centre in Newport.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has negotiated to give MoJ staff who transferred to Shared Services Connected Limited under TUPE arrangements eligibility to apply for Civil Service roles via Civil Service Recruitment at Stage 2, as long as the recruiting departments sign up to the arrangement.
This arrangement will come to an end in May 2015.
Following a competitive process last year Shared Services Connected Limited were awarded a contract to provide HR, payroll and other services to more than 65,000 of our staff. This is a crucial move to modernise our aging back office functions that is planned to save taxpayers more than £100m over the next seven years.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether Ministry of Justice Shared Services staff in Newport who have recently been transferred to Shared Services Connected Ltd are eligible for Stage 2 surplus status for redeployment within the Civil Service.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has negotiated to give MoJ staff who transferred to Shared Services Connected Limited under TUPE arrangements eligibility to apply for Civil Service roles via Civil Service Recruitment at Stage 2, as long as the recruiting departments sign up to the arrangement.
This arrangement will come to an end in May 2015.
Following a competitive process last year Shared Services Connected Limited were awarded a contract to provide HR, payroll and other services to more than 65,000 of our staff. This is a crucial move to modernise our aging back office functions that is planned to save taxpayers more than £100m over the next seven years.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which proceeding types are recorded on the Legal Aid Agency's IT systems for recording applications for civil legal aid.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
The proceeding types recorded on the Legal Aid Agency IT systems can be found in the documents “Civil Representation Guidance on Proceeding Codes: Proceedings Codes and Standard Wordings for post-April 2013 Certificates” and “Guidance for reporting Controlled Work & Controlled Work matters” which can be found on gov.uk website at the following links:
Civil Representation Guidance on Proceeding Codes: Proceedings Codes and Standard Wordings for post-April 2013 Certificates:
Guidance for reporting Controlled Work & Controlled Work matters:
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 for private family law cases to be resolved in court where at least one party is a litigant in person in (a) the UK and (b) Wales in each year from 2009 to 2014.
Answered by Simon Hughes
Parties with no legal representation are not a new phenomenon in our courts. We have taken steps to help people who either want or have to represent themselves in court. The new package of support announced on 23 October is aimed at keeping disputes away from court, while those who end up in court will be provided with better support.
The Ministry of Justice has responsibility for courts in England and Wales only and the available information is provided in the table below. We do not hold this information prior to 2011 as the case management system “FamilyMan” was not used by all courts until the end of 2010. 2014 data is available up to June, and the full year figures for 2014 will not be published until late March 2015.
| Average timeliness | |
| England and Wales | Wales only |
2011 | 14.6 | 19.4 |
2012 | 13.5 | 17.2 |
2013 | 13.6 | 17.0 |
2014[1] | 15.8 | 19.1 |
Notes
Self-representation is determined by the field “legal representation” in FamilyMan being left blank. Therefore, this is only a proxy measure and parties without a recorded representative are not necessarily self-representing litigants in person.
[1] To end of June 2014