Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Wales Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, when the Tata Steel/ Port Talbot Transition Board will next meet.
Answered by David T C Davies - Secretary of State for Wales
The Tata Steel/Port Talbot Transition Board plan to next meet on 1 February 2024.
I chair the Transition Board which was set up to support people, businesses and communities affected by Tata Steel’s decarbonisation transition. The Transition Board will have access to up to £100 million to invest in skills and regeneration programmes for the local area.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Wales Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, whether he has had recent discussions with (a) the Secretary of State for Transport, (b) Network Rail and (c) the Welsh government on the electrification of the North Wales Main Line.
Answered by David T C Davies - Secretary of State for Wales
My officials and I have regular discussions with counterparts in the Department for Transport, Network Rail and the Welsh Government on a wide range of transport matters across Wales.
The UK Government is committed to providing £1 billion to fund the electrification of the North Wales Main Line. This investment will have a transformative impact for the many residents, commuters and tourists who use the North Wales Main Line, driving economic growth across the region.
The Department for Transport is working closely with Network Rail and industry partners to develop and deliver on the Government priorities outlined in the Prime Minister’s Network North announcement, including electrification of the North Wales Main Line. The Government is currently considering next steps, including delivery timelines, and will share further information when this work is complete. All schemes will be subject to the development and approval of business cases and will undergo all formal governance, in line with relevant fiscal and legal duties.
The UK Government is already providing significant investment to improve rail infrastructure and travel in Wales, including £144 million for the Core Valley Lines, delivering the £76 million electrification of the Severn Tunnel and £77.7 million for improvements to Cardiff Central Station.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate has been made of the average length of time between submission of a PIP mandatory reconsideration and the decision.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The monthly average clearance time of a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) can be found in the latest PIP quarterly release: Personal Independence Payment statistics to October 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
In particular, the figures on MR average clearance times can be found in Table 4A in the Customer Journey Excel.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the total cost of the electrification of the North Wales mainline.
Answered by Huw Merriman - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
As part of the Prime Minister’s Network North announcement, the Government committed an unprecedented £1 billion investment to fund the electrification of the North Wales Main Line. We continue to work through the next steps for developing and delivering the scheme.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of asylum applications from applicants in Newport East constituency that were submitted before June 2022 are awaiting a final decision.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on applications awaiting a decision is published in table Asy_10a of the ‘Asylum applications, decisions and resettlement detailed datasets’. Please note that this information is not broken down by local authority, nor the date by which the application was submitted.
The Home Office publishes data on asylum seekers in receipt of support by local authority in table Asy_D11 of the ‘Asylum and resettlement local authority data’ detailed datasets. Information on asylum seekers who are not claiming support is not available by local authority. Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of each workbook. Additionally, the data shows a snapshot as at the last day of each quarter, rather than the number of asylum applications awaiting a decision over the entire quarter. The latest data relates to as at 30 September 2023. Data as at 31 December 2023 will be published on 29 February 2024.
Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress his Department has made in resolving the technical issues affecting the issuing of Biometric Residence Permit cards.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Incidences of technical issues preventing BRP card production are extremely low, and no systemic issues have been identified.
Where individual card requests do fail, operational case working teams and IT Support endeavour to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
For any case that cannot be resolved immediately, the Employer Checking and Landlord Checking Services are available to provide support to customers to verify their immigration status and permission to work and rent properties in the UK.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of applicants have been waiting more than 28 days for a biometric residence permit.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
BRPs are produced at the secure delivery facility within 48 hours of the production request being made and are collected by our secure delivery partner the same day. Our secure delivery partner aims to attempt to deliver the BRPs within 48 hours of receipt of the BRPs. This equates to a minimum of 5 working days from the date of the production request being made to delivery of the BRP. We have added an additional 2 working days to the timeline advised to applicants to allow us to resolve any production issues.
During 2023, 99.6% of BRPs were produced within 24 hours of the production request and 100% within 48 hours. In 2023, our Secure Delivery Partner attempted to deliver over 99% of BRPs within 48 hours.
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 estimate of the number of hours of unpaid work completed at home as part of community sentences in each year since 2010.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Independent working projects were introduced as a temporary delivery method in response to COVID-19 restrictions and enabled the Probation Service to continue delivery during periods of lockdown.
Independent working projects were not in use prior to April 2020, therefore there is no relevant data between 2010 and that date. The practice of home working ceased in September 2022
The following number of hours of unpaid work have been recorded as completed at home as part of a community sentence.
Date | UPW hours completed at home |
01/04/2020 to 31/03/2021 | 71,711 |
01/04/2021 to 31/03/2022 | 294,554 |
01/04/2022 to 31/03/2023 | 168,738 |
01/04/2023 to 30/09/2023 | 492 |
Explanatory note
These figures differ from previously reported figures due to data recording corrections.
Independent home working ceased in September 2022, however, some recording errors where probation teams still recorded completed UPW hours under the heading of home working have resulted in some hours recorded in 2023.
The 492 hours recorded since April 2023 result primarily from data recording issues (for example, hours delivered prior to September 2022 but recorded on the system at a later date). A small number of hours relate to the continuation of home working in 4 individual cases due to specific, unavoidable factors (for example, an absence of childcare).
This data was sourced from the Probation Case Management System, nDelius. While reasonable efforts have been taken to ensure the accuracy of this data, the inaccuracy inherent in any large-scale administrative data source means data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last unit presented.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what data his Department holds on the number of applications received for jobs in prisons at grade bands 3 to 5 in each year since 2010.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Submission Year | Number of Applications -Band 3 | Number of Applications -Band 4 | Number of Applications -Band 5 | Total |
2017 | 109520 | 6245 | 2647 | 118412 |
2018 | 108259 | 10182 | 6152 | 124593 |
2019 | 73709 | 11094 | 4820 | 89623 |
2020 | 95667 | 12143 | 4072 | 111882 |
2021 | 84635 | 12740 | 5309 | 102684 |
2022 | 112068 | 10366 | 4427 | 126861 |
2023 (January to September) | 85610 | 9086 | 3305 | 98001 |
Notes
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many judges retired in each of the last five years.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The number of judges in the courts and tribunals who retired in each of the last five financial years is:
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| 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | 2022-2023 |
Salaried | Courts | 80 | 80 | 41 | 45 | 67* |
Tribunals | 34 | 32 | 8 | 14 | 25* | |
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| Courts | 68# | 54* | 69* | 29* | 39* |
Tribunals | 71# | 38* | 50* | 44* | 39* |
Data for salaried judges who retired in the financial years 2018-2022 is taken from MoJ’s evidence provided to the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) for the 2023 Annual Report on Senior Salaries (www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministry-of-justices-evidence-to-the-senior-salaries-review-body-2023).
#This data is the number of fee-paid judges who left office (including retirements, resignations and deaths in office) reported in the 2019 Diversity of the Judiciary statistics: https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/diversity/judicial-diversity-statistics/.
*This data is a subset of the data of judges who left office reported in the annual Diversity of the Judiciary statistics, which only reflects those who retired: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/diversity-of-the-judiciary-2023-statistics.