Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the average (a) AS90, (c) L118 light gun, (c) Jackal and (d) Foxhound vehicle availability rate was in each year since 2018.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The British Army holds and maintains an appropriate amount of all its platforms to meet operational requirements. I am withholding further information on the number of platforms available for operational deployment for security reasons.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Answer of 25 October 2023 to Question 203030 on Military Exercises: Conventional Weapons, how many 81mm mortars were fired on training exercises in each year since 2015.
Answered by James Heappey
Due to the time required to collate the information, I will write to the hon. Member and place a copy of my letter in the Library of the House.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will publish a list of the types of small arms and light weapons that went missing from his Department's establishments and facilities in each year since 2015.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
We take the security of our small arms and light weapons extremely seriously and have a range of measures in place to ensure the integrity of these arrangements. Whilst we do not publish data in full, we do publish some information on weapon losses on the Ministry of Defence (MOD) website under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. MOD officials will collate that information and I will write to the hon. Member when it is available, and a copy of this letter will be placed in the Library of The House.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many hours of Community Payback are yet to be delivered as of 28 November 2023 in each (a) region of (i) England and (ii) Wales and (b) probation service area in the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Below is a table which shows the total number of community payback hours yet to be delivered for each region of England and Wales as of 27 November 2023.
Region | Hours Outstanding |
England and Wales Total | 3,978,852 |
East Midlands | 271,848 |
East of England | 446,167 |
Greater Manchester | 272,324 |
Kent, Surrey and Sussex | 272,131 |
London | 630,995 |
North East | 182,048 |
North West | 340,021 |
South Central | 301,545 |
South West | 280,126 |
Wales | 155,132 |
West Midlands | 370,286 |
Yorkshire and The Humber | 456,228 |
The current number of hours outstanding reflects the hours yet to be delivered on the Unpaid work caseload.
Please see attached annex for a table which shows the total number of community payback hours yet to be delivered for Probation Delivery Units (PDUs) as of 27 November 2023.
This Government has announced up to £93million additional investment in Unpaid Work over the next three years. The funding is being used to recruit an additional ~500 Unpaid Work staff so that we can ramp up delivery to address the Covid backlog and effectively manage oncoming orders.
This investment gives Probation a vital opportunity to relaunch Unpaid Work and make sure that placements are visible and robust, and put UPW delivery on a sustainable footing following disruption caused by the pandemic.
Explanatory note
Data for part B (Probation service areas) has a high proportion of hours allocated to unknown PDUs within regions. This is due to regional practice on how UPW requirements are managed (single Regional PDU for all UPW requirements vs localised PDUs managing both standalone UPW requirements and other multi requirement orders).
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many hours of community service were not carried out in each (a) local justice area and (b) region in (i) England and (ii) Wales in each year since 2010.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Please see attached annex for data table contain information on how many hours of community service were not carried out in each local justice area and region in England and Wales since 2010.
Owing to data migration issues following the move to a single National Recording Platform, with Transforming Rehabilitation in 2014 and subsequent changes to Probation Delivery boundaries, it is less possible to accurately map older locations to the current Probation Regions.
The dataset covers reasons hours are not carried out including offender deaths, deportation, orders revoked, and resentenced, successful appeals and Suspended Sentence Order (SSO) activated.
This Government has announced up to £93million additional investment in Unpaid Work over the next three years. The funding is being used to recruit an additional ~500 Unpaid Work staff so that we can ramp up delivery to address the Covid backlog and effectively manage oncoming orders.
This investment gives Probation a vital opportunity to relaunch Unpaid Work and make sure that placements are visible and robust, and put UPW delivery on a sustainable footing following disruption caused by the pandemic.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the average time taken to resolve an appeal is in the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme; and what steps he is taking to reduce that time.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The average (median) clearance time for AFCS appeals is published in Table 9 of the annual Armed Forces Compensation Scheme Statistics.
The latest release was published on 6 July 2023 and can be found at the following link: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/armed-forces-compensation-scheme-statistics-financial-year-20222
To better support claimants and reduce timelines that are within Miistry of Defence control, resource is flexed across teams supporting veterans' services to target priority areas wherever possible. Additional resource is also being onboarded along with continuous review and improvement to processes. Overtime is being utilised where required.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme Quinquennial Review 2023, published on 17 July 2023.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The Department is considering the recommendations in full, and the Government's response will be published later this year.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, when she plans to publish the eligibility criteria for the Warm Home Discount Scheme 2023-2024.
Answered by Amanda Solloway - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The eligibility criteria for the Warm Home Discount scheme 2023-24 is set in the Eligibility Statement which was published on 12th September 2023 and can be found here:
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of trends in the level of standing charges in the last 12 months.
Answered by Amanda Solloway - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
For financial year 2021-22, an investment of £100m by EDF in the Sizewell C project in January 2022 was provided by the Government through the Combined Option Agreement. In the same financial year, the Government provided a further £0.24m of innovation funding in 2021/22 to Sizewell C, together with partner organisations, through Phase 1 of the Direct Air Capture and other Greenhouse Gas Removal technologies competition, part of the Government’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.
In the financial year 2022-23, the Government’s planned expenditure on developing the Sizewell C project is £860m, with a further £0.5m provided as part of Phase 2 of the Direct Air Capture and other Greenhouse Gas Removal technologies competition.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many drug overdoses took place in prisons from March (a) 2021-2022 and (b) 2022-2023 broken down by institution.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Between January 2021 and December 2021, a total of 2,273 incidents of self-harm were recorded that were linked to overdoses.
The total figure for January 2022 to December 2022 was 2,387 incidents linked to overdoses. Please see the accompanying table.
The data has been produced on a calendar basis to match published figures on method of self-harm. Information is reported for calendar rather than financial years to avoid the risk of identifying individuals in combination with published calendar year breakdowns of self-harm data.
We do not explicitly collect data on an “overdose” incident type. The data we have provided is based on the “self-harm” incident type. In particular, the data is based on self-harm categorised as “Self-Poisoning/Overdose/Substances/Swallowing” and subcategorised as “illegal drugs”, “own persons medicine” or “other persons medicine”.
The data provided is based on two main assumptions:
There will be other incidents involving the consumption of substances that are not included as they were not reported as self-harm by the prison and so would not have been captured in the provided data.
These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS Incident Reporting System and although care is taken when processing and analysing returns, the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. Although shown to the last case, the figures may not be accurate to that level.
The data only includes self-harm incidents collated centrally; identifying any wider incidents that lead to a hospitalisation and have a connection to drugs would exceed the cost threshold as it would require reading through the text of each incident.
We are committed to doing all we can to prevent deaths from drug overdoses in prison. We have outlined in both our Prisons Strategy White Paper and the Government’s 10-year drug strategy ‘From Harm to Hope’ (2021) how we will achieve this.
All prisons have a zero-tolerance approach to drugs. Our £100m Security Investment Programme, completed in March 2022, introduced measures such as 75 additional X-ray body scanners and airport-style gate security. To prevent the smuggling of illegal drugs such as psychoactive substances through the mail, we have deployed 95 next generation drug trace detection machines. We are aiming for full coverage of public sector prisons by March 2024.
We are also increasing the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living units, where prisoners commit to remaining free of illicit drugs with regular drug testing and incentives. We have more than doubled the number of these from 25 last summer to 60 now and we are aiming to reach up to 100 by March 2025.