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Written Question
Courts
Wednesday 28th February 2024

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to expand the use of Nightingale courts.

Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

Nightingale courts have provided necessary additional court capacity since the pandemic, and we announced on 16 February that 20 of these courtrooms will remain open in 2024. Our assessment is that this is the appropriate level of provision required to deliver swifter justice.

The locations chosen to remain open in England and Wales have been identified where they will help reduce the number of local outstanding cases, support maintenance projects by hearing cases when nearby locations are temporarily closed or to make full use of judicial capacity in court areas where there are more judges available.

Our primary focus is to maximise the use of our existing estate and our investment of £220 million in the two years to March 2025 to maintain and modernise our buildings will improve resilience and availability. We will continue to monitor our operational requirements, and should further additional capacity be required, we will consider a range of options including Nightingale courts.


Written Question
Sexual Offences: Criminal Proceedings
Wednesday 28th February 2024

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases of (a) rape and (b) serious sexual offences are outstanding 12 months after the accused was charged.

Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)

Our published data includes the number of cases outstanding at the court from the point of crown court receipt rather than charge. As of Q3 2023, there were 667 adult rape cases and a further 2,019 cases of sexual offences (excluding adult rape) that had been outstanding at Crown Courts in England and Wales for 12 months or more.

We recognise that lengthy waiting times can be particularly difficult for victims of rape and other serious sexual offences who wish to see justice done and move on with their lives. We are doing everything we can to address the outstanding caseload. We are taking action to maximise capacity and hear more cases so we can minimise the impact on victims. As part of this, we are:

  • Funding another year of unlimited sitting days in the Crown Court to allow courts to work at full capacity for a third year in a row.
  • Recruiting up to 1,000 judges across all jurisdictions to secure enough capacity to sit at the required levels in this year and beyond.
  • Continuing to use 20 Nightingale Courtrooms throughout 2024 to provide additional capacity for all jurisdictions.
  • Investing £220 million for essential modernisation and repair work of our court buildings across the next two years.

We are also ensuring that all victims of rape and sexual offences are well supported throughout their engagement with the criminal justice system. This includes delivering our 24/7 helpline service for victims of rape and sexual violence; quadrupling victim support funding by 2024/25, up from £41 million in 2009/2010; and increasing the number of Independent Sexual and Domestic Abuse Advisors by 300 to nearly 1,000.

These actions have been delivered as part of our Rape Review Action Plan, which included ambition to return the number of adult rape cases reaching court to 2016 levels. This ambition was hugely stretching, as 2015 and 2016 marked the years where adult rape prosecutions and convictions were at their highest recorded levels.

We have exceeded this ambition well ahead of schedule. Across July - September 2023 we recorded 665 Crown Court receipts for adult rape, exceeding our original 2016 ambition of 553 by 20%. In practice, this means we have more than doubled the number of adult rape cases reaching court compared to when the Rape Review was first commissioned (2019). The number of people prosecuted for rape is 32% higher than in 2010.


Written Question
Ministry of Justice: Information Officers
Monday 26th February 2024

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many posts there are for (a) press, (b) media and (c) other communications staff in his Department; and what the salary band is for each post.

Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice’s 24/7 shared press and media team provides a wide-ranging service to ministers, the department and multiple agencies (including HMCTS, HMPPS, Legal Aid Agency, Office of the Public Guardian and Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority). This includes proactive and reactive media handling, monitoring, planning, media training, event support and speechwriting. It is made up of 35 employees with roles ranging from grades HEO to SCS1. The grade salary ranges between £32,827 - £117,800 - this is departmental salary ranges, not actual salaries.

This figure is for the Ministry of Justice central departmental Press Office and Media team only.


Written Question
Prisoners' Release: Sexual Offences
Wednesday 14th February 2024

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to ensure that serious sexual offenders are not allowed day release when serving their sentence.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Prison Rules in England and Wales provide that a prisoner may be allowed to leave prison for short periods on temporary licence (ROTL). The main purpose of ROTL is to aid resettlement and suitable, risk assessed prisoners may be allowed out during the day to, for example, work, attend college, attend an interview or maintain/re-establish links with their family. They are also, once at the required stage of their sentence, allowed to apply for temporary release overnight for a maximum of four consecutive nights a month.

Eligibility for temporary release is not restricted by seriousness of offence. The decision to allow temporary release is taken by the prison governor, on behalf of the Secretary of State, who must always balance the needs of the prisoner and the purpose of the ROTL applied for, against the need to maintain public safety and the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system. Each decision is taken on a case-by-case basis to safeguard the public. Any breaches can result in more time behind bars.

Category A prisoners, remand prisoners, and prisoners subject to extradition proceedings are not eligible for ROTL under any circumstances.


Written Question
Ministry of Justice: Carbon Emissions
Thursday 8th February 2024

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what targets his Department has set to help achieve the Government's commitments on net zero.

Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Government set out how we would meet our commitments in the Net Zero Strategy in 2021 which included a detailed breakdown of actions required across all sectors in the economy. This was updated in 2023 through the publication of 'Powering Up Britain'.

The UK has halved its emissions, ahead of every other major economy, and we have grown our economy by over 70% since 1990. The UK over-achieved against the first and second carbon budgets, and the latest projections show that we are on track to meet the third.

We have one of the most ambitious decarbonisation targets in the world, and we have set more stretching targets for 2030 than most countries. We plan to cut emissions by 68% by 2030, which is more than the EU, Japan or the United States. The Ministry of Justice continues to support Government’s commitment to achieve Net Zero by 2050 or sooner and we have already reduced our total carbon emissions by 28% to March 2023 (against a 2017-18 baseline).


Written Question
Criminal Records
Monday 5th February 2024

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will take legislative steps to expunge criminal records for summary offence crimes committed by individuals (a) under the age of 18 and (b) more than 10 years ago.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Government agrees with the conclusion of the 2017 Justice Select Committee report, ‘Disclosure of youth criminal records’, which found that, whilst there may be some merits in a mechanism whereby records could become ‘sealed’, this would create “unsustainable pressures” on the body responsible for deciding if a record should be sealed. As the report recommended, we are instead focused on using and reforming the existing automatic filtering system.

In November 2020, we implemented secondary legislation that changed the rules governing criminal records disclosure for those working with children, vulnerable adults or in a position of public trust, removing (for example) the requirement to disclose youth cautions. Further changes introduced by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act have significantly reduced the length of time that someone needs to disclose their criminal record for custodial sentences of under four years and community sentences.

We believe that these reforms will continue to ensure we strike the right balance between public protection and ensuring that individuals, and in particular children, who committed minor offences can move on with their lives as quickly as possible.


Written Question
Ministry of Justice: Employment Tribunals Service
Thursday 14th December 2023

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many employment tribunals were brought by employees of their Department in the last 12 months.

Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

Details of all employment tribunal decision outcomes are available on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions.


Written Question
Prison Accommodation
Wednesday 29th November 2023

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress his Department has made on delivering 20,000 additional prison places.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

So far, c.5,600 additional prison places have been delivered. This includes our two new c.1,700-place prisons: HMP Five Wells, which opened last year; and HMP Fosse Way, which opened in May. It also includes, among others, c.380 Rapid Deployment Cells now in place across six sites, c.350 places brought online by re-rolling HMP Morton Hall, and a workshop at HMP High Down to support 90 new places which was delivered ahead of schedule in March.

By the end of 2025, we will have delivered over 10,000 places in total. This will include our third new prison, HMP Millsike, delivering c.1,500 places, new houseblocks at HMP Stocken and HMP Guys Marsh, as well as hundreds more Rapid Deployment Cells.

We have secured outline planning permission for our fourth new prison, near the existing HMP Gartree in Leicestershire, which will deliver a further c.1,700 modern places.

We have also put in place short-term measures across the prison estate to expand useable capacity in the estate by an extra c.2,500 places since September 2022 while ensuring our prisons remain safe for staff and offenders.


Written Question
Prisoners' Release: Employment
Wednesday 22nd November 2023

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will set a target for the number and proportion of people moving into employment within (a) one and (b) six months of leaving prison.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Employment reduces the chance of reoffending significantly, by up to nine percentage points. Therefore, it is a priority for this government to increase the proportion of prison leavers in employment on release. We collect data on the proportion of prison leavers who are employed at six weeks and six months after release from prison.

The proportion of prison leavers in employment six months after their release has more than doubled in the two years to March 2023, from 14% to over 30%. Meanwhile, the proportion who were in employment six weeks after their release almost doubled in the same period, from 9.8% to 19.4%: Employment Rates following Release from Custody - Ad Hoc - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

While the Government seeks to continue this excellent progress, we are not pursuing a specific target at this time.


Written Question
Lie Detectors
Tuesday 21st November 2023

Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to enable the use of polygraph tests by probation officers in the management of serious offenders.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Probation Service has used polygraph testing for high risk sex offenders since 2014 and for terrorist offenders since 2021. In July 2021, the Ministry of Justice commenced a three-year pilot of polygraph testing with high risk domestic abuse perpetrators.

We will close three operational gaps in the use of polygraph through the Criminal Justice Bill.

Currently, certain offenders convicted of murder cannot be polygraph tested on licence even if they have also been convicted of a serious sexual offence, where the sentence for the sexual offence has expired before they are released on licence. The Bill will permit polygraph testing with those offenders convicted of murder who are assessed as posing a risk of sexual offending on release.

It will also make sure that an offender sentenced concurrently for a sexual and a non-sexual offence, where the sexual offence expires before or during the licence period of the non-sexual offence, can be polygraph tested throughout their entire licence period.

Finally, the Bill also extends polygraph testing to a cohort of serious offenders who committed a non-terrorism offence, such as conspiracy to murder, as an act of terrorism or for the purposes of terrorism but did so before the relevant legislation came into force, which enables the Court at the point of sentencing to make a formal ‘terrorist connection’ determination.