Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
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 bringing forward legislative proposals to compensate people who carry out community service as part of a criminal sentence that is later overturned.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
There is no specific route to claim compensation related to any work or community service undertaken as part of a sentence, which is subsequently overturned.
For individuals who have suffered a miscarriage of justice, section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act provides for the Secretary of State to pay compensation to an individual, subject to meeting the statutory test. This is administrated by the Miscarriages of Justice Application Service. If an individual is deemed eligible, the level of award is determined by an Independent Assessor, and in October 2025, we increased the maximum cap for compensation by 30%.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the written answer 106063 of 14 January 2026 on Community Orders: Appeals, how many people have received compensation for work undertaken following their sentence being overturned.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
There is no specific route to claim compensation related to any work or community service undertaken as part of a sentence, which is subsequently overturned.
For individuals who have suffered a miscarriage of justice, section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act provides for the Secretary of State to pay compensation to an individual, subject to meeting the statutory test. This is administrated by the Miscarriages of Justice Application Service. If an individual is deemed eligible, the level of award is determined by an Independent Assessor, and in October 2025, we increased the maximum cap for compensation by 30%.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many defendants in each of the last five years have completed unpaid work as part of a sentence later overturned on appeal.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The table below sets out number of individuals with sentences that terminated in the calendar years between 2021 and 2025, and where there was Unpaid Work completed as part of the sentence itself recorded as having been terminated due to being overturned on appeal:
Calendar year | Number of individuals |
2021 | 92 |
2022 | 74 |
2023 | 62 |
2024 | 64 |
2025 | 71 |
These data have been gathered from National Delius (the Probation Service case management system).
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the workloads of prison officers in the North West.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Staffing models in public sector prisons and associated staffing numbers, are reviewed on a routine basis to take account of business changes that may impact on the workload of staff.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to help protect the privacy of people affected by fatal or serious accidents.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government is committed to open justice which means criminal justice should be administered in public and subject to public scrutiny including media reporting. However, there are exceptions in statute or common law which: exclude the press/public from court for all/part of proceedings; permit information to be withheld from open court; or impose temporary/permanent bans on reporting of proceedings or part of proceedings (e.g. identity of those appearing).
Automatic reporting restrictions are applied to complainants in rape cases and all other sexual offences. There is a ban on reporting any matter that would identify a child or young person (under 18) in the Youth Court, whether that is a victim, witness or defendant. Victims of Female Genital Mutilation, Human Trafficking, and Forced Marriage are also granted automatic anonymity for life.
Lifetime anonymity can be granted to an adult witness or victim in any offence if the quality of the witness’s evidence or their co-operation is likely to be diminished by reason of fear/distress in testifying.
Reporting restrictions are a matter for judicial discretion - decisions on whether to impose these are made on a case by case basis by judges taking into account the circumstances of the case, the parties involved and the interests of justice.
In addition, the Victims’ Code is a practical and useful guide for all victims of crime to understand what they can expect from the criminal justice system. This includes victims of fatal or serious accidents where they constitute a criminal offence. We will consult on a new Victims’ Code in due course to ensure that we get the foundations for victims right.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders were subject to alcohol monitoring tags over the Christmas and New Year period in each of the last five years.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Department does not directly compare the cost-effectiveness of alcohol monitoring tags and alcohol-related custodial sentences.
Alcohol monitoring is used a tool to assist with the safe management of individuals in the community, where alcohol has been shown to be a factor in their offence or offending behaviour, and in support of other requirements added to a court order or post-custody licence. There will and should be instances where an individual is required to serve a custodial sentence given the offence they have committed and for public protection. The compliance rate of alcohol monitoring imposed by the court as part of a Community Order or Suspended Sentence Order, which imposes a total ban on drinking alcohol for up to 120 days, showed from the introduction of the technology in October 2020 through to 6 June 2025, the devices did not register a tamper or alcohol alert for 97.3% of the days worn.
The number of individuals subject to alcohol monitoring between October 2020 and June 2024 is available in Table 4.1 of the data tables published in the following link: Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, June 2024 - GOV.UK. The most recent provisional figures for alcohol monitoring, covering November 2025, can be found in the following link: Ad-Hoc Alcohol Monitoring Statistics Publication, Dec 2025 - GOV.UK
Please note that caseload statistics published after July 2025 are not directly comparable with earlier data due to changes in the definition and methodology used to classify individuals as “tagged”.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what comparative assessment his Department has made of the cost-effectiveness of (a) alcohol monitoring tags and (b) custodial sentences for alcohol-related offences.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Department does not directly compare the cost-effectiveness of alcohol monitoring tags and alcohol-related custodial sentences.
Alcohol monitoring is used a tool to assist with the safe management of individuals in the community, where alcohol has been shown to be a factor in their offence or offending behaviour, and in support of other requirements added to a court order or post-custody licence. There will and should be instances where an individual is required to serve a custodial sentence given the offence they have committed and for public protection. The compliance rate of alcohol monitoring imposed by the court as part of a Community Order or Suspended Sentence Order, which imposes a total ban on drinking alcohol for up to 120 days, showed from the introduction of the technology in October 2020 through to 6 June 2025, the devices did not register a tamper or alcohol alert for 97.3% of the days worn.
The number of individuals subject to alcohol monitoring between October 2020 and June 2024 is available in Table 4.1 of the data tables published in the following link: Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, June 2024 - GOV.UK. The most recent provisional figures for alcohol monitoring, covering November 2025, can be found in the following link: Ad-Hoc Alcohol Monitoring Statistics Publication, Dec 2025 - GOV.UK
Please note that caseload statistics published after July 2025 are not directly comparable with earlier data due to changes in the definition and methodology used to classify individuals as “tagged”.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many possession claims relating to Section 21 notices are currently awaiting court hearing; and what the average waiting time is for those hearings.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
A Section 21 notice provides for an accelerated court process, usually without a hearing. However, if the application is not in order or the tenant challenges the claim a hearing may be scheduled.
The Civil Procedure Rules stipulate that possession claims should be listed within 4 to 8 weeks of a claim being issued. The most recent published statistics, covering the period July to September 2025 show that the median time from claim to order is 7.6 weeks.
The Government has set out its roadmap for implementing the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. Private landlords will not be able to serve new Section 21 notices on their tenants on or after 1 May 2026.
The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly data on possession claims at: Mortgage and landlord possession statistics: July to September 2025 - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the potential number of historical child sexual abuse cases likely to be brought following the removal of the limitation period for such claims.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Measuring the scale and nature of child sexual abuse is difficult because it is usually hidden from view. Victims often feel unable to report their experiences and adults are not always able to recognise that abuse is taking place. As a result, there is no data available to represent the full scale of the issue. We therefore do not know how many people are currently experiencing, or have experienced, child sexual abuse or how many potential victims and survivors may be impacted by these changes.
However, the Government recognises, as was reinforced by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, that it might take years and in many cases decades for the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to come forward and feel ready to disclose their trauma. That is why we accepted the critical issue the Inquiry sought to remedy in calling for reform of limitation law to overcome some of the barriers to justice that are faced by victims and survivors.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to use technology to improve (a) prison management and (b) prisoner monitoring.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Ministry of Justice is committed to developing modern digital platforms and processes to improve prison management and prisoner monitoring. The Ministry of Justice is continuing to deploy Digital Prison Service (DPS) which will provide a new set of digital services to manage and record data on offenders, which will replace the legacy system NOMIS.