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Written Question
Coroners: Standards
Thursday 14th March 2024

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to ensure the adequacy of coroners' inquests.

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

The coroner’s statutory duty, through the investigation and inquest process, is to establish who has died, and when, where and how they died. Coroners are independent judicial office holders and the way in which they conduct their investigations and inquests is a matter for them. However, the Government and the Chief Coroner are clear that the bereaved should be placed at the heart of this process.

The office of the Chief Coroner was introduced in 2013 to provide judicial leadership, guidance and support to coroners and to promote consistency of standards and practice. In addition, the Chief Coroner is required to provide an annual report to the Lord Chancellor which, amongst other issues, assesses the consistency of standards between coroner areas.

The Government continues to identify and implement measures to promote consistency of standards in coroner services – for example, through the programme of coroner area mergers, and by means of a suite of provisions in the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 to streamline coronial processes.

We also accepted a number of recommendations made by the Justice Committee following its 2021 Inquiry into the Coroner Service, and undertook to give further consideration to others. The Committee’s current follow up Inquiry will, amongst other issues, consider progress against those recommendations.


Written Question
Legal Profession: Accountability
Tuesday 27th February 2024

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will publish a rating of legal firms by their environmental social governance each year.

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

Under the Legal Services Act 2007, the legal services sector, together with its regulators, operate independently of government. The Ministry of Justice does not collect data on law firms’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. The department has no plans to publish ratings of law firms by their ESG performance.


Written Question
Small Claims: Electronic Government
Thursday 18th May 2023

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Money Claim Online system.

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

Money Claim Online (MCOL) is a digital service first released in 2001 which allows users to start and reply to a civil money claim for a fixed amount of money less than £100,000. Digital claims and responses are processed automatically on the day of receipt, users also have the opportunity to respond on paper, these paper responses can take longer to process. Weekly performance statistics are published here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hmcts-civil-business-centres-performance-information/weekly-performance-national-business-centres-updated-5-december-2022. If a case is defended it is no longer supported on MCOL and is printed and posted to a local county court to proceed on papers only.

HMCTS has invested £1.3bn in the HMCTS Reform Programme to deliver large-scale modernisation. As part of the Programme, HMCTS is developing the Online Civil Money Claims (OCMC) service - providing a more modern, user-friendly service beyond the functionality of the MCOL service. Cases progress three times quicker in the OCMC service (9 weeks compared to 27 weeks) and user satisfaction currently sits at 97%. The service will ultimately replace MCOL.


Written Question
Administration of Justice: Electronic Government
Thursday 18th May 2023

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to improve the performance of the County Court Business Centre.

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

We have implemented a recovery action plan, introduced a new leadership structure focusing on performance recovery and are exploring task force activity to help to reduce the backlogs as soon as possible. For the current delays in service provision, we apologise. We are keeping all stakeholders informed and dealing with priority work where necessary.


Written Question
Guardianship: Child Trust Fund and Individual Savings Accounts
Thursday 27th April 2023

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department is taking steps to help improve access to (a) Child Trust Funds (b) Junior ISAs for the guardians of young people without capacity to make financial decisions.

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

In 2021, the Court of Protection begun a programme of work to digitise and streamline the property and affairs application process, this includes an online application process and changes to the application forms. A pilot of these improvements showed that application waiting times reduced from 24 weeks to 8 weeks. These improvements were rolled out for all court users in February 2023. The forms are still under review and steps are being taken to simplify these as much as possible.

In December 2020 we announced that Court of Protection application fees can be waived for Child Trust Funds in the majority of cases.

We are also collaborating with ODGs and stakeholders in both the disability and finance sectors to raise awareness of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and ensure that materials are available to support parents and guardians to navigate the legislation.


Written Question
Probate
Tuesday 25th April 2023

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 16 January 2023 to Question 117447 on Probate, how many unassessed probate cases for which evidence has been received were awaiting a decision for longer than six weeks since evidence was received in each of the last six months.

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

The number of probate cases that have been awaiting a decision for seven weeks or more is 9125 (December 2022).

The number of unassessed probate cases for which evidence has been received that were awaiting a decision for longer than six weeks is in the table below:

Unassessed over 62 Weeks

Jul-22

4,419

Aug-22

6,090

Sep-22

8,067

Oct-22

8,331

Nov-22

8,901

Dec-22

9,873

1 The administration of probate applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales. The open caseload excludes cases older than 6 months.

2 The time outstanding is counted from the application submission date recorded in the case management system, except for digital applications with a Will, where the date of receipt of the original Will by HMCTS is used.

Since October 22 we have increased staffing resources in Probate by 42%, an increase of 75 staff after taking account of attrition, recruiting into Probate an additional 100 staff. Following a period of extensive training those additional staff are now being used bring down the overall timeliness on digital and paper applications and improve call handling times.


Written Question
Probate
Tuesday 25th April 2023

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 16 January 2023 to Question 117447 on Probate, what recent steps he has taken to increase resources for HM Courts and Tribunals Service to reduce waiting times for probate cases.

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

The number of probate cases that have been awaiting a decision for seven weeks or more is 9125 (December 2022).

The number of unassessed probate cases for which evidence has been received that were awaiting a decision for longer than six weeks is in the table below:

Unassessed over 62 Weeks

Jul-22

4,419

Aug-22

6,090

Sep-22

8,067

Oct-22

8,331

Nov-22

8,901

Dec-22

9,873

1 The administration of probate applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales. The open caseload excludes cases older than 6 months.

2 The time outstanding is counted from the application submission date recorded in the case management system, except for digital applications with a Will, where the date of receipt of the original Will by HMCTS is used.

Since October 22 we have increased staffing resources in Probate by 42%, an increase of 75 staff after taking account of attrition, recruiting into Probate an additional 100 staff. Following a period of extensive training those additional staff are now being used bring down the overall timeliness on digital and paper applications and improve call handling times.


Written Question
Probate
Tuesday 25th April 2023

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 16 January 2023 to Question 117447 on Probate, how many probate cases have been awaiting a decision for seven weeks or more.

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

The number of probate cases that have been awaiting a decision for seven weeks or more is 9125 (December 2022).

The number of unassessed probate cases for which evidence has been received that were awaiting a decision for longer than six weeks is in the table below:

Unassessed over 62 Weeks

Jul-22

4,419

Aug-22

6,090

Sep-22

8,067

Oct-22

8,331

Nov-22

8,901

Dec-22

9,873

1 The administration of probate applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales. The open caseload excludes cases older than 6 months.

2 The time outstanding is counted from the application submission date recorded in the case management system, except for digital applications with a Will, where the date of receipt of the original Will by HMCTS is used.

Since October 22 we have increased staffing resources in Probate by 42%, an increase of 75 staff after taking account of attrition, recruiting into Probate an additional 100 staff. Following a period of extensive training those additional staff are now being used bring down the overall timeliness on digital and paper applications and improve call handling times.


Written Question
Miscarriages of Justice: Compensation
Friday 10th March 2023

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department can provide data on the (a) number of claimants (b) number of successful claimants and (c) the total awarded in compensation for a miscarriage of justice in each year since 2018.

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

The number of claimants in each financial year, the number of successful claimants and the total amount of compensation they were awarded under the Miscarriages of Justice Application Service (MOJAS) is set out in the table below. Data from 2000 has also been provided for context.

Please note that the number of successful claimants in any given year does not relate to the number of claims made in that year. The amount of compensation awarded in any given year relates to the successful decisions taken in that year, but the amount of money should not be divided by the number of successful claimants as each award is individual to the circumstances of the case. Where an individual has been found to meet the criteria of the statutory compensation scheme, but has not yet been awarded their compensation, this is highlighted in the table.

It should also be noted that the information provided below is internal management information and not quality assured to the same level as published statistics and is subject to change.

Financial Year

Number of claimants in the financial year

No of successful decisions in the financial year

Amount of compensation for successful applicants

1999/2000

n/k

32

£7,461,573.37

2000/2001

n/k

56

£14,400,929.51

2001/2002

n/k

41

£10,297,352.81

2002/2003

95

34

£8,241,042.26

2003/2004

89

36

£10,919,984.48

2004/2005

86

48

£7,769,144.21

2005/2006

90

31

£14,682,776.36

2006/2007

79

29

£7,206,847.83

2007/2008

41

9

£2,439,725.74

2008/2009

38

7

£1,664,795.00

2009/2010

38

1

£981,864.00

2010/2011

61

1

£2,189,151.00

2011/2012

38

3

£1,284,725.00

2012/2013

36

1

£50,480.00

2013/2014

45

7

£239,140.36

2014/2015

43

2

£261,705.82

2015/2016

29

2

£12,492.60

2016/2017

51

1

£93,000.00

2017/18

36

0

£0.00

2018/19

59

0

£0.00

2019/20

98

5

£713,500.00

2020/21

80* *4 cases have been placed on hold so have not received a decision

4

£480,400.00

2021/22

73

4 / 1

£231,600.00 / Amount still to be determined by Independent Assessor

2022/23 *to 24/02/2023)

95* *Not all 95 cases have received a decision

12

Amounts still to be determined by Independent Assessor


Written Question
Television Licences: Non-payment
Tuesday 25th October 2022

Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what data his Department holds on the number of (a) people and (b) women given custodial sentences for the non-payment of a magistrates’ court fine arising from a conviction for evasion of payment of TV licence fees in 2021.

Answered by Rachel Maclean

The Ministry of Justice publishes figures on the number of people fined for non-payment of a TV licence, broken down by fine amounts, on an annual basis on the GOV.UK website. These figures were most recently updated in May 2022, in the ‘Sentencing Outcomes’ worksheet in the Magistrates' court data tool (MS Excel Spreadsheet, 17.1 MB) as part of the Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2021 publication. The number of people fined for this offence can be found by filtering for HO Offence Code ‘19101 – Television licence evasion’ and breaking this down by fine amount. These figures can also be broken down by various demographics such as age and gender. The average fine amount is available on the ‘Average Amounts’ worksheet.

The penalty for TV licence evasion is a fine. A person cannot receive a custodial sentence for TV licence evasion but can be committed to prison for wilfully refusing to pay the fine or culpably neglecting to pay. In 2021, there were no admissions into prison associated with failing to pay a fine in respect of the non-payment of a TV licence in England and Wales.