Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average price quoted was for court transcripts for victims in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Management information held about transcript requests is limited, and the information requested is not held centrally.
Victims usually request the judge’s sentencing remarks, which summarise the case against the defendant made at trial, the impact on victims and families and outline how the judge has come to a conclusion about the sentence handed down. This typically costs around £45 to £50.
However, bereaved families of victims of murder, manslaughter and fatal road offences can request a free transcript of the judge’s sentencing remarks. On 22 May we announced that, following the conclusion of a one-year pilot at the end of May, we are continuing the scheme that enables victims of rape and other sexual offences to apply for a free copy of the judge’s sentencing remarks.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress her Department is making on reducing the (a) cost and (b) time to taken to produce court transcripts for victims who request them.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Bereaved families of victims of murder, manslaughter and fatal road offences can request a free transcript of the judge’s sentencing remarks. On 22 May we announced that, following the conclusion of a one-year pilot at the end of May, we are continuing the scheme that enables victims of rape and other sexual offences to apply for a free copy of the judge’s sentencing remarks.
More widely, we are actively considering how to make court transcripts more accessible, and we continue to explore the potential for using AI to produce transcripts more quickly and cost effectively.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much income her Department has received from the sale of court transcripts to victims in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
HM Courts and Tribunals Service receives no income from the sale of court transcripts to victims. The service is provided under contract and suppliers provide court transcripts for a fee.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people received awards under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme in Warrington in each of the last five years or which figures are available; and what the value of those awards was.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The table below provides the number of compensation awards paid in each of the last five calendar years to applicants living in Warrington.
Number of compensation awards paid to applicants living in Warrington* **
Calendar Year | Number of awards paid | Total value of those awards |
2020 | 79 | £955,381 |
2021 | 65 | £685,608 |
2022 | 61 | £684,051 |
2023 | 92 | £701,724 |
2024 | 52 | £702,440 |
*The above table includes all awards where the applicant named Warrington as the town in their home address in their application.
**The table does not include archived bereavement applications because the address of the applicant is not retained. In most cases, applications are archived three years after the case has been closed.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average processing time was for applications to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme by people resident in Warrington in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The table below shows the average time for decisions to be made on applications* for criminal injuries compensation by people resident in Warrington**.
Calendar Year | Average time (days) |
2020 | 279 |
2021 | 423 |
2022 | 340 |
2023 | 352 |
2024 | 317 |
*The table does not include archived bereavement applications because the address of the applicant is not retained. In most cases, applications are archived three years after the case has been closed.
**The above table includes all awards where the applicant named Warrington as the town in their home address in their application.
Over the last three years, we have seen continued growth in people coming forward to claim compensation. To help meet this rising demand and to boost our capacity to assess claims, we continue to uplift staff numbers in line with funding. We are working to identify efficiencies in the way we work led by an in-house continuous improvement team.
We have sponsored work to explore and implement helpful case management system changes and the potential for Artificial Intelligence applications to deliver further efficiencies by assisting our claims officers as they identify key information relevant to the assessment process.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were prosecuted for (a) killing and (b) taking certain species of wild birds (i) in (A) 2021, (B) 2022 and (C) 2023 and (ii) since general license 42 was updated on 1 January 2024.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on prosecutions at criminal courts in England and Wales between January 2021 and June 2024 in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics. The offence ‘Prohibition of certain methods of killing or taking wild birds (Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981)' can be found using the following HO code; 19006. This can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Prosecutions and convictions’ tab and using the HO Offence Code filter to select the above offence in the Outcomes by Offence data tool.
Between January 2021 and June 2024 there have been 6 prosecutions for the offence 'Prohibition of certain methods of killing or taking wild birds (Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981)'. However, it is not possible to separately identify killing or taking wild birds from the offence within the court proceedings database held centrally by the Ministry of Justice.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the financial impact of outsourcing within prisons.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
In June 2019, the Ministry of Justice put in place the Prison Operator Services Framework to manage a pipeline of operator competitions for new build prisons, and existing private prisons as they expire. To date, nine operator competitions have been launched via the Framework, with seven contracts awarded. One further contract is due to be awarded in 2024 before the final contract is awarded in 2025.
The aim of all operator competitions is to secure an operator to provide high quality, sustainable, and value for money custodial and maintenance services that are safe, decent, secure, and rehabilitative.
In each competition, bidders are required to set out detailed, high quality, value for money prison specific proposals that must meet minimum quality and financial thresholds. Bids are evaluated against clearly defined quality and financial criteria and a public sector comparator.
All operator competitions to date have delivered savings and provided additional added value when compared against the public sector comparator.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many compensation awards have been made by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme to victims under the age of 18 experiencing (a) rape and (b) sexual violence in each of the last five years.
Answered by Laura Farris
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Schemes contain a tariff of injuries in which payments are based on specified injuries or offences. The Schemes provide that, in respect of sexual assault(s), the applicant will be entitled either to an award that reflects the nature of the sexual assault(s) or an award for their mental injury, whichever attracts the highest payment under the tariff.
Between April 2019 and March 2024, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority made awards to victims who were under 18 at the time of the incident(s):
(a) 920 awards in respect of rape* and
(b) 19,323 awards in respect of sexual assault
* The reported figure is referred to in the tariff of injuries as ‘non-consensual penile penetration of vagina, anus or mouth’.
The table below divides these payments by financial year.
The table below does not include awards made for mental injuries where the award payable was higher than the sexual offence tariff. This is because a manual check would be required to distinguish mental injury awards for rape/sexual assault from those for other types of violent crime. Therefore, the total awards made to victims under the age of 18, as a result of rape or sexual assault is likely to be considerably higher than the numbers in the table below.
Financial Year | Number of cases categorised as ‘rape’ | Number of cases categorised as ‘sexual assault’ |
19/20 | 166 | 4290 |
20/21 | 187 | 3361 |
21/22 | 189 | 3504 |
22/23 | 183 | 3903 |
23/24 | 195 | 4265 |
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information his Department holds on the number of naloxone kits issued (a) within custodial settings in and (b) on release from HM Prisons in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The information requested is not held centrally.
Naloxone kits have been issued and maintained by individual healthcare providers across the prison estate and have not been supplied by the Ministry of Justice over the time specified in the question.
From January 2024, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is coordinating roll-out of Naloxone training on a voluntary basis to prison staff. We will collate data on the use of Naloxone by HMPPS staff as roll-out and usage progresses.
The information requested for opioid overdose reversals is not held centrally. In relation to fatalities, ONS data on drug-related deaths includes the number in which opiates are mentioned on the death certificate (which differs from the number of overdoses) – table 7 in this publication Drug-related deaths and suicide in prison custody - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). However, this only covers up to 2019, as it uses data from Coroner’s reports on which there is a considerable time lag. Furthermore, depending on the circumstances, an opioid overdose could be classed as a self-inflicted death or an ‘other: non-natural' death. Therefore, without checking the individual cases, it is not possible to obtain an accurate figure from the wider data, on fatalities.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many opioid overdoses in custodial settings have (a) been successfully reversed and (b) resulted in fatalities in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The information requested is not held centrally.
Naloxone kits have been issued and maintained by individual healthcare providers across the prison estate and have not been supplied by the Ministry of Justice over the time specified in the question.
From January 2024, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is coordinating roll-out of Naloxone training on a voluntary basis to prison staff. We will collate data on the use of Naloxone by HMPPS staff as roll-out and usage progresses.
The information requested for opioid overdose reversals is not held centrally. In relation to fatalities, ONS data on drug-related deaths includes the number in which opiates are mentioned on the death certificate (which differs from the number of overdoses) – table 7 in this publication Drug-related deaths and suicide in prison custody - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). However, this only covers up to 2019, as it uses data from Coroner’s reports on which there is a considerable time lag. Furthermore, depending on the circumstances, an opioid overdose could be classed as a self-inflicted death or an ‘other: non-natural' death. Therefore, without checking the individual cases, it is not possible to obtain an accurate figure from the wider data, on fatalities.