Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many repossessions there were in (a) the UK and (b) Bolton in (i) the current financial year to date and (ii) each of the previous five financial years.
Answered by Dominic Raab
This information is available from Ministry of Justice published statistics at:
A supporting document for Mortgage and Landlord possession statistics is available here:
This information covers England and Wales, not the whole of the UK.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many appeals have been made to the outcome of work capability assessments in each of the last five years.
Answered by Dominic Raab
This information is not held centrally.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many appeals against decisions on entitlement to employment and support allowance following a work capability assessment were resolved within (a) three, (b) three to six, (c) six to nine, (d) nine to 12 and (e) over 12 months in each of the last five years.
Answered by Dominic Raab
This information is not held centrally.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much his Department has spent on external consultancy since 2010.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The information requested is published in the department’s annual accounts. These can be found at:
Data for the current financial year will be published in due course. As announced in the Spending Review, the MOJ is committed to reducing its admin spend by 50% over the course of this Spending Review period.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prosecutions there have been for motor insurance fraud in each of the last five years.
Answered by Dominic Raab
This information is not held centrally, and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many refused claims for personal independence payment have (a) been appealed and (b) been successfully appealed to date.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
The First-tier Tribunal – Social Security and Child Support (SSCS), administered by HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS), hears appeals against Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) decisions on a range of benefits including personal independent payment (PIP).
This information is published in Tribunals Statistics Quarterly, available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tribunal-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2014
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he has taken to ensure that funds devolved to the budgets of police and crime commissioners for victims' services are allocated according to crime rates.
Answered by Damian Green
Funding for the commissioning of victims' services has been allocated to Police and Crime Commissioners using a transparent formula based solely on population data. One of the reasons we are moving to a local commissioning model is to allow Police and Crime Commissioners to provide services tailored to meet local needs. The population based formula ensures that funding is allocated according to where the victim lives, and therefore where they will likely seek the support of victims' services. Additionally the relatively low variation in distribution of population between areas year on year means these proportions should remain relatively stable over time.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to release statistics on the number of refusals by the Legal Aid Agency to pay legal aid in cases settled before the permission stage.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
The Legal Aid Agency records information on the outcome of each application for a discretionary payment in respect of remuneration for work on applications for permission for judicial review, where a case concludes before a decision on permission is taken by the court. The Government is considering the best way of publishing this information.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the new judicial review regulations on people who are fighting eviction or the repossession of a house.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
Judicial review is an important way of challenging decisions by public authorities and will remain so. The recently amended regulations do not prevent people receiving legal aid in judicial review cases.
The Government's policy is that limited legal aid resources should be targeted at those judicial review cases where they are needed most, if the legal aid system is to command public confidence and credibility. We amended the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 to implement the proposal that legal aid providers should only be paid for work carried out on an application for permission if permission is given by the court, subject to a discretion to pay providers for work carried out on an application for permission in cases that conclude prior to a permission decision. The discretion is held by the Lord Chancellor but will be exercised by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) on behalf of the Lord Chancellor. The amendments took effect on 22 April 2014.
An assessment of the impacts of this policy was published alongside the consultation response paper Judicial Review: Proposals for Further Reform: the Government Response and is available at https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/judicial-review. It is important to reiterate that no change has been made to the availability of civil legal aid to individuals or to eligibility for legal aid for judicial review proceedings. Where a client is in receipt of legal aid, he or she will remain so for the life of the case (unless it is withdrawn for other reasons). We consider that there will remain sufficient providers who undertake judicial review work, taking on cases which they consider to be of merit.
The Government plans to undertake a post-implementation review of the legal aid provisions within the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 within 3-5 years of implementation. The review will include an assessment of the impact of this change.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effect on funding available for victims' services of devolution to police and crime commissioners.
Answered by Damian Green
From 1 October 2014 the majority of support services for victims of crime will be commissioned at the local level by democratically elected and publicly accountable Police and Crime Commissioners and this Government is making more money than ever before available to ensure that victims receive the vital support they require.
PCC's with their knowledge of local victims' needs are uniquely placed to ensure that available funding is targeted where most required to help victims of crime to both cope with and, where possible, recover from the impacts of crime.
PCCs are also ideally placed to co-commission with other local commissioners such as Health or Local Authorities, thereby reducing duplication and achieving better value for money.