Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many pregnant women are (a) imprisoned and (b) held on remand across the prison estate.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The death of ‘Baby A’ was a tragedy and we have taken a range of actions to prevent this from happening again in partnership with Health.
On 20 September the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published a new policy on pregnancy, Mother and Baby Units and maternal separation from children up to the age of two in women’s prisons, which contains a range of reforms for improving the care of pregnant women, including reforms that address the learning from Baby A.
As part of our reforms, we have increased central data collection on self-declared pregnancies in women’s prisons. We will be publishing annual snapshots in the HMPPS Annual Digest. The first publication on 29 July, which covers the period July 2020 - April 2021, showed that on average there were 26 women in prison self-declared as pregnant each week. At present, there is no central collection that breaks this data down into those sentenced and those held on remand, however this is collected locally by individual prisons to ensure care is appropriate.
Women in prison should have access to the same range and quality of healthcare services compared to that which they would find in the community, including midwifery, obstetric and health visiting services. For information on the commissioning of clinical services for pregnant women in prison please refer to NHS England and NHS Improvement, the responsible authority.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Female Offenders Strategy, published on 27 June 2018, what his Department's timeline is for meeting the objective of reducing the women's prison population.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The publication of the Female Offender Strategy in June 2018 was the start of a new and significant programme of work to deliver better outcomes for female offenders. There was no deadline attached to delivering the Strategy when it was published and we have always been clear that it will take several years to deliver its objectives, including reducing the women’s prison population.
In June 2018, the female prison population was 3,803. This had reduced by 16% to 3,196 by June 2021, although it is likely that the impact of the pandemic will be responsible for some of this reduction. As of October 2021, there were 3,227 women in prison.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which women's prisons are operating (a) under capacity, (b) at capacity and (b) over capacity.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) publishes monthly individual prison population and capacity information through the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/prison-population-statistics.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential economic benefits of expanding the provision of free specialist legal advice.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
As part of our commitment to coordinate and signpost people to the right legal support, we have made improvements to telephone signposting from MoJ telephone support lines, for individuals who do not fall within the scope of legal aid. In collaboration with DLHUC, we have also developed an online (guided pathway) signposting pilot to help individuals resolve housing disrepair issues in private rented accommodation. The online pilot launched on GOV.UK in April and offers tailored guidance and information about an individual’s rights and responsibilities, with the aim that individuals will be able to resolve their issues independently before they escalate.
The Government has also committed to piloting early legal advice in social welfare law and this pilot will start in early 2022.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of BAME children held on remand were subsequently found guilty of an offence in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Bail Act 1976 and the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012 provides the framework for courts to remand children to custody.
Court outcomes broken down by type of remand and ethnicity are available from 2011 in the Crown Court and 2013 for the Magistrates’ Court and can be found at the following links under remand:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2016
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2015
Information on ethnicity for the Magistrates’ Courts for 2011 and 2012, however, could only be obtained at disproportionate costs.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many applications have been made for employment legal aid in each year over the last 20 years.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Legal Aid Agency publishes volumes of applications and grants for civil representation in the inquest and employment law categories at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/legal-aid-statistics. The published figures (in that link) cover from the 2013/14 and 2006/07 financial years respectively.
Historic volumes are shown below. Please note that the earliest data available in the inquest category dates from the 2002/03 financial year. Data prior to the 2013/14 financial year for this category is sourced from raw data from a legacy operational database which, like any operational database, may contain errors. The figures have not been subject to validation or quality assured to the standard of Official Statistics, and should therefore not be interpreted as such.
Inquests | |||
Financial Year | Applications | Granted | % Successful |
2002-03 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
2003-04 | - | - | - |
2004-05 | 25 | 23 | 92% |
2005-06 | 75 | 67 | 89% |
2006-07 | 127 | 105 | 83% |
2007-08 | 160 | 92 | 58% |
2008-09 | 159 | 88 | 55% |
2009-10 | 176 | 97 | 55% |
2010-11 | 136 | 75 | 55% |
2011-12 | 143 | 87 | 61% |
2012-13 | 151 | 77 | 51% |
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of requests for legal aid funding before an inquest were successful in each of the last 20 years.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Legal Aid Agency publishes volumes of applications and grants for civil representation in the inquest and employment law categories at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/legal-aid-statistics. The published figures (in that link) cover from the 2013/14 and 2006/07 financial years respectively.
Historic volumes are shown below. Please note that the earliest data available in the inquest category dates from the 2002/03 financial year. Data prior to the 2013/14 financial year for this category is sourced from raw data from a legacy operational database which, like any operational database, may contain errors. The figures have not been subject to validation or quality assured to the standard of Official Statistics, and should therefore not be interpreted as such.
Inquests | |||
Financial Year | Applications | Granted | % Successful |
2002-03 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
2003-04 | - | - | - |
2004-05 | 25 | 23 | 92% |
2005-06 | 75 | 67 | 89% |
2006-07 | 127 | 105 | 83% |
2007-08 | 160 | 92 | 58% |
2008-09 | 159 | 88 | 55% |
2009-10 | 176 | 97 | 55% |
2010-11 | 136 | 75 | 55% |
2011-12 | 143 | 87 | 61% |
2012-13 | 151 | 77 | 51% |
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Lord Wolfson's oral evidence of 27 April 2021 to the Justice Committee, Q148, what plans the Government has to scrutinise non-CPS prosecutors given Lord Wolfson's observation that HMCTS had identified errors in 10 per cent of Covid Single Justice Procedure cases.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
A review of Single Justice Procedure (SJP) cases dealt with between 1st September and 30th October 2020 showed that legal advisers and justices identified errors in 10% of cases. The errors are not caused by the type of proceedings; work done over the summer of 2020 suggested that the primary cause was the volume of regulations and the constant amendments, combined with the speed of introduction and the conditions in which officers issuing fixed penalty notices had to work. In the autumn of 2020, work was done with police forces and justices’ legal advisers to reduce the errors. Anecdotally, and from limited data, the error rate with the new round of SJP proceedings appears to be lower than last year. As the regulations ceased in the summer, the numbers of Covid SJP cases are set to decline.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the impact of video-conferencing linking defendants to the court on (a) remand decisions, (b) sentencing decisions and (c) the take-up of legal representation.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
It is for judges to decide whether it is in the interest of justice to enable a live link to be used having considered representations from parties in the case. We will continue to conduct research and testing to ensure that the current technology is reliable, user-friendly and accessible and meets the requirements of justice.
The MoJ is conducting an evaluation of the HMCTS reform programme to ensure that the effects of reform can be identified and assessed. This evaluation will help identify if the reform programme has met its aims and what effects it had, for whom and why, including the impacts on vulnerable users. Our evaluation framework for HMCTS Reform was published in May 2021. An interim evaluation report is planned for publication in 2022, and a final evaluation report will be published following the end of the reform programme.
We are keen to evaluate impacts as part of any future research however plans for this are still to be confirmed.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
o ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many junior barristers have specialised in crime in each financial year since 2010-11.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
Ministry of Justice (MOJ) does not routinely hold data on barristers’ specialisms. However as part of the Criminal Legal Aid Review, MOJ worked with the Bar Council and other stakeholders to combine key datasets which were summarised in a published Data compendium. This shows that the number of barristers in England and Wales who reported themselves as specialising in crime, and who carried out some publicly-funded criminal work, was 2,780 in 2018-19 and 2,690 in 2019-20 (Table 5.3). Comparable data is not available prior to 2018-19.
Table 5.13 shows that, in 2019-20, 87% of this group were junior barristers and 13% were QCs.