Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of asylum cases from applicants from Afghanistan (a) in progress and (b) awaiting trial in the First-Tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum).
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information that would allow this question to be answered accurately is not held centrally. HMCTS is working to clear the outstanding caseload caused by the pandemic and will ensure that there is capacity to manage any additional appeals that may flow from the state of affairs in Afghanistan.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much his Department has spent with each company providing agency staff to his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested for is provided in the attached Tables.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many domestic abuse survivors have had an application for legal aid denied in each year since 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Legal aid is available to obtain an injunction to protect survivors of domestic violence. This is not subject to any upper means limit; applicants cannot be found financially ineligible for this form of support.
Save for the above, whether someone is a survivor of domestic violence is not recorded for types of legal aid for other categories of law, eligibility for which would be subject to the applicable means and merits tests.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many incidents of confiscation of the legal high known as spice there were in prisons in England and Wales in each year since 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The HMPPS Annual Digest for the relevant years, where available, contains information in relation to the number of drug finds on the prison estate. The digest contains all available data on drug type and class.
The Government takes seriously the conveyance of drugs into prisons, including psychoactive substances. In April 2021 we published a National Prisons Drugs Strategy to reduce drug misuse in our prisons, in order to increase safety for both staff and prisoners, and contribute towards ensuring that prisons are places of opportunity and change for prisoners.
In September 2016, HMPPS became the first prison service in the world to introduce innovative mandatory drug tests for psychoactive substances. We have made it a criminal offence to possess psychoactive substances in prison and trained more than 300 sniffer dogs specifically to detect these drugs.
In August 2019, the Government committed to invest £100 million in prison security in an ambitious new Security Investment Programme. One of the aims of the Programme was to reduce the quantity of drugs entering the prison estate.
Since then, we have installed 73 X-ray body scanners across the prison estate and to date have had over 9000 positive indications. The roll out of Enhanced Gate Security (EGS), replicating the tough measures used in airport screening, has resulted in hundreds of illicit items being prevented from entering prisons.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many meetings (a) he has and (b) Ministers of his Department have had with the operator of Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre since inspectors issued an Urgent Notification in respect of that Centre in December 2020.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Following the invoking of the Urgent Notification protocol at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre (STC) last December, Ministers called an urgent meeting with senior representatives from the provider MTC. HMPPS officials were then instructed to deploy to Rainsbrook to scrutinise actions taken by MTC in response to the Urgent Notification. Subsequent meetings were conducted between officials, with regard to monitoring the Urgent Notification action plan. As this is a contracted service the YCS/HMPPS contract management and commercial teams have met internally and with MTC on a regular basis.
We ordered the provider to take the immediate action necessary to address the unacceptable failings at Rainsbrook, including a focus on ensuring all children in the Reverse Cohorting Unit had a suitable amount of time out of their room. Whilst inspectors acknowledged that this issue had been addressed, and that the Youth Custody Service had strengthened its oversight of the STC, a second Urgent Notification was invoked on 18 June following a full inspection of the centre with reference to separate serious concerns.
We have now transferred all children from Rainsbrook to alternative appropriate accommodation. Separately, we are also considering the future of the centre, with a further announcement to be made on this position in due course following conclusion of the current commercial matters.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were prosecuted for committing an offence under section 5 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Ministry of Justice has published information on prosecutions under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 in England and Wales, up to December 2020, available in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code’ data tool, which can be found here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/987731/HO-code-tool-principal-offence-2020.xlsx
Data showing the number of defendants prosecuted under section 5 of this Act, in England and Wales from 2010 to 2020 (latest available) can be found in the attached table.
The data supplied is a subset of published information from the Courts Proceedings database.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers have been (a) reprimanded, (b) dismissed and (c) convicted for being in possession of prohibited items including drugs while on duty in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. To answer this accurately each individual personnel file held on each prison officer in post over the last 10 years would need to be examined. Most older personnel files are still held in hard copy format and would need to be brought back from storage.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will provide a breakdown of the most recent (a) rape and (b) sexual assault (i) prosecution and (ii) conviction statistics by the ethnicity of the alleged victim or victims.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Due to a lack of data collected on victim characteristics, we do not have any rape or sexual assault statistics available on prosecutions or convictions by victim ethnicity.
However, I am able to provide data on the estimated prevalence rates of rape and sexual assault by victim ethnicity. This can be found at Sexual offences prevalence and victim characteristics, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).
Information on the ethnicity of the alleged victim or victims of rape and sexual assault offences is not centrally held within the court proceedings database. Overall information on prosecutions and convictions for rape and sexual assault offences in England and Wales, up to December 2020, is available in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code’ data tool, which can be found here:
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will publishe the backlog of outstanding cases at the start of July for each year since 2010 in every Crown Court open in England and Wales.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The number of outstanding cases by Crown Court for each year since 2014 is currently published as part of the National Statistics publication ‘Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly’ in the ‘Crown Court cases received, disposed, outstanding tool’. The published data for the second quarters of these years reflects the outstanding caseload in Crown Courts at the end of June of those respective years. The most recent data can be found in Criminal Statistics Quartely January to March 2021 linked below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2021
and the received, disposed and outstanding tool can be accessed here:
This data is only available split by individual Crown Court back to 2014.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many persons convicted of rape have received a sentence of less than (a) five, (b) seven and (c) 10 years imprisonment in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Ministry of Justice has published information on prosecutions and convictions for rape and offences in England and Wales, up to December 2020, available in the ‘Outcomes by Offence’ data tool, which can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/987715/outcomes-by-offence-2020.xlsx
In order to isolate rape offences, type ‘rape’ into the ‘Offence’ filter and select all results that appear (19C-19H). Rows 55 to 77 will display a range of values based on sentence lengths.
Rape and sexual violence are devastating crimes that have a long-lasting impact on victims. Provisions in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, currently before Parliament, will ensure that all serious sexual offenders, including those convicted of rape, will be required to serve two-thirds of their sentence in prison if given a standard determinate sentence of more than 4 years.
It is regrettable that you voted against this.