Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, how much funding from the public purse the Equality and Human Rights Commission has received in each of the last five years.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
Funding received by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission in the last five years is set out in the table below;
| 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 |
Total | £23,542,000 | £20,415,029 | £19,345,000 | £18,349,000 | £17,431,000 |
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women have been killed by men who claim rough sex as a defence to murder, in each of the last five years in England and Wales.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The law states that a victim is unable to consent to actual bodily harm or other serious injury, including death. Defendants who claim consent to such activity remain liable to prosecution.
The Ministry of Justice collects information on defendants that are prosecuted and convicted of specific criminal offences in England and Wales (i.e. murder, manslaughter, etc) in any given year. Information is not collated on whether a prosecution or conviction relied on a defendant’s claim in their defence, that death had resulted from rough sex gone wrong. This may be a matter of court record but such information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Under the provisions of the Domestic Abuse Bill, the general functions of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner will include encouraging good practice in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of offences involving domestic abuse. Specified public authorities, including chief officers of police and the Crown Prosecution Service, will be under a duty to cooperate with the Commissioner where it is reasonably practical to do so. The duty to cooperate could include, for example, responding to requests for information from the Commissioner. As an independent office holder, it will be for the Commissioner to determine how best to discharge her functions and exercise her powers.”
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will take steps to ensure that it is a requirement of the new Domestic Abuse Commissioner to record information on the number of women killed by men who claim rough sex as a defence to murder in England and Wales.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The law states that a victim is unable to consent to actual bodily harm or other serious injury, including death. Defendants who claim consent to such activity remain liable to prosecution.
The Ministry of Justice collects information on defendants that are prosecuted and convicted of specific criminal offences in England and Wales (i.e. murder, manslaughter, etc) in any given year. Information is not collated on whether a prosecution or conviction relied on a defendant’s claim in their defence, that death had resulted from rough sex gone wrong. This may be a matter of court record but such information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Under the provisions of the Domestic Abuse Bill, the general functions of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner will include encouraging good practice in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of offences involving domestic abuse. Specified public authorities, including chief officers of police and the Crown Prosecution Service, will be under a duty to cooperate with the Commissioner where it is reasonably practical to do so. The duty to cooperate could include, for example, responding to requests for information from the Commissioner. As an independent office holder, it will be for the Commissioner to determine how best to discharge her functions and exercise her powers.”
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there have been for the offence of buying sex from a prostitute controlled for the gain of another person under section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 since April 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Ministry of Justice has published the number of prosecutions and convictions under S.53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as inserted by S.14 Policing and Crime Act 2009, for the calendar years 2013 – 2018 in the ‘Proceedings and Outcomes by Home Office Code 2013 to 2018 data tool’:
Prosecutions and convictions for this offence from 2010 to 2012 are in the attached table.
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many pregnant women are in prison in England and Wales (a) in total and (b) for non-violent crimes.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. We are currently carrying out a fundamental review of our Mother and Baby Units policy, as part of which, we are looking at what information related to pregnancy and birth can be collected.
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many pregnant women are on remand awaiting trial in England and Wales.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. We are currently carrying out a fundamental review of our Mother and Baby Units policy, as part of which, we are looking at what information related to pregnancy and birth can be collected.
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) babies born to women serving custodial sentences have lived and (b) neo-natal mortalities there have been among such women in each women's prison in England and Wales in each of the last five years.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. We are currently carrying out a fundamental review of our Mother and Baby Units policy, as part of which, we are looking at what information related to pregnancy and birth can be collected.
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of people convicted of a crime and sentenced to time in prison in each of the last five years had been excluded from their primary school.
Answered by Robert Buckland
This data is held at individual child level and could be provided only at a disproportionate cost. Aggregated data that is available about children sentenced to youth custody who have previously been excluded from school can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/understanding-the-educational-background-of-young-offenders-full-report
In his review of school exclusions published on 7 May 2019, Edward Timpson found that “exclusion is a marker for being at higher risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of crime”, but that “it would be wrong to suggest that we have evidence that exclusion of any kind causes crime or that preventing the use of exclusion would, in itself, prevent crime.” The review and the government’s response can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/school-exclusions-review-call-for-evidence
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) men and (b) women in prison are on the autistic spectrum.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The MoJ does not centrally hold specific information on the number of prisoners who are on the autistic spectrum, either within prisons or young offender’s institutions. The most recent, available data from the Department for Education (2014/15) shows that 0.25% of Offender Learners (defined as offenders aged 18 or over that participated in Skills Funding Agency funded learning while in the prison system) self-declared as having a learning difficulty classified within the Autistic Spectrum Disorder category. This represents 250 out of 101,600 learners. This data is not, however, separated out by gender.
The MoJ is committed to ensuring that all individuals who come into contact with the prison system are able to access the right support to help them engage with their sentence. We are therefore taking a number of steps to improve data collection on disability within prisons.
This includes work by HM Prisons and Probation Service looking at how disabilities data can be better categorised on the Prison National Offender Management System (P-NOMIS) for offenders aged 18 and over to improve staff awareness.
Health and justice partners are also working to establish the new Health and Justice Information Service (HJIS) to improve the link between prisons and community by introducing a system of sharing clinical records between community and prison on reception, and from prison back to the community on release.
Finally, the new adult prison education framework contracts, which commenced on 1 April, have introduced numerous improvements to the way prisoners aged 18 and over with learning difficulties and disabilities (LDD) are screened and provided with regular and consistent support throughout their sentence.
Asked by: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) male and (b) female people in young offending institutions have autism.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The MoJ does not centrally hold specific information on the number of prisoners who are on the autistic spectrum, either within prisons or young offender’s institutions. The most recent, available data from the Department for Education (2014/15) shows that 0.25% of Offender Learners (defined as offenders aged 18 or over that participated in Skills Funding Agency funded learning while in the prison system) self-declared as having a learning difficulty classified within the Autistic Spectrum Disorder category. This represents 250 out of 101,600 learners. This data is not, however, separated out by gender.
The MoJ is committed to ensuring that all individuals who come into contact with the prison system are able to access the right support to help them engage with their sentence. We are therefore taking a number of steps to improve data collection on disability within prisons.
This includes work by HM Prisons and Probation Service looking at how disabilities data can be better categorised on the Prison National Offender Management System (P-NOMIS) for offenders aged 18 and over to improve staff awareness.
Health and justice partners are also working to establish the new Health and Justice Information Service (HJIS) to improve the link between prisons and community by introducing a system of sharing clinical records between community and prison on reception, and from prison back to the community on release.
Finally, the new adult prison education framework contracts, which commenced on 1 April, have introduced numerous improvements to the way prisoners aged 18 and over with learning difficulties and disabilities (LDD) are screened and provided with regular and consistent support throughout their sentence.