Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what funds have been made available for support services in Sheffield for women who have left prison in the last 12 months; and what funds she plans to make available for that purpose in the next 12 months?
Answered by Phillip Lee
We are developing a strategy for female offenders to improve outcomes for women in the community and in custody. This will also consider how we can improve early intervention and diversion to avoid vulnerable women entering the criminal justice system.
Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) are contractually required to provide services for female offenders that they are managing in the community, and to deliver resettlement services to offenders both before and following release from prison. As part of our reforms to probation, we have given providers the flexibility to innovate and do what works to reduce reoffending, and to tailor rehabilitative support to the particular needs of offenders locally. These services are provided in Sheffield by South Yorkshire CRC.
As part of their supply chain, South Yorkshire CRC have contracted with Changing Lives, a consortium of local organisations, to deliver bespoke interventions for female offenders. The CRC are also working closely with Community Safety Partnerships to improve outcomes for women who have been either a victim of domestic violence or are a sex worker.
We have a robust contract management and assurance process in place for CRCs, and continue to assess their performance through a range of service levels, including their delivery of Through the Gate and how they are addressing the specific needs of female offenders.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the proportion of women who have been homeless after leaving prison in the last three years.
Answered by Phillip Lee
It is a cross-Government priority to address female offenders’ housing and support needs given the link between homelessness and re-offending.
Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and the National Probation Service (NPS) are required to facilitate access to housing and support services for the female offenders that they are managing. This includes working together with local partners to help women find and maintain accommodation as part of a package of support tailored to meet their individual needs.
The table below shows the proportion of women under CRC supervision recorded as homeless, based on releases from prison who are. There is no equivalent Settled Accommodation on Release metric for the NPS so data on NPS releases has not been included.
Revised recording to capture data for this metric was not introduced until August 2015, so data prior to this are not available. National coverage of accommodation status was not sufficient to report data until the period Jan-Mar 2016 onwards.
Releases of Female Allocated Persons (of a CRC) From Custody |
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| Jan-Mar 2016 | Apr-Jun 2016 | Jul-Sep 2016 | Oct-Dec 2016 | Jan-Mar 2017 | Apr-Jun 2017 |
Releases | 1,143 | 1,055 | 1,050 | 972 | 1,092 | 1,087 |
Recorded as Homeless1 | 103 | 132 | 126 | 134 | 164 | 227 |
% of Releases recorded as homeless | 9.0% | 12.5% | 12.0% | 13.8% | 15.0% | 20.9% |
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Notes: | ||||||
1Cases where the Accommodation Status recorded on the day of release was: Homeless (any), Squatting or No fixed Abode were counted as homeless. | ||||||
Not all releases have an Accommodation Status recorded; of this dataset, between 16% and 5% of releases in each quarter did not record an accommodation status. | ||||||
The reported proportion homeless increases over the reported period (9% to 21%), however the rate of non-recording has decreased due to HETE initiative (16% to 5%). | ||||||
It cannot be assumed that homelessness has increased. | ||||||
Because recording of Accommodation Statuses at release in London CRC is too low to be reliable, London CRC has been excluded from this dataset. | ||||||
Releases at Licence Expiry (without post-sentence supervision), releases following a period on remand without a custodial sentence, and releases outside of HMPPS authority (e.g. release for deportation, release to an address in Scotland or Northern Ireland) are not in this dataset. | ||||||
This dataset records each release separately; if an offender is released more than once, they will appear more than once in this dataset. | ||||||
Releases of persons who are not Allocated Persons of a CRC (i.e. offenders managed by the NPS) are not included in this dataset. | ||||||
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if the Government will take steps to ensure the continued provision of quality assured chaplaincy services in prisons by maintaining the guidelines set out in PSI 5/2016 and incorporating them into any future policy framework.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
PSI 05/2016 Faith and Pastoral Care of Prisoners is not in the first tranche of PSIs to be deregulated. When it is replaced by a Policy Framework I am confident that Governors will have the guidance they need to ensure the delivery of chaplaincy services that meet the pastoral and faith needs of prisoners. Discussions are already under way to see how the present Assurance and Compliance quality assurance process may be developed to support delivery of chaplaincy services in the future.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will include access to chaplaincy in its performance measures for prisons on time spent out of cells engaging in purposeful activity.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The Chaplaincy manually records prisoner attendance at Chaplaincy services. Prisoner attendance at Chaplaincy is normally counted as purposeful activity in the same way as any other intervention that involves time out of cells.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reasons there are differences between the timelines of his Department's Universal Credit Transition Roll-Out Schedules published in (a) November 2016 and (b) November 2017.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
As announced by the Secretary of State in his Oral Statement, to accommodate the changes in the scope of Universal Credit announced in the Budget, it has been necessary to make changes to the rollout plan.
We have carefully revised the rollout plan to ensure we continue safely and gradually to rollout this important welfare reform, and this will mean a slight change in date for when Universal Credit Full Service will be rolled out in some Jobcentres.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many convicted criminals have been imprisoned in the UK after trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The United Kingdom has sentence enforcement agreements with a number of international courts and tribunals. Under these arrangements the UK is currently holding one person convicted of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Previously three prisoners convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have served all or part of their sentence in the United Kingdom in the last 10 years. A further prisoner convicted by ICTY was held here prior to this period. These four prisoners are no longer detained in the UK.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people convicted of war crimes are detained in the UK; and how many people have been so detained in the last 10 years?
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The United Kingdom has sentence enforcement agreements with a number of international courts and tribunals. Under these arrangements the UK is currently holding one person convicted of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Previously three prisoners convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have served all or part of their sentence in the United Kingdom in the last 10 years. A further prisoner convicted by ICTY was held here prior to this period. These four prisoners are no longer detained in the UK.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of the early termination of the East Coast rail franchise?
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As with all recent franchise awards, Stagecoach Group PLC committed parent company support to inject funds into the franchise in circumstances where it doesn’t perform as predicted. We will hold them to that commitment in full.
From 2020 we intend to re-let the franchise as the East Coast Partnership, one of the first of a new generation of integrated regional rail operations. This will include appropriate contributions from the new private partner under a long-term competitively procured contract.
We are always looking for the best ways to achieve value for money for the taxpayer and the best results for passengers. Reforms will build on the best of the public and private sectors, with private sector involvement bringing innovation, investment and competition.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to help end childhood deaths from pneumonia by 2030.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK is the largest donor to Gavi, the global vaccine alliance that provides developing countries with Pneumococcol to vaccinate against pneumonia. 109 million children were vaccinated between 2010 and 2016, thanks to Gavi’s support, saving an estimated 762,000 lives.
DFID supports Gavi’s Pneumococcol Advanced Market commitment which reduces costs, enabling 58 countries to introduce vaccinations. We also support countries to build stronger health systems that can respond to existing disease burdens and emerging health issues, including pneumonia.
Asked by: Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of ending preventable child deaths by 2030.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK Government has committed to saving 1.4 million children’s lives by immunising 76 million children against killer diseases by 2020. Through the Ross Fund we are leading a major new global research programme. This will accelerate the development of vaccines and drugs to eliminate some of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, as well as saving lives from malaria and TB.
DFID supports countries to build stronger health systems, which will be able to respond to the existing disease burden and emerging health issues.