Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time taken to process a coroner's inquest was in weeks in (a) Gwent, (b) Wales and (c) England and Wales in each year from 2010-2019.
Answered by Alex Chalk
The requested information for 2010-2018 is set out in the attached table. It is taken from the Coroner Statistics Annual which is published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coroners-and-burials-statistics
Information for 2019 is not yet available.
Clearly, unnecessary delay between death and inquest may cause additional anguish and distress to the relatives and friends of the deceased. For this reason, the Coroners (Inquests) Rules 2013 require that an inquest must be completed within six months of the coroner being made aware of a death or as soon as is reasonably practicable after that date. The Chief Coroner has published advice for coroners to reinforce these requirements which indicates that, if there is to be a delay of over six months, a coroner should ensure that a Pre-Inquest Review hearing is held.
Coroners are also under a statutory duty to report to the Chief Coroner any inquest which is not concluded within twelve months.
The Chief Coroner undertakes regular training with all coroners on a number of issues, including the timeliness of inquests and the investigation process.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times for coroners' inquests.
Answered by Alex Chalk
The requested information for 2010-2018 is set out in the attached table. It is taken from the Coroner Statistics Annual which is published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coroners-and-burials-statistics
Information for 2019 is not yet available.
Clearly, unnecessary delay between death and inquest may cause additional anguish and distress to the relatives and friends of the deceased. For this reason, the Coroners (Inquests) Rules 2013 require that an inquest must be completed within six months of the coroner being made aware of a death or as soon as is reasonably practicable after that date. The Chief Coroner has published advice for coroners to reinforce these requirements which indicates that, if there is to be a delay of over six months, a coroner should ensure that a Pre-Inquest Review hearing is held.
Coroners are also under a statutory duty to report to the Chief Coroner any inquest which is not concluded within twelve months.
The Chief Coroner undertakes regular training with all coroners on a number of issues, including the timeliness of inquests and the investigation process.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
What assessment he has made of trends in waiting times for Child Maintenance Service appeals.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
I accept that waiting times for Child Maintenance Service appeals remain higher than we would like. I am pleased to say that we are working on measures to help reduce waiting times for those appealing to the Social Security and Child Support jurisdiction.
We have recruited three more judges who will be able to hear Child Maintenance appeals in Wales, two of which will be available to sit at the Langstone tribunal venue in Newport. Furthermore, we are spending £1.2 billion on modernising the courts and tribunals system with a view to improving the experience of service users. 129 fee paid judges have been recruited to the SSCS jurisdiction in 2019, which will also greatly assist.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many litigants in person there were in (a) crown courts, (b) family courts and (c) county courts in each court area in Wales in (i) 2013, (ii) 2014, (iii) 2015, (iv) 2016, (v) 2017, (vi) 2018 and (vii) 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
This information is not held centrally and would require reviewing individual court files in each year specified. The requested information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. However, self-representation in criminal, civil and family cases is identified in HMCTS case management systems by the legal representation field being left blank. These figures should therefore be considered as counting parties without a recorded representative, and are not necessarily self-representing litigants in person.
PERSONS WITHOUT RECORDED REPRESENTATION IN HMCTS WALES 2013-2019 | |||
YEAR | CROWN COURTS | COUNTY COURT | FAMILY COURT |
2013 | 22 | 2291 | 6660 |
2014 | 17 | 1792 | 6243 |
2015 | 22 | 1800 | 5813 |
2016 | 30 | 1653 | 6506 |
2017 | 30 | 1852 | 6757 |
2018 | 48 | 1763 | 6679 |
2019 | Data not published until June 2020 | 15111 | 50861 |
Access to justice is a central pillar of society, which is why we spent around £1.7 billion on legal aid last year. We have also committed a further £5 million on innovative technologies to enable access to legal support at the earliest opportunity.
We are improving the Exceptional Case Funding scheme, reviewing legal aid means testing, and will launch an awareness campaign to ensure even more people know what support they are entitled to.
Notes to accompany release of data:
1. Family and county court data for 2019 is available at present only for the period January 2019 until September 2019.
2. County court data is for cases where claims were defended. The data represents defended cases where there was a claimant only represented, defendant only represented or neither claimants or defendants were represented. Please note: it cannot be assumed that each defended claim has only one claimant and defendant.
3. In both the family and county court, some cases involve more than one applicant/claimant or respondent/defendant. As such there are more applicants and respondents than there are cases.
4. Please note, the Crown Court data includes both defendants who did not have an advocate recorded at all hearings and defendants whose advocate representation was unknown. It is not necessarily the case that someone whose representation was unknown, did not have representation.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time is for a personal independence payment appeal to be heard under the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal service in (a) Wales and (b) England and Wales.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
Information about waiting times for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) is published at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time is for a Child Maintenance Service appeal to be heard under Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service in each court area in Wales.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
General information about waiting times for appeals in the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) are published at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics
The table below contains the average waiting time for Child Maintenance appeals between July and September 2019 (the latest period for which data are available) at HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) hearing venues in Wales1.
Average time (in weeks) taken to administer Child Maintenance appeals between July – September 2019 (the latest period for which figures are available) | |
Aberystwyth | ~ |
Cardiff | 59 |
Haverfordwest | ~ |
Langstone, Newport | 38 |
Llanelli | ~ |
Port Talbot | 42 |
Swansea | ~ |
Wrexham | ~ |
1 Wales SSCS Region
~ denotes five or fewer cases. If the number of disposals are five or fewer, the average disposal time is redacted.
Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and are the best data that are available. Data include appeals cleared with and without a Tribunal hearing.
Waiting times are calculated from receipt of an appeal to its final disposal. An appeal is not necessarily disposed of at its first hearing. The final disposal decision on the appeal may be reached after an earlier hearing had been adjourned (which may be directed by the judge for a variety of reasons, such as to seek further evidence), or after an earlier hearing date had been postponed (again, for a variety of reasons, often at the request of the appellant). An appeal may also have been decided at an earlier date by the First-tier Tribunal, only for the case to have gone on to the Upper Tribunal, to be returned once again to the First-tier, for its final disposal.
HMCTS recognises it is important for appeals to be heard as quickly as possible, and is in the process of recruiting more judicial office holders to the SSCS jurisdiction in order to increase capacity and help to reduce waiting times for appellants. In 2018, 118 specialist members were appointed and trained to the jurisdiction, and an extra 129 fee-paid judges were appointed in 2019. The jurisdiction will also benefit from 114 salaried judges and 170 fee-paid judges being recruited across tribunals more widely.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of steel procured by his Department was produced in the UK, in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
This Government remains committed to supporting the UK steel industry.
MoJ collates information about steel spend for projects with the largest steel requirements, including origin where known. This information is published annually on gov.uk at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/steel-public-procurement
The data was first published in January 2019, with the next iteration due to be published shortly.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time is for a Child Maintenance Service appeal to be heard under Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service in (a) Wales and (b) England and Wales.
Answered by Wendy Morton - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
General information about waiting times for appeals in the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) are published at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics
The average waiting time for Child Maintenance appeals between July and September 2019 (the latest period for which data are available) was (a) 46 weeks in Wales and (b) 40 weeks in England and Wales.
Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and are the best data that are available. Data include appeals cleared with and without a Tribunal hearing.
Waiting times are calculated from receipt of an appeal to its final disposal. An appeal is not necessarily disposed of at its first hearing. The final disposal decision on the appeal may be reached after an earlier hearing had been adjourned (which may be directed by the judge for a variety of reasons, such as to seek further evidence), or after an earlier hearing date had been postponed (again, for a variety of reasons, often at the request of the appellant). An appeal may also have been decided at an earlier date by the First-tier Tribunal, only for the case to have gone on to the Upper Tribunal, to be returned once again to the First-tier, for its final disposal.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many publicly-funded providers of legal aid for housing cases there are in (a) Newport and (b) Monmouthshire.
Answered by Wendy Morton - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Details of firms holding a legal aid contract, including their locations and the categories of law in which they may offer services, are published at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/directory-of-legal-aid-providers.
The LAA regularly monitors capacity and the available access to services, and takes action where it identifies gaps in services or where demand is greater than the available supply.