Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will conduct a review into the effectiveness of the Sentencing Council.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The proper role of the Sentencing Council, and the process for making guidelines, must be considered further and in greater depth. The Lord Chancellor has committed to reviewing the role and powers of the Council over the coming months.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will take steps to override the Sentencing Council's guidance entitled Imposition of community and custodial sentences - Effective from 1 April 2025.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
This Government’s position is clear: we are seeking to remove the unequal treatment before the law in these guidelines.
In the first instance, the Lord Chancellor used her power under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 and asked the Sentencing Council to reconsider their guidance. On 01 April, we introduced legislation to address the specific issue with these guidelines.
The Sentencing Council have now put the guidelines on pause – we are grateful for their constructive engagement on this issue.
We will also consider a broader review of the Sentencing Council’s role and powers over the coming months. It is right that we take the time to consider more fundamental reforms.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been convicted of drug driving offences in Lincolnshire in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on drug driving offence convictions. This is available in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
The number of convictions and the type of sentence related to drug driving offences can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Prosecutions and Convictions’ tab, using the “Police Force Area” filter to select ‘Lincolnshire’ and filtering the “HO offence code” drop down for:
The resulting numbers of prosecutions are for offenders appearing at courts in Lincolnshire and the offence may not have originated in Lincolnshire.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the total amount of fines resulting from drug driving convictions was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on fines for drug driving offences. This is available in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
The drug driving offences used in the table are below:
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people convicted of drug driving offences were given the maximum sentence in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on drug driving offence convictions. This is available in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
The number of convictions and the type of sentence related to drug driving offences can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Sentence Outcomes’ tab, using the sentencing outcome filter and filtering the “HO offence code” drop down for:
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of food procured by her Department is sourced in the UK.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
To date, the Government has not held information on where publicly procured food is sourced from.
Starting right away, for the first time ever, this Government will review the food currently bought in the public sector to determine the standards that it is meeting, where it is bought from and look to introduce monitoring for transparency and accountability within those supply chains to ultimately get the best food for the consumer.
This work will be a significant first step to inform any future changes to public sector food procurement policies as we want to help make it an equal playing field for British producers to bid into the £5 billion spend each year on public sector catering contracts.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been (a) charged and (b) prosecuted with communications offences under the Online Safety Act 2023 by offence.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Online Safety Act introduced a number of communication offences, which were commenced in January 2024. These offences were introduced to criminalise cyberflashing, fake news intended to cause non-trivial harm and other online abuse.
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on offenders prosecuted with communications offences under the Online Safety Act 2023. This is available in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
The number of prosecutions for communications offences can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Overall Volumes’ tab, and filtering the “HO offence code” drop down for:
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the number of coroners working in Lincolnshire.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Coroner services are locally funded and administered across 77 coroner areas in England and Wales. Statutory responsibility for coroner appointments lies with the funding local authority in each area, and the assessment of resource is based on local caseload and other relevant factors. The Chief Coroner has published guidance and advice to support local authorities in this context.
The Government is committed to supporting an inquest process which is as swift as possible and which puts bereaved families at the heart of the process. We recognise the impact of delays on bereaved families and wider systems and we will continue to work closely with the Chief Coroner, local authorities and other key partners to reform and deliver a framework for the future development of coroner services.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for what purposes the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has used artificial intelligence in the last 12 months.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the heart of the Government’s plan to kickstart an era of economic growth, transform how we deliver public services, and boost living standards for working people across the country. CICA has not used AI technology for any live or past applications for compensation. It is exploring the use of AI to enable the extraction of key information from large documents to add further efficiency to its decision-making process.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for what purposes the Office of the Public Guardian has used artificial intelligence in the last 12 months.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the heart of the Government’s plan to transform how we deliver public services, and boost living standards for working people across the country.
A small number of staff in Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) are trialling the use of Microsoft 365 Co-pilot as part of a Ministry of Justice wide pilot, looking to reduce time spent on repetitive administrative tasks. OPG does not use AI in its decision-making processes.
OPG can draw on a range of resources, published on GOV.UK, to inform AI usage. For example, the Generative AI Ethics Framework, the Ethics, Transparency and Accountability Framework, the Data Ethics Framework, the AI Opportunities Action Plan and the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard.