Asked by: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether it is a criminal offence to (a) threaten and (b) actually (i) spit, (ii) cough and (iii) sneeze upon another person; whether any such offence is aggravated by a claim by the assailant to be infected with the covid-19 virus; whether it is in the public interest to prosecute such cases during the covid-19 outbreak; and if he will review any recent decision to take no action against such an assailant on grounds that the subsequent death of the victim could not be directly attributed to the assault.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Whether such behaviour amounts to a criminal offence will depend on the circumstances. Threatening to infect someone with covid-19, for example, can be charged as an assault and if a direct causal link can be established between one person’s unlawful act and another person contracting the virus then other more serious offences could be charged. Each case is considered on its own specific facts.
Provided there is sufficient evidence, whether it is in the public interest to prosecute such cases is a matter for the CPS. The Director of Public Prosecutions has made clear that the CPS will not hesitate to prosecute those using covid-19 to threaten people in this way and CPS data shows that more than 300 such prosecutions were brought in the first month of lockdown alone.
The Sentencing Council has published interim guidance clarifying that, when sentencing common assault offences involving threats or activity relating to the transmission of covid-19, courts should treat this as an aggravating feature of the offence and take this into account when sentencing.
The Government has no remit for reviewing operational decisions of the police or the CPS in individual cases.
Asked by: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people previously convicted of (a) murder and (b) other killings have subsequently been convicted of carrying out additional killings after being released from prison in each year since 2010; and how many of those people had been serving (i) life and (ii) indeterminate sentences before being so released.
Answered by Rory Stewart
(a) The mandatory sentence for murder is life imprisonment. The number of offenders serving a life sentence for murder and, after being released, subsequently convicted of an offence or offences which resulted in death is in column (a) in the table below.
(b) The number of offenders serving a sentence for offences resulting in death (but not murder) and, after being released, subsequently convicted of an offence or offences resulting in death is in column (b) below. None of these offenders was serving an indeterminate sentence.
The numbers given in each column relate to the year in which the offenders concerned were charged with an offence or offences which resulted in death not the year in which they were convicted.
Year |
| a) Life sentenced prisoners convicted of murder or other offences resulting in death at both index offence and SFO | b)Other sentenced offenders convicted of offences resulting in death at both index offence and SFO |
2010 |
| 1 | 1 |
2011 |
| 2 | 1 |
2012 |
| 0 | 0 |
2013 |
| 2 | 1 |
2014 |
| 1 | 2 |
2015 |
| 2 | 1 |
2016 |
| 0 | 0 |
2017 |
| 3 | 0 |
* Not all SFO outcomes have been received for 2017, as some cases have not yet reached conclusion