Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service prison transport contract specifies that women and men should be transported to prison separately.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) contract is specifically designed for the movement of prisoners in cellular vehicles that meets MOJ standards.
A total of 191 pregnant women have been transported since December 2018, with 1 being moved by a cellular vehicle because she did not declare her pregnancy before the move.
Below is a table showing the number of instances when both women and men have been transported in the same vehicle. PECS contracts include a Contract Delivery Indicator which requires women to be separated from men for at least 97% of all journeys made. The current national performance is 99.93% of total journeys made.
Year | Number of instances OF failure to separate females |
2014 | 297 |
2015 | 226 |
2016 | 262 |
2017 | 81 |
2018 | 5 |
2019 YTD | 5 |
Contracts also include a requirement that individuals should not remain on a cellular, or any other vehicle, overnight and there have been no instances where women have been held in such circumstances.
Private providers continue to play an important role in the prison estate. We will continue to closely the performance of all providers and we will not hesitate to take action where
standards fall short.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many incidents there have been of women being held in a cellular vehicle overnight until prison reception opens in the last 12 months.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) contract is specifically designed for the movement of prisoners in cellular vehicles that meets MOJ standards.
A total of 191 pregnant women have been transported since December 2018, with 1 being moved by a cellular vehicle because she did not declare her pregnancy before the move.
Below is a table showing the number of instances when both women and men have been transported in the same vehicle. PECS contracts include a Contract Delivery Indicator which requires women to be separated from men for at least 97% of all journeys made. The current national performance is 99.93% of total journeys made.
Year | Number of instances OF failure to separate females |
2014 | 297 |
2015 | 226 |
2016 | 262 |
2017 | 81 |
2018 | 5 |
2019 YTD | 5 |
Contracts also include a requirement that individuals should not remain on a cellular, or any other vehicle, overnight and there have been no instances where women have been held in such circumstances.
Private providers continue to play an important role in the prison estate. We will continue to closely the performance of all providers and we will not hesitate to take action where
standards fall short.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 3 December 2018 to Question 196156 on Prisoners: employment, for each of the figures given to provide the proportion of (a) men and (b) women.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The figures used to answer question 196156 were taken from data collected on the pre-imprisonment status employment status of individuals within 72 hours of them entering custody using the Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCS) and covered the period 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018. The corresponding breakdown by gender can be found in the table below.
BCS Q B4.12: Were you working before you came to custody? | Gender | Count of Assessments | Percentage |
Employed | Female | 1010 | 0.99% |
Employed | Male | 21151 | 20.78% |
Employed | Not disclosed | 1 | 0.00% |
Unemployed | Female | 6513 | 6.40% |
Unemployed | Male | 55024 | 54.05% |
Unemployed | Not disclosed | 6 | 0.01% |
Unavailable for work | Female | 2265 | 2.22% |
Unavailable for work | Male | 8519 | 8.37% |
Retired | Female | 69 | 0.07% |
Retired | Male | 1097 | 1.08% |
Retired | Not disclosed | 1 | 0.00% |
Self-employed | Female | 106 | 0.10% |
Self-employed | Male | 6045 | 5.94% |
Self-employed | Not disclosed | 1 | 0.00% |
| Count: | 101808 | 100.00% |
Note: Slight discrepancies in the figures from those published in response to question 196156 are likely to be due to the deletion of offender records and/or BCS responses from the OASys application since those figures were published.
As was stated in the earlier answer, these figures are compiled from information the prisoners have provided the assessor to enter into the BCS and include not only prisoners sentenced in respect of a criminal offence, but also those received into custody on remand. Given the information is provided by the prisoners themselves and is not assessed, there will always be a margin of error in the figures. A proportion of prisoners will enter custody multiple times each year and may provide different answers to these questions over time.
Prisons must be places of rehabilitation, which will ultimately reduce reoffending. Our Education and Employment strategy sets out how we will transform our approach to ensure prisoners develop the skills they need to secure employment on release. We have overhauled the prison education system and we implemented our new prison education contracts. Governors control their budget, including the power to choose providers and deliver learning that will best support their prisoners. We are engaging with employers to take on ex-prisoners via the New Futures Network (NFN) and have consulted on proposals to increase the opportunities available to prisoners to gain experience in real workplaces through ROTL.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to allocate funding to the network of specialist women’s centres offering holistic support to women affected by the criminal justice system.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Female Offender Strategy recognises the role that holistic community services can play in supporting vulnerable women in contact with or at risk of entering the justice system. These services work to support women to address the often complex needs that underlie their offending behaviour.
This is why, as part of the Female Offender Strategy, we have invested £5 million of funding over two years in community provision for women. This funding will help to sustain and enhance existing services, and create new services where there is currently a gap. This is in addition to the £1 million invested between 2016 and 2020 to support local areas to respond to the needs of female offenders by adopting a multi-agency approach.
Services such as women’s centres receive funding from a range of sources. We will continue to look at the scope to increase the sustainability of the sector as we take forward the delivery of the Strategy in its second year.
In the strategy we also committed to develop a ‘residential women’s centre’ pilot in at least five sites across England and Wales. The aim of the pilot will be to develop an evidence base for how we might reduce the numbers of women entering and re-entering custody for short periods. We want to make sure the models we take forward are sustainable, scalable and appropriate for the local context of each site. We have recently concluded our first phase of consultation with stakeholders, partners and providers to inform our scoping. We will continue to consult with partners as we refine the design and delivery of the pilot.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many babies were born to mothers in prison in each of the last five years.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. Information relating to births and pregnancy is recorded locally. Work is currently underway to look at what information related to pregnancy and birth can be collected centrally.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the findings of the Farmer Review, what progress his Department has made on introducing in-cell phones throughout the women’s prison estate.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Currently, HMP Eastwood Park and HMP Styal have in-cell telephones and this will be extended to HMP Newhall and HMP Foston Hall later this year. This is part of a wider rollout which will see 50 public sector prisons having in-cell telephones by March 2020. This will provide a crucial means of allowing prisoners to build and maintain family relationships, boosting their rehabilitation prospects.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that women in prison on imprisonment for public protection sentences have sentencing plans with release dates.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
It is for the independent Parole Board to review the detention of those prisoners serving an IPP sentence who have completed their tariff period. The Board will direct the release of these prisoners only if it is satisfied that the levels of risk posed to the general public are reduced enough that the National Probation Service and its partner agencies can safely manage them in the community under supervision. Therefore, whilst every female prisoner serving the IPP sentence should have a sentence plan, it is not possible for an offender manager to include a release date in the sentence plan.
A range of initiatives are in place, as part of the joint action plan, co-owned by HM Prison and Probation Service and the Parole Board, which are having a positive impact on the progression of women serving an IPP sentence. The initiatives include ensuring that there is a sufficient supply of places on offending behaviour programmes, to meet the demand in prisoners’ sentence plans.
On 27 June 2018 we published our strategy for female offenders. This sets out our vision to see fewer women coming into the criminal justice system, a greater proportion managed successfully in the community, and better conditions for those in custody.
Whilst HM Prison and Probation Service is focused on giving all prisoners serving IPP sentences opportunities to progress towards release, public protection must remain our priority.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will allocate the proceeds of the sale of HMP Holloway to support the female offender strategy.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The sale of the former HMP & YOI Holloway to Peabody Estates was announced on 8 March 2019. The proceeds from the sale have been reinvested into the general custodial estate budget for the 2019/20 financial year, which will benefit both the male and female custodial estates.
The purchasers intend to include a Women’s Centre as part of their development of the Holloway site. Sustainable community provision for women is essential to delivering the vision of the female offender strategy, which was published in June 2018. Women’s centres can play an important role in helping female offenders to address their often-complex needs, and they are often at the heart of the holistic, multi-agency, whole system approach models. The Government has already invested £1 million in these models between 2016 and 2020. In addition to this, we are investing a further £5m grant funding through our female offender strategy in 2018-20, to support community provision for female offenders and women at risk of offending.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the process is by which the civil and criminal legal aid means test thresholds have been evaluated since they were last reviewed and uprated in 2008 and 2009.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The financial thresholds for civil and criminal legal aid were reviewed by MoJ Ministers in January 2010, March 2011 and March 2016, following advice from officials. Separately, the means test thresholds were reviewed at official level within MoJ in January 2012 and between October 2013 and January 2014.
The Legal Aid Means Test Review, announced by MoJ in February 2019, will be studying the thresholds for legal aid entitlement, including the effectiveness with which the means testing arrangements appropriately protect access to justice, particularly for the vulnerable. As part of the review process, we will evaluate a wide range of evidence from both within and outside of government, liaising with experts from across the field to explore any improvements to the system.
Upon conclusion of the review, expected by summer 2020, we will publish a full consultation paper setting out our future policy proposals in this area. We will seek to implement any final recommendations as soon as practicable following public consultation.
Asked by: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the cost to his Department's budget of the increased number of litigants in person as a result of the means test threshold not being uprated in line with inflation in (a) civil legal aid since 2008 and (b) criminal legal aid since 2009.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
It is not possible to estimate the cost to the Ministry of Justice of any increase in the number of litigants in person as a direct result of not uprating the legal aid means test thresholds since 2008/2009.
The Legal Support Action Plan, published in February 2019, confirmed that the Ministry of Justice will undertake a legal aid means test review which will study the thresholds for legal aid entitlement as well as the effectiveness with which the means testing arrangements appropriately protect access to justice, particularly for the vulnerable. Within this review, we will evaluate a wide range of evidence from both within and outside of government, liaising with experts from across the field to explore any improvements to the system.
The Ministry of Justice has also announced that it is doubling its funding for the Litigants in Person Support Strategy to £3 million per year for the next two years, to ensure that those representing themselves in court can access the support they need.