Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign nationals held in the prison estate have previously been detained after conviction.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. This is because it would require data linking between prison data and the Ministry of Justice extract of the police national computer.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will publish a breakdown of offences committed by foreign nationals held in the prison estate.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The requested information can be found in the attached spreadsheet.
The removal of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) is a Government priority and my department continues to work closely with the Home Office to maximise the number of deportations.
Published figures show that FNO returns have increased following the pandemic, in the latest 12-month period (ending December 2023) by 27% when compared to the previous 12-month period. Between January 2019 and December 2023 17,795 FNOs have been removed.
The proportion of FNOs held in custody is 12% of the total prison population and has remained stable in recent years while the overall prison population has grown.
On 11 March, the Government set out a plan to increase the number of FNOs removed through:
These actions build on our expansion of the Early Removal Scheme to allow for removal of FNOs up to 18 months before the end of the custodial element of their sentence, and expediting prisoner transfers with priority countries such as Albania and seeking to conclude new transfer agreements with partner countries.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign nationals are held in the prison estate by nationality.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Data on how many Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) are held in custody are published in Offender Management Statistics Quarterly: Offender management statistics quarterly: July to September 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). For data on the prison population by nationality, see prison population table 1_7.
The latest published data from 31 December 2023 shows that there were 10,423 (3,333 remand, 6,697 sentenced and 393 non-criminal) FNOs held in custody; representing 12% of the total prison population. The most common nationalities after British Nationals in prisons are Albanian (13% of the FNO prison population), Polish (9%), Romanian (7%), Irish (6%) and Jamaican (4%).
The removal of FNOs is a Government priority and my department continues to work closely with the Home Office to maximise the number of deportations.
Published figures show that FNO returns have increased following the pandemic, in the latest 12-month period (ending December 2023) by 27% when compared to the previous 12-month period. Between January 2019 and December 2023 17,795 FNOs have been removed.
The proportion of FNOs held in custody is 12% of the total prison population and has remained stable in recent years while the overall prison population has grown.
On 11 March, the Government set out a plan to increase the number of FNOs removed through:
These actions build on our expansion of the Early Removal Scheme to allow for removal of FNOs up to 18 months before the end of the custodial element of their sentence, and expediting prisoner transfers with priority countries such as Albania and seeking to conclude new transfer agreements with partner countries.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many children have been subject to a special guardianship order in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government does not collect figures in relation to how many children are subject to a special guardianship order at any one time.
However, the following table extracted from the publicly available Family Court Statistics Quarterly figures provides details on the number of children involved in orders from 2013 until 2022. Data for public law cases in 2022 has not been published due to data issues resulting from the reform of public law services.
The number of these orders has remained relatively stable over that period.
Year | Public Law | Private Law | Total |
2013 | 4,923 | 1,863 | 6,786 |
2014 | 4,852 | 1,944 | 6,796 |
2015 | 5,514 | 1,949 | 7,463 |
2016 | 5,668 | 1,812 | 7,480 |
2017 | 5,758 | 1,581 | 7,339 |
2018 | 5,920 | 1,501 | 7,421 |
2019 | 5,835 | 1,544 | 7,379 |
2020 | 5,268 | 1,196 | 6,464 |
2021 | 6,124 | 1,293 | 7,417 |
2022 | * | 1,184 | * |
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he plans to enact section 4 of the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Work to publish the response to the 2019 consultation on coronial investigations of stillbirths was paused during the pandemic, and since then the landscape of maternity investigations has changed significantly.
The findings of the consultation were complex, and it is imperative that they are carefully considered when deciding whether the coronial jurisdiction should be extended to include the investigation of stillbirths.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate his Department has made of the current average processing time for probate cases; and what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Despite record level of receipts during January to March 2023, the average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required, is 9 weeks.
HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand following an increased number of estates requiring probate and these resources are focussed on increasing outputs to reduce overall timeliness on all types of applications.
Average waiting times for probate grants, are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to March 2023.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will place in the Library a copy of the inclusivity induction pack provided to all new employees in his Department.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
There is no single departmental inclusivity induction pack provided to all new employees.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) regularly host a corporate induction workshop which all new starters can attend, and information about induction into the MoJ is made available on the MoJ Intranet. This is supplemented with the online Civil Service Expectations training which includes specific learning outcomes relating to diversity and inclusion.
In addition, all new employees receive an induction through their individual business areas where induction products are tailored to their delivery model.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to ensure that data collected by (a) his Department and (b) his Department’s associated arms-length bodies records biological sex as opposed to gender identity.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
To provide a response Ministry of Justice officials would need to ascertain the facts in relation to all steps taken to ensure that data is recorded as biological sex in MoJ HQ and its 34 public bodies, which could only be done at disproportionate cost to the department.
The scope of this question covers MoJ and its 34 public bodies. All ALBs do not use the same systems to record biological sex information and it is not known what steps are taken in each ALB to ensure biological sex is recorded, as opposed to gender identity, because this information is not held centrally.
To reach a factual conclusion each ALB would need to be investigated to identify and extract all information pertaining to all steps taken to ensure that data collected records biological sex as opposed to gender identity across all records.
However, I can confirm that our policy concerning prisons is that transgender prisoners are allocated based on legal gender rather than self-declared gender identity. HMPPS also records the transgender status of every transgender prisoner, meaning that for each we know both their biological sex and their gender identity.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Albanian nationals have voluntarily been transferred from UK prisons to detention in Albania in the last year.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
More than 10,000 foreign national offenders have been returned to their home countries in the last three years.
The Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Albania. This agreement came into force in May 2022. We are working closely with our counterparts in Albania to begin transferring prisoners – with or without the offender’s consent – as soon as possible, as outlined in our new bilateral prisoner transfer agreement.
Justice is a devolved matter in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Scottish Prison Service (SPS), an agency of the Scottish Government, operates Scottish prisons. Similarly, the Northern Ireland Prison Service is responsible for the management of prisons in Northern Ireland. The MoJ therefore does not hold this information in relation to prisoners in Scottish or Northern Irish prisons.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many overseas nationals are imprisoned in the UK by nationality.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The information requested, in relation to England and Wales, can be found in Table 1.7 at the following link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1113584/Population_30Sep2022.ods.
The table provides information in relation to all prisoners in England and Wales, and to foreign nationals held in prison in England and Wales, as of 30 September 2022, the latest publication of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly.