Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to help improve the inheritance rights of unmarried couples in cases were the couple where cohabiters for an extended period.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The current law allows people to make a will to set out their wishes on who should inherit their assets after their death, including cohabitees.
At present, unmarried cohabiting partners have no automatic inheritance rights under the current intestacy rules (which apply if an individual dies without a valid will). However, cohabitees may apply for family provision claims from the estate of the deceased if they cohabited with the deceased for a continuous period of at least two years, ending immediately before the death of the deceased.
The Government shares concerns about these limited existing protections for cohabiting couples. It is particularly concerning that the weakness of these protections disproportionately affects the vulnerable, including survivors of domestic and economic abuse, and women, who are often the more financially vulnerable party in a relationship.
For these reasons, the Government made a 2024 manifesto commitment to “strengthen the rights and protections available to women in cohabiting couples”. The Government is working to deliver this manifesto commitment and plans to issue a formal consultation as a next step later this year to build public consensus on what cohabitation reform should look like.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 14 September 2023 to Question 198188, whether his Department has made a further assessment of the implications for his policies of the Law Commission report entitled Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law, published in July 2022; and when his Department plans to publish a response to that report.
Answered by Mike Freer
The Government is still carefully considering the Law Commission’s 57 recommendations for weddings reform and will publish a response in due course.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department plans to implement the recommendations in the Law Commission report entitled Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law, published in July 2022.
Answered by Mike Freer
Marriage will always be one of our most important institutions, and the Government has a duty to consider the implications of any changes to the law in this area very carefully.
The Government is considering the Law Commissions’ 57 recommendations for legislative reform and a response will be published in due course.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure the safety of pregnant women in prison.
Answered by Damian Hinds
In September 2021, the Ministry of Justice published a new Policy Framework on Pregnancy, Mother and Baby Units (MBUs) and Maternal Separation from Children up to the Age of Two in Women’s Prisons. The policy set out in the Framework was developed jointly with NHS England and NHS Improvement, and as a result of extensive consultations with key stakeholders, including women with lived experience, the children’s social care sector, academics and charities.
Over £500,000 of additional funding was provided to better equip Mother and Baby Units and to support the introduction of a new liaison officer role. Pregnancy and Mother and Baby Liaison Officers have been recruited to all women’s prisons and multi-disciplinary care planning for pregnant women, based on their individual needs, is now compulsory. We have also introduced additional training for prison officers on the care of pregnant women in prison. All women are now provided with free telephone access to local NHS Pregnancy Advice Services and appropriate Social Services support: this includes any pregnant women who refuse to engage with ante-natal services.
Under the policy, care planning based on individual needs is in place for all women identified as pregnant, regardless of the level of engagement. The policy explains how prison staff should support women not engaging with services. Operational guidance that accompanies the policy highlights specific barriers to engagement and how these might present, to enable staff to identify and address complex needs and ensure access to relevant support services.
The policy can be found at the following link: Pregnancy, MBUs and maternal separation in women’s prisons Policy Framework - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, What steps his Department is taking to help ensure there are an adequate number of duty solicitors available across the criminal justice system.
Answered by Mike Freer
The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) is responsible for commissioning duty solicitor services and the day-to-day administration of the court and police station duty schemes. This includes keeping membership records, allocating slots and producing and maintaining duty solicitor rotas.
At a national level, the LAA monitors capacity across criminal legal aid contracts on an ongoing basis and, where demand is greater than the available supply, takes action to secure additional provision to ensure the continuity of legal aid-funded services.
The LAA is satisfied that there continues to be sufficient duty solicitor coverage across England and Wales. Provision under the duty schemes is demand led and so there may be variations in numbers across each local rota or other fluctuations in numbers depending on prevailing market conditions, and other internal factors such as firms merging or other consolidation activity.
More generally in relation to criminal legal aid, on 30 November 2022, the government published its full response to the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review (CLAIR) setting out various proposals to ensure the long-term sustainability of the criminal legal aid sector.
This followed the interim response to the CLAIR which introduced a 15% uplift across most fee schemes in line with the recommendations made in the Review. This funding began to come into effect from the end of September 2022, and we subsequently agreed to extend it to the majority of cases already progressing in the Crown Court. Following these reforms, an increase in expenditure of up to £141 million a year will take expected annual criminal legal aid spend to £1.2 billion.
Overall, our ambitious reforms will deliver a stronger justice system for all who rely on it. They will reinforce a more sustainable market, with publicly funded criminal defence practice seen as a viable long-term career choice befitting of our world-class legal professionals.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 14 March 2022 to Question 134064 on Rape: Victims, if he will publish guidance on the application of the right to anonymity to victims of rape in cases in which (a) the rape occurred abroad and (b) the perpetrator was (i) a non-UK citizen, (ii) a British Overseas Territories citizen, (iii) a British National (Overseas) and (iv) a British Overseas citizen.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, which makes provision for automatic reporting restrictions to protect the identity of complainants in cases of rape and other serious sexual offences, extends to the United Kingdom and does not apply to criminal proceedings overseas. Where, however, an offence of rape is alleged to have been committed abroad by a UK national (including a person holding one of the categories of citizenship listed in the Question) or by someone resident in the UK, there is the possibility of asserting extra-territorial jurisdiction and trying the case in a UK court. In cases where that is done, the reporting restrictions in the 1992 Act would apply in the usual way.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many lasting powers of attorney applications to the Office of the Public Guardian are awaiting processing as of 29 March 2023; and what steps his Department is taking to improve the processing time of those applications.
Answered by Mike Freer
As of 29 March 2023, 396,858 applications for Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPA) were at different stages of being processed (i.e. from being received via post, up to being registered and awaiting dispatch). This includes 76,361 applications in the 20-day statutory waiting period to allow any objections to be lodged. For the financial year 2022-23, up to and including the latest full month of February, 811,008 applications had already been registered and dispatched. All figures exclude the registration of Enduring Powers of Attorney which, while valid, have been replaced by LPAs since the Mental Capacity Act 2005 came into effect.
Eliminating the backlog that arose during the pandemic and responding to increased demand is a priority for the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) to enable the return to processing times achieved before the pandemic. To achieve this, extra staff have been hired, staff are working overtime and across multiple shift patterns, and process efficiencies have been introduced. The government is also supporting the Powers of Attorney Bill, which will create a faster and simpler service for customers in future.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to provide support to victims of crime.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Last May, we published our draft Victims Bill, alongside a wider package of measures to improve victims’ experience of the criminal justice system. The Bill will enshrine the overarching principles of the Victims’ Code in primary legislation; increase oversight of how criminal justice agencies treat victims; and enable improvements in the quality and consistency of support services for victims. Following the Justice Select Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny report on 19 January, we set out our intentions to strengthen the Bill. We will introduce the Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows.
In addition, we have taken strong steps to improve support for victims of rape and serious sexual assault, including:
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the impact of extending fixed recoverable costs on the legal aid sector.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
Last year, the Government spent around £1.7bn on legal aid. We are also injecting more than £10 million of increased funding a year into housing legal aid through our reforms to the Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme. We keep the impact of the extension of fixed recoverable costs on legal aid under close review and have temporarily paused the extension to legally aided housing possession cases, to allow time for improvements to provision to be implemented.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the Government is taking steps to increase funding for the legal aid sector.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
Last year, the Government spent around £1.7bn on legal aid. We are also injecting more than £10 million of increased funding a year into housing legal aid through our reforms to the Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme. We keep the impact of the extension of fixed recoverable costs on legal aid under close review and have temporarily paused the extension to legally aided housing possession cases, to allow time for improvements to provision to be implemented.