Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many of the 200 custodial places on the Building Better Relationships programme were filled in 2023-24.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We are unable to provide data on the number of people on probation who have been assessed as eligible for the Building Better Relationships programme (BBR) or who are waiting for a place on that programme as of 23 April 2024 without incurring disproportionate cost. We are also unable to provide the number of available places on the BBR programme for people on probation in 2024-25 without incurring disproportionate cost. This information is not collated and recorded centrally. Regions collect their own management information and waiting lists vary with average waiting times for BBR between one and five months. Each region manages their own accredited programme referrals and allocation of places is based on risk and order expiry date.
We are unable to provide data on the number of filled custodial places on the Building Better Relationships (BBR) programme in 2023-24 at this time as to do so would breach official statistics publication rules outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics as they will form a subset of future published statistics. Data for 2023-2024 will be published in the Prison Education and Accredited Programme Statistics report on 26 September 2024.
There are 210 places available on the BBR programme for people in custody for 2024-25. This is subject to review related to changes in both the demand for different programmes, and the transition to new programmes being introduced in-year.
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress he has made on developing Domestic Abuse Matters training for officers investigating domestic abuse offences.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The Domestic Abuse Matters training programme has now been delivered to over 80% of police forces to date, including Hertfordshire Police. The College of Policing guidance for the Domestic Abuse Matters training specifies 75% of all first responders to domestic abuse must be trained to effect mass behavioural change.
The Home Office has also funded the College of Policing to develop a new module of Domestic Abuse Matters training, targeted specifically at officers investigating domestic abuse offences to enable further improvement in police responses to domestic abuse incidents.
The Home Office will continue to work with the College of Policing to ensure the training reflects our most up to date understanding of domestic abuse.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to help support survivors of domestic abuse in Birmingham.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The government has taken a number of measures to support victims of domestic abuse across England and Wales. As a result of the of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and our Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan (2022) the government will invest up to £140 million in supporting victims.
Funding which may support victims in Birmingham from this plan includes, but is not limited to:
Ringfenced funding the Ministry of Justice provided to PCCs. In 2023/2024 MoJ provided £38 million for Independent Sexual Violence Advisors and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors and £21 million for community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence services.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing new policies to help improve protection for people at risk of domestic homicide in all regions.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
In the 2022 Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan the government outlined a package of measures to reduce domestic homicides and reform the Domestic Homicide Review (DHR) process.
DHRs are reviews into deaths related to domestic abuse which seek to identify what lessons can be learnt and implemented to prevent future deaths.
In June 2023, we launched the online DHR Library to help ensure police and partners have easy access to material to learn from previous homicides and prevent future deaths linked to domestic abuse.
The implementation of reforms to DHRs will improve our understanding and drive down the frequency of domestic homicides.
The Home Office also funds the collection of data on deaths related to domestic abuse through the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Domestic Homicide Project. The project brings together data and information on prior agency knowledge of victims and risk factors to improve the evidence base and subsequent policy responses for preventing domestic homicides.
To gain protection from domestic abuse a protective order can be applied for. Police can apply for a Domestic Violence Protection Order, victims can apply for a Non-Molestation Order and criminal courts can impose a Restraining Order on acquittal or conviction of a criminal offence. The introduction of the new Domestic Abuse Protection Notice and Order, will help simplify and strengthen the protection for victims avaliable, introducing new features like mandatory notification requirements and electronic monitoring (“tagging”). The new order will be piloted in Greater Manchester, the London Boroughs of Croydon, Sutton, and Bromley, and with the British Transport Police.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to (a) assess and (b) improve the effectiveness of existing legal measures designed to protect (a) minority ethnic women and (b) all people from domestic abuse.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The government has taken a number of measures to strengthen legislation and protections for victims of domestic abuse.
This includes the measures set out in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which is helping transform our response to victims and bring perpetrators to justice.
Controlling or Coercive Behaviour within an intimate or family relationship was made a criminal offence under the Serious Crime Act 2015. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 removed the requirement for the parties to be ‘living together’ for the offence to occur, meaning it applies to intimate partners, ex-partners or family members, regardless of whether the victim and perpetrator live together.
The Domestic Abuse statutory guidance contains detailed sections setting out specifically how victims from ethnic minority backgrounds may experience additional barriers to identifying, disclosing, seeking help or reporting abuse.
The government continues to offer migrant victims in the UK who have, or last had, permission to be in the UK under the family Immigration Rules to apply for access to the Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession (MVDAC).
The government will continue to work with the police and criminal justice agencies to ensure the law is used to maximum effect to protect victims of domestic abuse.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how his Department monitors compliance with bail conditions in domestic abuse cases; and what measures are in place to intervene when violations occur.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Setting and monitoring pre-charge bail conditions is a matter for policing and the Home Office does not collect data on how this is achieved. This data may be held at force level.
Where a suspect breaches their conditions, the police may arrest this individual, hold them in custody and charge them with a separate offence or progress their original case. The 2020 bail reforms introduced a 3 hour pause on the custody clock to ensure that arrests for breach of bail do not have a negative impact on the overall case.
The Home Office have recently funded the development of a new module of the ‘Domestic Abuse Matters’ training for police, developed by the College of Policing and the sector. The new module of police training is targeted specifically at officers investigating domestic abuse offences to enable further improvement in police responses to domestic abuse incidents.
Asked by: Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time was for a (a) rape, (b) murder, (c) GBH and (d) robbery trial in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We have interpreted waiting time to refer to the time between the date of sending a case to the Crown Court and the start of the substantive Crown Court hearing.
The average waiting times of defendants dealt with in rape, murder, GBH and robbery trial cases where a not guilty plea was entered in the Crown Court can be found in the below table based on published annual data from 2014 to 2023. Data prior to 2014 is not available.
While the Crown Court is still recovering from the impact of the pandemic and disruptive action from the Bar, which reduced our ability to hear cases swiftly, the latest published statistics show that the median age of cases that are outstanding was around 6 months.
We are committed to ensuring the delivery of swift justice for all victims and have introduced a raft of measures to achieve that aim. This includes funding around 107,000 sitting days during the most recent financial year (FY23,24), recruiting up to 1,000 judges annually across all jurisdictions and investing in the continued use of 20 Nightingale courtrooms into this financial year (FY24/25) to allow the courts to work at full capacity.
Judges do prioritise cases involving vulnerable complainants and witnesses, and seek to ensure that domestic abuse, serious sexual offences and those with vulnerable witnesses are listed at the first available opportunity. The Senior Presiding Judge has also recently announced that all rape cases outstanding for more than two years at court will be listed by the end of July 2024.
Average waiting times (weeks) of defendants dealt with in rape, murder, GBH and robbery for-trial cases where a not guilty plea was entered in the Crown Court, annually, 2014 - 2023 | ||||||||
| Rape | Murder | GBH | Robbery | ||||
Year | Median | Mean | Median | Mean | Median | Mean | Median | Mean |
2014 | 27.6 | 29.5 | 25.0 | 26.3 | 26.6 | 30.1 | 23.9 | 24.5 |
2015 | 28.9 | 31.8 | 25.7 | 28.8 | 28.0 | 33.0 | 24.4 | 28.4 |
2016 | 28.0 | 30.9 | 24.3 | 23.1 | 25.9 | 33.4 | 24.0 | 27.3 |
2017 | 28.8 | 31.5 | 24.0 | 24.6 | 24.9 | 30.5 | 22.6 | 24.6 |
2018 | 29.6 | 32.9 | 23.7 | 23.7 | 24.7 | 28.9 | 22.6 | 23.4 |
2019 | 26.7 | 30.1 | 24.6 | 24.5 | 24.1 | 26.7 | 22.9 | 23.2 |
2020 | 30.6 | 32.5 | 25.5 | 28.9 | 27.0 | 31.4 | 25.4 | 27.8 |
2021 | 41.0 | 44.8 | 32.6 | 36.9 | 36.7 | 44.0 | 33.9 | 39.4 |
2022 | 39.7 | 44.4 | 33.0 | 36.6 | 35.9 | 46.7 | 32.4 | 43.1 |
2023 | 41.7 | 48.2 | 33.6 | 38.5 | 36.9 | 50.3 | 29.7 | 47.6 |
Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 11 March 2024 to Question 17238 on Migrants: Domestic Violence, for what reason his Department does not routinely publish information on the concession or immediate settlement for migrant victims of domestic abuse in a reportable format; and if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of publishing the number of individuals who have claimed indefinite leave to remain through the Destitute Domestic Violence Concession (a) in each year between 2018 and 2023 and (b) annually from 2024.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Data relating to specific concessions within the Act are not published as part of the National Statistics series. The latest quarterly Immigration Systems Statistics were published in February 2024, and include data for the period to December 2023. Table Se_04, “Grants of settlement to spouses on the basis of marriage”, is included within the Settlement summary tables: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65d8880b54f1e70011165916/settlement-summary-dec-2023-tables.xlsx.
Table Se_04 provides data on persons “Granted settlement due to domestic violence after leave to remain granted as a spouse”. The published statistics do not show how many or what proportion of these would have applied under DDVC.
There are currently no plans to publish the requested information within these tables. However, the contents of all tables are regularly reviewed to ensure they are appropriate and meet the requirements of users.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he (a) is taking and (b) plans to take steps to assess the efficacy of restraining orders in preventing repeat incidents of domestic violence (i) in minority ethnic communities and (ii) generally.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Restraining orders play an important role in ensuring that victims are appropriately protected, and feel safer, particularly within the context of repeated and/or escalating behaviour that disproportionately impacts women and girls, such as domestic abuse.
They are one of several existing protective orders that can be used in cases of domestic abuse to protect a victim, such as Non-Molestation Orders, Stalking Protection Orders, and Domestic Violence Protection Orders.
Abusers who breach restraining orders face tough penalties including jail time. Where a restraining order is breached, CPS guidance encourages prosecutors to consider whether a new course of conduct is present and, if so, to ensure that it is prosecuted in addition to the breach in question.
Safeguarding victims of all crimes, and particularly from those such as domestic abuse is a priority for this Government. That is why we are going further to protect victims of domestic abuse by piloting a new Domestic Abuse Protection Order from Spring 2024 which will give courts the power to impose exclusion zones, curfews, and electronic monitoring tags on abusers. The order will be independently evaluated to understand its effectiveness in protecting all victims.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will provide additional funding for charities that support women who are victims of domestic violence.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Through the Safer Streets and Safety of Women at Night Funds, the Home Office has invested over £150 million to deliver interventions to tackle violence against women and girls, anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood crime.
In 2023/24, the Ministry of Justice provided £21 million for community-based serious violence and domestic abuse services, and £38 million for Independent Sexual Violence Advisors and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors posts. In all, the Ministry of Justice is quadrupling funding for victim and witness support services by 2024/25, up from £41 million in 2009/10.
And at Autumn Statement 2023, the government announced £10 million of additional funding available in 2024/25 for projects that aim to understand the impacts of domestic abuse on the labour market, support victims of domestic abuse in the workplace or prevent victims experiencing further abuse.