Asked by: Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of sobriety tagging schemes.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
In advance of legislating for the introduction of the Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement (AAMR) for community based sentences to tackle alcohol related offending, the Government contributed to funding for two pilots to ensure robust evaluation of the effectiveness of the measure. The pilots were carried out in London and in the North East of England and findings informed the introduction of AAMR in 2020. AAMR enables courts to impose an alcohol ban of up to 120 days on adult offenders who are not alcohol dependent, compliance is monitored using an alcohol tag.
Alcohol monitoring on licence was introduced in 2021 and enables probation to include an additional licence condition banning or restricting the consumption of alcohol, where a criminogenic need related to alcohol misuse is identified as an increase to risk. Funding has been allocated for evaluation of the processes, impact and value for money. A process and interim impact evaluation are expected to be published by the end of 2025. A full reoffending analysis and value-for-money assessment are expected by the end of 2026.
Evaluations published to date can be accessed via the links below:
MOPAC’s AAMR Final Impact Evaluation Report, December 2020 - aamr_final_impact_report_100521.pdf (london.gov.uk).
Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement: A review of process and performance from Year 2, July 2018 - aamr_final_process_performance_y2_report_final.pdf (london.gov.uk).
Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement The pan London roll out: A review of process and performance from year 1, July 2017 - AAMR Interim Report (london.gov.uk).
Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement: South London Pilot Indicative Impact Report, April 2017 - Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement (london.gov.uk).
HNLY Pilot Process Evaluation Report, October 2019 - Evaluation-of-the-AAMR-tagging-pilot.pdf (northyorkshire-pfcc.gov.uk).
The AAMR pilot in the North-East focused on domestic abuse perpetrators, the process evaluation shows that 31% of wearers were convicted of a domestic violence offence. Compliance with the alcohol ban shows that the devices did not register a tamper or alcohol alert on 97.4% of the days worn. The impact evaluation (including for reoffending) is underway for this pilot and is also intended to be published.
The evaluations to date and published statistics have shown a strong uptake of alcohol monitoring by courts and probation. The number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring (AM) device as at 31 March 2024 was 2,862, a 27% increase over the previous 12 months. There were 12,506 new alcohol monitoring orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2024. Overall, 24,305 new alcohol monitoring orders have been imposed since their introduction against an ambition of 12,000 by 2025 and compliance with the alcohol ban has remained consistent at over 97% for the total of days monitored. Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, March 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the success of sobriety tagging schemes, particularly for those convicted of serious assaults or domestic violence where alcohol was a factor.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
In advance of legislating for the introduction of the Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement (AAMR) for community based sentences to tackle alcohol related offending, the Government contributed to funding for two pilots to ensure robust evaluation of the effectiveness of the measure. The pilots were carried out in London and in the North East of England and findings informed the introduction of AAMR in 2020. AAMR enables courts to impose an alcohol ban of up to 120 days on adult offenders who are not alcohol dependent, compliance is monitored using an alcohol tag.
Alcohol monitoring on licence was introduced in 2021 and enables probation to include an additional licence condition banning or restricting the consumption of alcohol, where a criminogenic need related to alcohol misuse is identified as an increase to risk. Funding has been allocated for evaluation of the processes, impact and value for money. A process and interim impact evaluation are expected to be published by the end of 2025. A full reoffending analysis and value-for-money assessment are expected by the end of 2026.
Evaluations published to date can be accessed via the links below:
MOPAC’s AAMR Final Impact Evaluation Report, December 2020 - aamr_final_impact_report_100521.pdf (london.gov.uk).
Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement: A review of process and performance from Year 2, July 2018 - aamr_final_process_performance_y2_report_final.pdf (london.gov.uk).
Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement The pan London roll out: A review of process and performance from year 1, July 2017 - AAMR Interim Report (london.gov.uk).
Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement: South London Pilot Indicative Impact Report, April 2017 - Alcohol Abstinence Monitoring Requirement (london.gov.uk).
HNLY Pilot Process Evaluation Report, October 2019 - Evaluation-of-the-AAMR-tagging-pilot.pdf (northyorkshire-pfcc.gov.uk).
The AAMR pilot in the North-East focused on domestic abuse perpetrators, the process evaluation shows that 31% of wearers were convicted of a domestic violence offence. Compliance with the alcohol ban shows that the devices did not register a tamper or alcohol alert on 97.4% of the days worn. The impact evaluation (including for reoffending) is underway for this pilot and is also intended to be published.
The evaluations to date and published statistics have shown a strong uptake of alcohol monitoring by courts and probation. The number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring (AM) device as at 31 March 2024 was 2,862, a 27% increase over the previous 12 months. There were 12,506 new alcohol monitoring orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2024. Overall, 24,305 new alcohol monitoring orders have been imposed since their introduction against an ambition of 12,000 by 2025 and compliance with the alcohol ban has remained consistent at over 97% for the total of days monitored. Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, March 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Simon Jupp (Conservative - East Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help tackle violence against women and girls in East Devon constituency.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
It is difficult to determine the specific activity to tackle violence against women in the East Devon constituency as services are mostly commissioned at a national level, and not monitored by the Home Office by constituency.
To help support local service commissioners, we published a revised National Statement of Expectations in March 2022, which sets out how local areas should commission effective services. It also aims to increase understanding of the need for specialist services and the value of those designed and delivered by and for the users and communities they aim to serve.
As part of the effort to tackle these crimes across England and Wales, in 2021 we published our cross-Government Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy to help ensure that women and girls are safe everywhere - at home, online, at work and in public. This was followed by a complementary cross-Government Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan in 2022.
These documents aim to transform the whole of society’s response to these crimes with actions to prevent abuse, support victims and pursue perpetrators, as well as to strengthen the systems that underpin the response. The actions set out in both strategy documents benefit all regions across England and Wales, including East Devon.
The Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan committed to over £230 million from 2022-2025. As part of this commitment, the joint Home Office-Ministry of Justice VAWG Support and Specialist Service Fund will provide up to £8.3 million (in total) from 2023-2025 for specialist organisations to support victims often facing the greatest barriers to getting the help they need.
The Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan funding also includes the Children Affected by Domestic Abuse (CADA) Fund, which allocated £10.3 million over three years (2022-2025) to eight organisations across England and Wales to provide specialist support within the community to children who have been impacted by domestic abuse. Part of this includes c.£1.25m for the Children’s Society to provide direct support for children and young people and families, including those from rural and hard to reach communities, covering Devon, Shropshire, Rochdale and Merseyside.
In May 2023, the Home Office also launched a £300,000 ‘flexible fund’ trial in partnership with Women’s Aid Federation for England to make direct cash payments of £250 to victims and survivors of domestic abuse (£500 to those with children and those who are pregnant) to help remove barriers to leaving an abusive relationship. In November 2023, the Government commitment to support victims was renewed with a further £2m investment into the Flexible Fund until March 2025.
Through the current Round Five of the Safer Streets Fund, the Home Office has directly awarded £34 million to Police and Crime Commissioners across England and Wales to deliver interventions to tackle neighbourhood crime, anti-social behaviour and VAWG. Devon and Cornwall received £819,998.64 (2024-2025) to support projects covering Paignton, Camborne and Redruth and are delivering educational training packages such as bystander training to help address behaviour and attitudes on VAWG and using night-time economy marshalls for patrols in the town centres.
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: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to tackle violence and sexual offences in Preston.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
As part of steps taken through our Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, we are tackling perpetrators and supporting victims.
We have provided funding to the Lancashire PCC to roll out the Drive Project, which focuses on the most serious domestic abuse offenders to prevent them from abusing again, and funded Preston based Saraha to provide bilingual, comprehensive, face-to-face support service for women from black and minority ethnic backgrounds who are victims of domestic abuse.
Nationally, we have invested £9.4 million to develop a New Operation Model for the investigation of rape through Operation Soteria. This ensures investigations are suspect based. All police forces in England and Wales are now implementing this new approach to rape investigations and we have provided £8.5m in 2023/24 to continue to support policing to improve their response to rape.
Through the Safer Streets and Safety of Women at Night Funds, we have invested over £150 million to deliver interventions to tackle violence against women, anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood crime.
This includes just over £3.4m for Lancashire, of which £146,568 has been awarded to Preston City Council to fund interventions such as the installation of CCTV, the deployment of taxi stewards and night-time economy sector training, along with improvements to accommodation for services assisting women at risk and recovery services for victims of sexual violence.
Since 2019, the Home Office has provided over £8m for a Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in Lancashire. VRUs bring together local partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their area, including sexual abuse and domestic abuse.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the statement entitled Domestic Abuse Commissioner responds to Criminal Justice reforms in the King’s Speech, published on 7 November 2023, what plans he has to bring forward legislative proposals to ensure perpetrators of domestic abuse can be removed from the police force and police staff as well as changes to police regulations to remove warrant cards from police officers under investigation for violence against women and girls offences.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Existing Regulations provide Chief Constables with a power to suspend officers under investigation, including where it is in the public interest to do so.
In February, Government announced that it will legislate for automatic suspension in cases where an officer is charged with an indictable only offence, and a presumption of suspension where an officer is charged with an either way offence. When suspended, an officer is suspended from the Office of Constable and its associated powers. Forces should remove officers’ warrant cards from them where this happens.
The Government is further introducing measures to strengthen the system for removing officers who are not fit to serve. These include a presumption of dismissal where officers are found to have committed gross misconduct and a clarified route to remove officers who fail to hold and maintain vetting.
Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department plans to provide funding to Women's Aid in the next three financial years.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Tackling violence against women and girls is a government priority. Our strategies aim to transform the whole of society’s response to these crimes with actions to prevent abuse, support victims and ensure more perpetrators are bought to justice.
The Home Office has provided funding to Women’s Aid of up to £1.34m until March 2025 to deliver the Flexible Fund. This fund will help hundreds of domestic abuse victims next year who will receive lifeline payments to help escape tormenting and often life-threatening abuse, providing the chance to rebuild their lives. We are also investing £753k into Women’s Aid next year to improve the awareness of domestic abuse amongst young people.
Funding beyond March 2025 is subject to future budgets which will be set through the next Spending Review process.
Asked by: Peter Gibson (Conservative - Darlington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that providers of NHS services are protecting the whereabouts of domestic abuse victims from perpetrators.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are security and legislative protections in place to protect patient data, and ensure data is used across the health and social care system in a safe, secure, and legal way. This includes data protection rules which prevent National Health Service employees from disclosing addresses of victims of domestic abuse.
Each organisation’s terms and conditions of employment include strict guidelines on how staff handle and protect patients’ information. Staff must also be regularly trained in information governance responsibilities. Professional bodies such as the General Medical Council also set out standards which their members must meet.
General practices have two options if they are worried that having access to their record might cause harm to a patient or another individual. They can either redact specific items on the record, or disable patient access entirely.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the document entitled Qualified legal representative appointed by the Court: Statutory guidance, published in July 2022, how many qualified legal representatives have been registered in (a) family and (b) other civil cases since the publication of that guidance.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The Qualified Legal Representative (QLR) scheme was introduced in July 2022, following the Government’s Domestic Abuse Act (2021) which prohibited unrepresented perpetrators or alleged perpetrators of abuse from cross-examining their victims or alleged victims in family and civil proceedings, and vice versa. The prohibition ensures that vulnerable victims and witnesses are not traumatised by being cross-examined directly by their alleged perpetrator.
As of 20 March 2024, there are currently 366 QLRs registered to undertake work in the family courts and 78 QLRs registered to undertake work in the civil courts. We do not hold central data on total registrations since the publication of the statutory guidance.
Circumstances under which a QLR is required vary, for example, depending on whether parties have their own representation, and decisions on which cases require QLRs are taken by the courts. We do not collect data centrally on how many cases have required a QLR, or the number of QLRs that have presented cases under the scheme.
We do not hold central data on how many QLRs have completed training, which they are able to access from a range of external providers. The Government encourages legal professionals to take up this important work to assist in both the family and civil courts, and to complete the required training as early as practicable.
Asked by: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in how many cases a qualified legal representative was (a) required and (b) available.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The Qualified Legal Representative (QLR) scheme was introduced in July 2022, following the Government’s Domestic Abuse Act (2021) which prohibited unrepresented perpetrators or alleged perpetrators of abuse from cross-examining their victims or alleged victims in family and civil proceedings, and vice versa. The prohibition ensures that vulnerable victims and witnesses are not traumatised by being cross-examined directly by their alleged perpetrator.
As of 20 March 2024, there are currently 366 QLRs registered to undertake work in the family courts and 78 QLRs registered to undertake work in the civil courts. We do not hold central data on total registrations since the publication of the statutory guidance.
Circumstances under which a QLR is required vary, for example, depending on whether parties have their own representation, and decisions on which cases require QLRs are taken by the courts. We do not collect data centrally on how many cases have required a QLR, or the number of QLRs that have presented cases under the scheme.
We do not hold central data on how many QLRs have completed training, which they are able to access from a range of external providers. The Government encourages legal professionals to take up this important work to assist in both the family and civil courts, and to complete the required training as early as practicable.