Asked by: Lord Berkeley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, for each of the last five calendar years, how many appeals have been made against magistrates' court decisions which have rejected defendants' claims of exceptional hardship in proceedings concerning drivers liable to disqualification under the totting-up provisions; and how many of those appeals were successful.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly data on appeals against magistrates’ court decisions heard in the Crown Court in the Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly release which can be downloaded from the Criminal Court Statistics landing page here: Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK. Table C11 provides details of appeals heard at the Crown Court.
However, data is not centrally recorded on the specific grounds of appeal, including whether an appeal relates to the rejection of an exceptional hardship argument in proceedings concerning drivers liable to disqualification under the totting-up provisions.
This information may be contained within individual court records. However, identifying and reviewing relevant cases would require a manual examination of those records and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Lord Pickles (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of appeals against education, health and care plan decisions were successful in each of the last five years.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Year | Decisions Heard | In Favour | Upheld | %age | |||
2021 | 3662 | 3597 | 65 | 98.23 | |||
2022 | 4112 | 4041 | 71 | 98.27 | |||
2023 | 5696 | 5626 | 70 | 98.77 | |||
2024 | 8451 | 8383 | 68 | 99.20 | |||
2025 | 9942 | 9883 | 59 | 99.41 | |||
The data has been taken from the local management information system with financial year set as April to March. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that are available. For this reason, the appeals shown in the above table may not match published totals. Data does not include refusals to make a plan, as that is the step before deciding the content of a plan.
Asked by: Lord Garnier (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of changes to jury trials in the Courts and Tribunals Bill on (1) the Crown Court backlog, and (2) the rule of law.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Impact Assessment for the Courts and Tribunals Bill shows that the structural reform package in the Bill is expected to reduce incoming demand on the Crown Court by almost 20%. It also shows that reforms will support the rule of law by improving access to justice through increased case disposals, strengthening confidence in legal institutions, and supporting a more effective and resilient justice system.
The Impact Assessment can be found, attached.
Asked by: Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to monitor the safety of release provisions in place for offenders serving custodial sentences for (a) domestic abuse-related offences, (b) sexual offences and (c) child sexual offences who are eligible for early release.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This Government is committed to strengthening public protection and ensuring the Probation Service has the tools and capacity it needs to keep communities safe and protect victims. We are investing £700m into probation and community services, recruiting 1,300 additional probation officers this year, and ensuring every prison leaver is tagged unless there is clear reason not to. We are delivering the biggest expansion of tagging in history, with thousands of offenders having their every movement tracked as well as investing £100m to expand our ability to monitor even more individuals in the community. These changes will significantly strengthen probation’s ability to monitor offenders in real time and intervene quickly where risk escalates or conditions are breached.
We are ensuring there is a robust regime of controls and punishment outside of prison, offenders may be controlled by a range of measures. This includes curfews, exclusion zones, requirements to live in a different part of the country to their victim, bans from spaces such as sport matches and pubs. This is designed to manage risk and restrict offenders’ movements as necessary.
Probation will apply additional licence conditions where appropriate to address the specific risks an offender presents – including victim-related conditions such as exclusion zones and no-contact requirements. We are also introducing tough new Restriction Zones which will restrict the movements of the most serious sexual and violent offenders to specific geographical areas where appropriate, so their victims know they are safe wherever else they want to go. These will be robustly monitored by electronic monitoring and provide probation with greater visibility of offenders’ movements and strengthen their ability to identify and respond to breaches at an early stage. Victims who are eligible and opted into the Victim Contact Scheme will be notified of an offender’s release, in line with existing practice and will continue to be able to make representations for licence conditions.
From September 2026, we are expanding the Domestic Abuse Perpetrators on Licence (DAPOL) scheme from 8 probation regions to all 12 across England and Wales from September 2026. This will give probation staff a greater ability to track hundreds of prison leavers who pose a threat to a former partner or their children.
We are also introducing Electronic Monitoring Data Insight (EMDI), a new tool allowing probation practitioners near real-time access to electronic monitoring information and GPS trail maps. This will help practitioners monitor compliance with licence conditions, identify emerging risks more quickly and make better-informed decisions and make better-informed decisions to support public protection.
We are extending and expanding a feasibility pilot in the South West of England to the North West and North East NHS regions pilot on the use of Medication to Manage Problematic Sexual Arousal (MMPSA) for sex offenders, which marks a vital first step towards a national rollout and is a wider intervention probation can use. We are also exploring the feasibility of mandatory or incentivised treatment.
Our CAS 1 provision, also known as Approved Premises, accommodates higher-risk prison leavers and people on probation. Approved Premises are temporary accommodation for public protection purposes in the community and are staffed 24 hours a day, operate a curfew, carry out mandatory drug testing, closely monitor licence conditions, and are covered by CCTV across all sites. They provide a high level of supervision in a controlled environment and are closely integrated with Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). This will allow continuous monitoring of the highest risk offenders as they transition from custody to the community.
Probation has a broad range of tools available when setting conditions or managing offenders safely in the community. These will be dependent on the specific risks posed by each offender and not all measures will be applied in every case. All offenders will remain on licence to the end of their sentence and where an offender breaches their licence conditions, probation have a full suite of options for managing this, including recall to prison.
All Ministry of Justice policies are routinely kept under review and statistics relevant to core policies will be published in the usual way to support public scrutiny.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to fast-track immigration and deportation cases in which offenders have prolonged proceedings through appeals lasting more than three years.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice is only able to collect data on the timeliness of appeals; it does not record or hold information related to an appellant’s previous convictions or offending, or how long the overall deportation process takes.
We have taken steps to speed up appeals brought by Foreign National Offenders (FNOs). The latest figures show that, in 2025/26, the average time taken from receipt to disposal was 36 weeks for Detained HM Prison appeals and 16 weeks for Detained Immigration Removal Centre appeals, compared with 43 weeks and 20 weeks respectively in 2023/24 (Source: DIA_dataset_2025-26_Q4.ods). Further, we will shortly commence the 24-week statutory timeframe for appeals from those in supported accommodation and non-detained FNOs liable to deportation, as legislated in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025.
Since the July 2024 election, there have been 9,805 removals of FNOs, to end of March 2026. This is 36% up on the 7,185 returns from the previous 21 months from October 2022 to June 2024.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average tribunal waiting time is for the deportation of foreign national child sex offenders whose criminal sentences have fully expired.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice is only able to collect data on the timeliness of appeals; it does not record or hold information related to an appellant’s previous convictions or offending, or how long the overall deportation process takes.
We have taken steps to speed up appeals brought by Foreign National Offenders (FNOs). The latest figures show that, in 2025/26, the average time taken from receipt to disposal was 36 weeks for Detained HM Prison appeals and 16 weeks for Detained Immigration Removal Centre appeals, compared with 43 weeks and 20 weeks respectively in 2023/24 (Source: DIA_dataset_2025-26_Q4.ods). Further, we will shortly commence the 24-week statutory timeframe for appeals from those in supported accommodation and non-detained FNOs liable to deportation, as legislated in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025.
Since the July 2024 election, there have been 9,805 removals of FNOs, to end of March 2026. This is 36% up on the 7,185 returns from the previous 21 months from October 2022 to June 2024.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many children aged 10 to 13 have been convicted of (1) common assault, (2) actual bodily harm, (3) inflicting grievous bodily harm, and (4) causing grievous bodily harm with intent, in each of the past five years.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on convictions for a wide range of offences by age in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
The requested information is provided in the below tables.
Total number of 10 to 13 year olds convicted of certain offences at criminal courts, England and Wales, 2021 to 2025 [note 1][note 2][note 3]
Source: Court Proceedings Database
Offence | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
Rape | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
Sexual Assault (includes penetration and non penetration) | 5 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 1 |
Sexual Assault With Penetration | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Exposure | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Offence | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
Grievous Bodily Harm | 5 | 11 | 20 | 18 | 11 |
Actual Bodily Harm | 5 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 11 |
Common Assault | 0 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 11 |
Notes
Note 1
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.
Note 2
These figures are presented on a principal offence basis - i.e. reporting information relating to the most serious offence that a defendant was dealt with for. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.
Note 3
Only rows with non-zero values within the specified time period will appear in the table.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many children aged 10 to 13 have been convicted of (1) rape, (2) sexual assault, (3) assault by penetration, and (4) exposure, in each of the past five years.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on convictions for a wide range of offences by age in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
The requested information is provided in the below tables.
Total number of 10 to 13 year olds convicted of certain offences at criminal courts, England and Wales, 2021 to 2025 [note 1][note 2][note 3]
Source: Court Proceedings Database
Offence | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
Rape | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
Sexual Assault (includes penetration and non penetration) | 5 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 1 |
Sexual Assault With Penetration | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Exposure | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Offence | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
Grievous Bodily Harm | 5 | 11 | 20 | 18 | 11 |
Actual Bodily Harm | 5 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 11 |
Common Assault | 0 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 11 |
Notes
Note 1
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.
Note 2
These figures are presented on a principal offence basis - i.e. reporting information relating to the most serious offence that a defendant was dealt with for. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.
Note 3
Only rows with non-zero values within the specified time period will appear in the table.
Asked by: Allison Gardner (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what engagement his department has undertaken with survivors of sexual violence, during the formulation of the early release scheme as part of the Sentencing Act 2026.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Alongside our record prison building programme, our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will help prevent the catastrophic consequences of prisons running out of space. Without intervention, police could be forced to halt arrests, placing unacceptable pressures on the criminal justice system. Keeping prison capacity available for arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment is essential to protecting the public and the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send offenders to custody. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.
The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences. Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like Extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now. Once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community. Offenders released on licence can be recalled if they breach their conditions or if they cannot be safely managed in the community.
The Government recognises the devastating impact of sexual offending on victims and survivors. Ministers regularly engage with victims and the victims’ sector to inform relevant areas of policy. During the development of the reforms in the Sentencing Act 2026, Ministers and policy officials met with victims’ stakeholders through a range of individual meetings, roundtables and sector-wide engagement groups. We remain committed to continuing to engage with the victim sector to monitor the impact of these changes.
Asked by: Allison Gardner (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what consideration has been made to exempt sexual offenders from eligibility for early release.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Alongside our record prison building programme, our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will help prevent the catastrophic consequences of prisons running out of space. Without intervention, police could be forced to halt arrests, placing unacceptable pressures on the criminal justice system. Keeping prison capacity available for arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment is essential to protecting the public and the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send offenders to custody. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.
The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences. Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like Extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now. Once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community. Offenders released on licence can be recalled if they breach their conditions or if they cannot be safely managed in the community.
The Government recognises the devastating impact of sexual offending on victims and survivors. Ministers regularly engage with victims and the victims’ sector to inform relevant areas of policy. During the development of the reforms in the Sentencing Act 2026, Ministers and policy officials met with victims’ stakeholders through a range of individual meetings, roundtables and sector-wide engagement groups. We remain committed to continuing to engage with the victim sector to monitor the impact of these changes.