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  • Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much the Government has paid in compensation claims for injuries while in custody in the last two years.

    Andrew Selous

    From 2005 to 2010 approximately £7.69m was paid in compensation to prisoners as a result of injuries sustained whilst in custody. In 2010 to 2015 this fell by 21.1% to £6.07m, with £0.68m paid in 2013/14 and £1.2m in 2014/15 respectively.

    NOMS robustly defend all claims brought and successfully defended two thirds of total claims brought by prisoners. An audit of all concluded personal injury claims submitted to the Prison Service over the course of a year is underway as part of a drive to identify opportunities to cut payouts and legal costs.

    The data relates to claims cases settled out of Court and those lost at Court. It is drawn from information available on a National Offender Management Service database. As with any large scale recording system, it is subject to possible error in data entry and processing.

  • Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been charged with trying to escape from a prison van in each of the last five years; and how many such people have avoided recapture.

    Andrew Selous

    The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) does not hold data about the number of people charged with trying to escape from vehicles operated by NOMS or by contractors.

    NOMS has implemented a range of measures in recent years to improve the security surrounding prisoners on escort. Between 2010-11 and 2014-15, 23 prisoners escaped from vehicles operated by NOMS or by contractors. All were re-captured.

    Overall, the number of escapes from prison escorts almost halved from 102 between 2005-06 and 2009-10, to 59 between 2010-11 and 2014-15.

    The table below gives the numbers and details of the escapes for each of these years.

    Escapes from escorts while entering or leaving vehicles1 or en route to or from venue

    Response

    2010/11

    2011/12

    2012/13

    2013/14

    2014/15

    ENTERING VEHICLE

    0

    0

    0

    2

    2

    LEAVING VEHICLE

    0

    1

    1

    1

    0

    VEHICLE EN ROUTE FROM VENUE

    0

    2

    0

    1

    0

    VEHICLE EN ROUTE TO VENUE

    1

    6

    1

    3

    2

    TOTAL

    1

    9

    2

    7

    4

    (1) Vehicles primarily refer to prison vans used for escorting prisoner but do include other vehicle types

    The table below provides information about escapes which have taken place from prison escort and private escort contractors from 2005/06 to 2014/15. The table includes escapes from courts but not those escapes of less than 15 minutes’ duration and covers the full duration of the escort process.

    KPI Escapes1 from Prison Escort2 and from Private Escort Contractors (PECS)3 from 2005/06 to 2014/15

    2005 /06

    2006 /07

    2007 /08

    2008 /09

    2009 /10

    2010 /11

    2011 /12

    2012 /13

    2013 /14

    2014 /15

    KPI Prison Escorts Escapes

    8

    6

    2

    4

    3

    1

    2

    0

    2

    1

    KPI Contracted Out Escort (PECS) Escapes

    17

    19

    16

    15

    12

    10

    13

    9

    9

    12

    KPI Category A Escapes during Escort

    –

    –

    –

    –

    –

    –

    1

    –

    –

    –

    1) The definition of a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Escape if (i) the prisoner is at liberty for 15 minutes or more before recapture or (ii) a prisoner escapes and is charged with another criminal offence.

    2) Escaping the control of escorting prison service staff.

    3) Escapes from the secure vehicles or supervision of contracted prison escorts. This includes escapes from court where contracted prison escort staff have been notified.

    “

  • Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many settlements his Department estimates have been affected by errors on his Department’s Form E divorce form.

    Mr Shailesh Vara

    An investigation into this issue is taking place. Officials are taking steps to identify rapidly cases where the regrettable error caused by the embedded calculator at table 2.20 may have had an impact, and we will be writing to anyone affected as soon as possible. Anyone concerned about their own court proceedings should contact formE@hmcts.gsi.gov.uk. The form now online no longer contains the error.

    “

  • Liz Kendall – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Liz Kendall – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Kendall on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people of each gender work in his Department.

    Mike Penning

    The Department publishes diversity report which contains workforce data broken down by gender on an annual basis. The last published report for 2013/2014 can be found at the following link:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/diversity-report-2013-to-2014

    “

  • Andrew Stephenson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andrew Stephenson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of levels of computer literacy among prison staff.

    Andrew Selous

    All staff who are required to use computers as part of their day-to-day duties will receive formal training in the use of specific software or programmes during induction into their role, or as part of continuous professional development.

  • Andrew Stephenson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andrew Stephenson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much illicitly-brewed alcohol was seized in prisons in each of the last 10 years.

    Andrew Selous

    The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has in place a comprehensive range of security measures and searching techniques to detect items of contraband including alcohol, to prevent smuggling into prisons. In addition we use specially trained dogs to detect illicit alcohol.

    The table below gives the number of alcohol finds in prisons in England and Wales in the timeframe requested

    Table 1: Finds of alcohol in prisons in England and Wales, 2005 to 2014

    Year

    Number of Incidents

    2005

    172

    2006

    306

    2007

    330

    2008

    340

    2009

    468

    2010

    386

    2011

    573

    2012

    803

    2013

    875

    2014

    1090

    (1) Figures were produced by searching for the words “alcohol”, “hooch” and “fermenting liquid”.

    (2) Includes NOMS operated Immigration Removal Centres

    (3) Data in whole years only and is not yet available for 2015

    Changes were introduced to the Incident Report System in September 2015 that improved the recording of alcohol finds. Prior to these changes, alcohol related finds are recorded as a "miscellaneous" incident and requires a text search of the data. This method of extracting data requires searching for specific words and may not always identify all the related incidents. It can also identify non-related incidents which contain the words in the search. In this case I have searched for the words "alcohol", "hooch" and "fermenting liquid" in the incident text.

    All figures in this answer have been drawn from live administrative data systems which may be amended at any time.Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. The data are not subject to audit.

  • Diana Johnson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Diana Johnson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Diana Johnson on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many press and public relations staff are employed by (a) his Department, (b) HM Courts and Tribunal Service, (c) HM Prison Service, (d) the Legal Aid Agency and (e) the National Offender Management Service; how many of those employees are paid more than (i) £50,000 and (ii) £100,000; and what the total expenditure was on press and public relations by each of those organisations in the most recent year for which figures are available.

    Mike Penning

    The Ministry of Justice including the National Offender Management Service employs a total of 42 staff within the external communications division. Of those, eight are paid more than £50,000. The total spend on external communications during 2014/15 was £1,914,806.

    The total number of staff is less than that in 2009/2010 even though the function has additional responsibilities such as strategic communications, campaigns, stakeholder communications and a wider spread of digital communications activities.

    The Legal Aid Agency shares services with the Ministry of Justice, and consequently has no separate spend on press and public relations. HM Courts and Tribunals Service operate a separate press office function employing a total of 3 staff, one of which is paid more than £50,000. The total HMCTS spend 2014/15 was £161,331.

    Spend on external communications continues to fall and we will look for further savings where possible. As one of the biggest departments responsible for prisons, courts and other issues of national importance such as human rights we have a duty to explain our work to the public.

  • John Spellar – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    John Spellar – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Spellar on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he plans to announce changes to procedures to deal with motor accident claims for whiplash.

    Dominic Raab

    In his Autumn Statement the Chancellor announced further reforms to tackle the number and cost of whiplash claims. The Government will consult on the detail of these reforms in due course.

  • John Spellar – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    John Spellar – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Spellar on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when his Department last discussed votes for prisoners with the Council of Europe.

    Dominic Raab

    I visited the Council of Europe and discussed votes for prisoners on 7 December 2015. We have consistently made clear that prisoner voting is a matter for Parliament to determine. I explained at the September Committee of Ministers meeting that there was no realistic prospect of Parliament lifting the current ban for the foreseeable future.

  • Seema Kennedy – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Seema Kennedy – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Seema Kennedy on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of enforcement powers for court orders relating to child custody.

    Caroline Dinenage

    The Government has not made any recent assessment. The family court has a wide range of enforcement powers to secure compliance with a child arrangements order.

    Where a person named in a child arrangements order breaches it without good reason, the court may make an enforcement order requiring that person to carry out unpaid work. The court may also order that person to pay financial compensation for any loss suffered by another person named in the child arrangements order. These sanctions are in addition to the general powers of the court to treat the breach of a court order as a contempt of court, which is punishable by a fine or imprisonment. The court may alternatively vary the terms of the child arrangements order (reconsidering the provisions made) if it considers this necessary to make the arrangements work in the best interests of the child.