The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-28.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what costs in each category of expenditure his Department incurred in relation to the proposed tender of criminal legal aid contracts.
Mr Shailesh Vara
This information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-02-03.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many times (a) knife, (b), shiv, (c) shank, (d) chib and (e) another slang word for a blade were recorded on the Incident Report System in each prison since 2010.
Andrew Selous
The information requested could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-02-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many complaints his Department received about the standard of its recent consultation document on court closures.
Mr Shailesh Vara
There has been one complaint about the standard of the recent consultation on the provision of court and tribunal estate in England and Wales.
The complaint, received by email, was from a member of the judiciary and related to St Alban’s County Court. It noted that the consultation document was inaccurate as it stated that no enabling work was required at the receiving court, Watford County Court. On investigation, it was determined that some enabling work would be required. The written response to the complaint corrected this inaccuracy. The published consultation response document was updated to present corrected information.
During the consultation process we were notified about inaccuracies in the consultation documents. These have all been corrected in the published response documents. All decisions were based on correct information together with the careful consideration of the consultation responses.
The consultation response is available online at www.gov.uk/moj.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-02-22.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 January 2016 to Question 21315, whether the changes to the Incident Report System of September 2015 made any improvements to the recording of knife finds.
Andrew Selous
Finds of certain prohibited items in prisons, including knives, are recorded on the NOMS Incident Reporting System (IRS).
Until October 2015, any weapon in prison would be recorded under a miscellaneous incident type, and therefore would not provide consistent and complete information on weapon finds. In October 2015 we introduced a new incident type ‘Find’ on IRS, including a new category for ‘Weapons’, which means that separate data on weapons is now recorded.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-02-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average amount of time is a prisoner spends on education or work-related activities at Feltham Young Offenders Institution.
Andrew Selous
HMP&YOI Feltham is a split site which holds both young people (under 18’s) and young adults (18-20 year olds). The two cohorts are managed distinctly and there are separate education contracts and different providers for each.
The Youth Justice Board oversees the management of the education contract for young people at Feltham. Prior to August 2015, education providers were only required to deliver 15 hours of education. In August 2015, we increased the requirement for education providers in public sector Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) to 27 hours of education a week, which is supplemented by 3 hours of physical exercise.
Whist the majority of education time is protected, it is expected that young people will miss some lessons to attend appointments such as court appearances, medical appointments and legal visits.
The following table provides the average number of classroom based education hours, alternative activities hours and physical education hours per week accessed by young people at Feltham YOI since 16 August 2015.
|
Education |
Average hours per week |
|
Classroom based learning |
13.99 |
|
Alternative activities(1) |
7.72 |
|
Physical education(2) |
1.43 |
|
Total |
23.15 |
(1) Alternative activities include interventions relating to offending behaviour, focus groups, Release on Temporary licence etc.
(2) Data is from 9 October only.
This table does not include outreach education provision which is provided to young people who are not able to engage with class room based education.
The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and the Youth Justice Board are working with education providers to address delivery challenges and increase the number of education hours received by young people.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-02-29.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average amount of time was that a prisoner spent on education or work-related activities at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in the last period for which figures are available.
Andrew Selous
Our prison system needs reform. Without reform, there will be more reoffending, more crime, more victims and the public will be less safe. We want prisons to be places of hard work, rigorous education and high ambition, with incentives for prisoners to learn and for prison staff to prioritise education and work. Prison should help offenders get the skills and qualifications to make a success of life on the outside. When so many come into custody illiterate and innumerate it would be a travesty if we didn’t get them reading and writing when they are in our care.
Of the 1251 prisoners at HMP Wormwood, 665 are either remand or non-EU foreign national (FNO) prisoners. Non-EU FNO prisoners are not eligible for employment on release and therefore education funding for this cohort mainly concentrates on English as a second language and basic literacy and numeracy provision. Remand prisoners are not required to work though are able to access education if they choose to.
There are 556 activity spaces available daily at Wormwood Scrubs which involve work or education. There are a further 108 spaces related to resettlement activities or addressing reoffending needs.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-03-14.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what his policy is on treasuring commercial flights to Sharm el Sheikh.
Mr Robert Goodwill
The Government is continuing to work towards a resumption of direct flights as soon as possible.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-03-22.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will make representations to the government of Bahrain pressing for (a) the release of all people arrested in relation to peaceful protest and (b) reconsideration of the July 2014 amendments to the nationality laws in that country.
Mr Tobias Ellwood
The UK encourages Bahrain to respect the rights of all peaceful opposition figures. We call on the Bahraini government to act proportionately in all such cases to protect the universal rights of freedom of expression and assembly. We also continue to encourage the Government of Bahrain to meets its human rights obligations and honour all conventions to which it is a party – including on citizenship rights. We regularly discuss human rights with the Government of Bahrain. I most recently raised human rights with the Bahraini Ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, on 8 March.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-04-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many times Capita Translation and Interpreting has met its key performance target since it has been contracted to provide courtroom interpreting services; and how many fines that company has incurred for missing those targets over that period.
Mr Shailesh Vara
The key performance target under the Language Services contract relates to successful completion of service requests for the provision of interpreters. The contract sets out a 98% target completion rate. The success rates for the first six months of the last financial year 2015/16 are 96.4 percent (Q1) and 97.3 percent (Q2). In addition the rate of complaints over this period was at its lowest level at just over 1 per cent.
Service credits can be imposed on Capita in line with the terms of the contract when performance falls below the contractual level of 98% success rate. From the beginning of the contract in January 2012 until September 2015 Capita TI has paid Service Credits on 44 occasions.
We are absolutely committed to further improving performance to ensure a standard of language services that meets the needs of all those who use the service in the justice system.
The contract has delivered significant improvements so far and we now have a system that is robust, sustainable and able to deliver a quality service at an affordable level. Since we introduced a new interpreting contract in 2012 we have spent £38m less on language service fees.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-04-29.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have had employment tribunal fees waived or reduced in each year since the introduction of such fees.
Mr Shailesh Vara
This information is published and available within the Ministry of Justice Official Tribunal Statistics and can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.
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