Tag: Andy Slaughter

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much companies contracted by his Department to operate (a) detention centres, (b) prisons, (c) young offender institutions and (d) secure training centres have paid in fines in each of the last five years; and what the reason was for each such fine imposed.

Andrew Selous

This department does not hold information relating to (a) detention centres as these are managed by the Home Office.

Information regarding (b) prisons, (c) young offender institutions can be located in PQ answer 24385 which was answered on 4 April 2016.

Information on (d) Secure Training Centres can be located in PQ answer 26793 which was answered on 9 February 2016.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will order a serious case review of allegations of abuse at Medway Secure Training Centre.

Andrew Selous

Kent Police and Medway Council’s child protection team have launched an investigation into the allegations made about Medway Secure Training Centre (STC). It will be for the Local Safeguarding Children Board to decide whether to undertake a serious case review. The Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board will do everything we can to assist and support the investigation underway. Last week, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Ofsted have also visited the STC since the allegations were made.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison staff from which prisons were dismissed for conducting inappropriate relationships with prisoners in (a) 2010, (b) 2013, (c) 2014 and (d) 2015.

Andrew Selous

Information on the number of cases of staff dismissed for having had an inappropriate relationship with a prisoner/ ex-prisoner are set out in the table below. Information on conduct and discipline cases is published in the Ministry of Justice Diversity Report on a financial year basis and to maintain consistency with these figures the table is presented in the same way.

Table: Number of staff dismissed for having had an inappropriate relationship with a prisoner/ ex-prisoner, 2009/10 to 2014/15

Year	Number of Cases
2009/10	10
2010/11	20
2011/12	10
2012/13	10
2013/14	10
2014/15	10

No individual establishment had more than 5 cases in each year so only total numbers are provided in the table.

All figures are rounded to the nearest 10, with numbers ending in5 rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time, to ensure consistency of reporting. However the database itself is dynamic, and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate, and to present unrounded figures would be to overstate the accuracy of the figures. Rounding to 10 accurately depicts the level of certainty that is held with these figures.

~ denotes suppressed values of 5 or fewer. Low numbers are suppressed, in conjunction with the rounding policy to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 1998.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many G4S employees in contracted-out facilities have been charged with a work-related criminal offence since 2010; and in which facility was each such person employed.

Andrew Selous

A total of 10* G4S employees in the 8 contracted-out facilities they run on behalf of the Ministry of Justice have been charged with a work-related criminal offence since 2010. The vast majority of staff working in these facilities are honest, hard-working professionals. There is no place for criminal behaviour within prisons and secure training centres.

*All figures are rounded to the nearest 10, with numbers ending in 5 rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time, to ensure consistency of reporting. However the database itself is dynamic, and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate, and to present unrounded figures would be to overstate the accuracy of the figures. Rounding to 10 accurately depicts the level of certainty that is held with these figures. Low numbers are suppressed, in conjunction with the rounding policy to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

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.