Tag: Andy Slaughter

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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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-05-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) children under 18 years of age and (b) young people aged 18 to 24 received (i) social welfare, (ii) family, (iii) immigration, (iv) debt and (v) housing legal aid funding in each year since 2009-2010.

Mr Shailesh Vara

This information is due to be released as part of the pre-announced annual statistics bulletin for the LAA on the 30th June 2016.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 6 June 2016 to Question 38441, what additional resources have been allocated to the management of prisoners serving sentences of imprisonment for public protection in the last 24 months.

Andrew Selous

The sentence of IPP was introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 for offences committed after April 2005. They were abolished in 2012 by the Coalition Government.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) does not disaggregate spending on IPP prisoners from spending on all prisoners.

It is a priority for us to help remaining IPP prisoners progress towards release, when it is safe to do so, including by giving them opportunities to complete relevant interventions and work to reduce their risk of harm and risk of reoffending.

The ongoing work to improve progression opportunities is continuing to achieve results, with 512 IPP releases approved by the Parole Board in 2015, the highest number of annual releases since the sentence became available in 2005.

The release dates of prisoners serving IPP sentences, once they have completed their tariff, is entirely a matter for the independent Parole Board. The Board will direct release only if prisoners’ risks have been reduced to a level that may be safely managed in the community.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-06-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 13 June 2016 to Question 39933, how much funding has been allocated to anti-beaching initiatives; and which countries have been identified as containing beaching hotspots.

George Eustice

The UK Government does not fund ‘anti-beaching’ initiatives. However, it does fund the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, the work of which is crucial in providing us with a better understanding of the general health of cetaceans in UK waters and the issues that affect them.

We are not aware of any countries identified as having ‘beaching hotspots’.