Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have compared the one-off and recurring cost of requiring separate codes of conduct under the terms of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill and the associated systems across all public authorities with the cost of one single national core code of conduct; and if not, whether they intend to do so and publish the figures.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Most public bodies will already be covered by a form of a Code of Ethical Conduct. The Bill provides public authorities the flexibility to tailor a code to best meet the needs of their organisation and sector. The cost impact for the majority of public authorities is not anticipated to be substantial. An impact assessment will be undertaken post Royal Assent alongside wider implementation plans.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much his Department spent on interpreters and related translation services in 2025.
Answered by Jake Richards - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The total spend by the Ministry of Justice on interpreters and related translation services during the 2025 calendar year was £41,945,961.34.
This figure includes expenditure on contracted spoken language interpreting (£30,127,536.45), non-spoken language interpreting (£1,849,519.44), translation and transcription (£2,988,335.45), and quality assurance services across the Ministry of Justice estate, including commissioning bodies (£524,692.00). It also includes off-contract language services expenditure incurred by HM Courts and Tribunals Service (£6,455,878.00). During the 2025 calendar year, more than 150,000 interpreter service requests were fulfilled across the Ministry of Justice estate.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he plans to reply to the letters from the hon. Member for West Suffolk of 26 June and 3 September 2026 regarding USAF Lakenheath.
Answered by Jake Richards - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Department recognises the importance of responding to correspondence from Honourable and Right Honourable Members in a timely manner.
The Hon. Member's letters of 26 June and 3 September have been received and were carefully considered. The Hon. Member has now received a response, and I apologise for the delay.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what evidence they have that minimum standards of candour, honesty, integrity, accountability, openness, and transparency should differ between public authorities, rather than being set out in a single national minimum standard which individual authorities may supplement.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Under the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, public authorities will be required to adopt and publish Codes of Ethical Conduct. These can be tailored to meet the requirements of their workforces and sectors. The Bill sets out the minimum requirements that public authorities must meet for their Code to be compliant.
Asked by: Viscount Stansgate (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the Powers of Attorney Act 2023 on the Lasting Power of Attorney application process.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 has not yet been commenced. The Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) are working to finalise the design of the modernised service this Act facilitates, including how this will be translated into legislation. This is a significant transformation for OPG, and it is important that we take the appropriate time to get the new service design right to enable an enhanced process to make and register a Lasting Power of Attorney for users. We remain fully committed to modernising the process to make it easier and more secure, whilst securing OPG's long term financial sustainability.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many separate codes of conduct they expect clause 10 of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill to produce; and what work will be involved collectively in preparing, approving, maintaining, and administering these codes of conduct.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
All core public authorities will be required to adopt and publish a Code of Ethical Conduct. This includes all central government departments, National Health Services bodies, local authorities, police forces and state schools. Approximately six million public sector workers across the public sector are within scope of this requirement. Public authorities will be responsible for promoting and maintaining their Codes of Ethical Conduct. Statutory guidance will be published to support public authorities to comply with the duties in clause 10 of the Bill.
Asked by: Lord Moylan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the recommendation by the Court of Appeal in Haycock v R (EWCA Crim 1105) that there should be a systematic review process to ensure that individuals still subject to imprisonment for public protection and detention for public protection sentences are adequately identified and provided with legal advice.
Answered by Lord Lemos - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes routine data on prisoners serving Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences in custody in the Offender Management Statistics publication. This is available online here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/offender-management-statistics-quarterly.
Prison staff are required to assist any prisoner who wishes to request legal advice by providing lists of legal advisers, supplying appropriate forms, and assisting prisoners to complete them where requested due to language or literacy difficulties.
Criminal legal aid is available for eligible IPP and DPP offenders for parole proceedings and for related preliminary or incidental proceedings. Information on finding a legal aid adviser is available at: Find a Legal Aid Adviser or Family Mediator. Alternatively, organisations, such as the Association of Prison Lawyers or the Prisoners' Advice Service, may be able to assist in finding a prison law adviser.
On 1 September, the Lord Chancellor announced that the Government will bring an end to the sentence for those who continue to serve it and will bring forward legislation to do this by the end of this Parliament. These are complex cases, involving important public protection and victim considerations. Reform will take time to get right.
Asked by: Chris Coghlan (Liberal Democrat - Dorking and Horley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps have been taken in response to receiving Prevention of Future Death reports.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Coroners do not make recommendations as part of their inquest findings. However, where a coroner investigation gives rise to a concern that circumstances creating a risk of other deaths will occur, or will continue to exist, in the future, and the coroner considers that action should be taken to prevent future deaths, they have a statutory duty to issue a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report to a person (including an organisation, public body, Government department or private company) that may have the power to take such action.
Recipients are required to provide a written response to the coroner within 56 days, or within any extended period agreed by the coroner, setting out action taken or proposed, or explaining why no action is proposed. Reports and responses must be sent to the Chief Coroner and are generally published and available at: https://www.judiciary.uk/?s=&pfd_report_type=&post_type=pfd&order=relevance.
These reports have been intentionally placed into the public domain since July 2013 as part of the Government and the judiciary’s commitment to open justice, so that coroner concerns can be understood, analysed and utilised to improve learning by recipient and other interested organisations, as well as by academics and others with a relevant interest.
The Government recognises the important role that PFD reports play in highlighting circumstances where action may be required to reduce the risk of future deaths and promoting organisational learning. However, whilst the Lord Chancellor has responsibility for the legislative framework governing the coronial system, the Ministry of Justice does not centrally assess, monitor or record the implementation of actions arising from individual PFD reports across Government and does not hold centrally the number of PFD reports received by government departments since 2013, nor the number of reports with outstanding responses. Responsibility for considering concerns raised by coroners, determining any appropriate action and responding to the coroner rests with the organisations and departments to which reports are addressed.
PFD reports are sent directly to the relevant recipients, and as above, are published by the Chief Coroner along with responses. Information on reports received and responses provided can also be obtained from individual recipients. Since 2025, the Chief Coroner has also published periodic lists of reports for which no response has been received by the relevant coroner's office.
The Ministry of Justice keeps all aspects of the coronial system under review and continues to consider evidence and proposals to improve learning from deaths. However, the Department currently has no plans to introduce a national learning from deaths strategy. This reflects the fact that responsibility for preventing avoidable deaths and reducing harm sits across a wide range of government departments, agencies and bodies, each with their own specialist expertise, statutory responsibilities, policy levers, governance arrangements and learning mechanisms.
Many individual government departments and agencies have strategies and frameworks for reducing harm and preventable deaths in their areas of responsibility. One example is the Patient Safety Strategy updated by NHS England in July 2026. The purpose of this strategy is to continuously improve patient safety and evidence shows that is saving around 1,000 extra lives each year. The updated strategy can be found here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/the-nhs-patient-safety-strategy/.
In addition, the National Quality Board produced guidance in 2017 to help standardise and improve the way the NHS identifies, reports, reviews and investigates deaths to inform learning and improvement. Earlier this year, the newly revitalised National Quality Board commissioned a review of the national Learning from Deaths guidance to align with the introduction of the Medical Examiner system and new safety policy introduced via the NHS Patient Safety Strategy in 2019. The revision of the Learning from Deaths guidance will also incorporate a data strategy to support learning from deaths across the NHS in England. NHS England has met with Dr Georgia Richards and others working in the space of PFD analysis and the revised guidance will take this work into account. The Department for Health and Social Care tracks relevant PFD reports and ensures that relevant regulators and other bodies, are made aware of concerns, so that the relevant organisations can consider and act upon learning identified, including recurrent themes and risks.
More broadly, death certification, investigation, and registration system (including the coronial system and, through the reforms introduced by this Government in September 2024, the statutory Medical Examiner system) plays a vital role in establishing and recording universal and robust information about the circumstances of all deaths which take place in England and Wales. This information in turn contributes to work by ONS and other organisations to provide comprehensive and detailed mortality data for public benefit.
The Government recognises calls by the Infected Blood Inquiry and the Grenfell Inquiry that Parliament is the right body to undertake independent oversight of public inquiry recommendations and ensure that public authorities are held accountable for the actions they have committed to undertake. The Public Administration and Constitution Affairs Committee is currently looking at how Parliament can do this.
Ministers and officials regularly engage with a range of stakeholders on matters relating to the coronial system, including academic and research organisations. The Government recognises the contribution of the Preventable Deaths Tracker, led by Dr Georgia Richards of King’s College London, as well as work being undertaken by the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody and by other academics, in supporting access to and analysis of published PFD reports, and ministerial meetings are considered and arranged in the usual way.
Asked by: Chris Coghlan (Liberal Democrat - Dorking and Horley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Prevention of Future Death reports the government has received since 2013 broken down by Department.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Coroners do not make recommendations as part of their inquest findings. However, where a coroner investigation gives rise to a concern that circumstances creating a risk of other deaths will occur, or will continue to exist, in the future, and the coroner considers that action should be taken to prevent future deaths, they have a statutory duty to issue a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report to a person (including an organisation, public body, Government department or private company) that may have the power to take such action.
Recipients are required to provide a written response to the coroner within 56 days, or within any extended period agreed by the coroner, setting out action taken or proposed, or explaining why no action is proposed. Reports and responses must be sent to the Chief Coroner and are generally published and available at: https://www.judiciary.uk/?s=&pfd_report_type=&post_type=pfd&order=relevance.
These reports have been intentionally placed into the public domain since July 2013 as part of the Government and the judiciary’s commitment to open justice, so that coroner concerns can be understood, analysed and utilised to improve learning by recipient and other interested organisations, as well as by academics and others with a relevant interest.
The Government recognises the important role that PFD reports play in highlighting circumstances where action may be required to reduce the risk of future deaths and promoting organisational learning. However, whilst the Lord Chancellor has responsibility for the legislative framework governing the coronial system, the Ministry of Justice does not centrally assess, monitor or record the implementation of actions arising from individual PFD reports across Government and does not hold centrally the number of PFD reports received by government departments since 2013, nor the number of reports with outstanding responses. Responsibility for considering concerns raised by coroners, determining any appropriate action and responding to the coroner rests with the organisations and departments to which reports are addressed.
PFD reports are sent directly to the relevant recipients, and as above, are published by the Chief Coroner along with responses. Information on reports received and responses provided can also be obtained from individual recipients. Since 2025, the Chief Coroner has also published periodic lists of reports for which no response has been received by the relevant coroner's office.
The Ministry of Justice keeps all aspects of the coronial system under review and continues to consider evidence and proposals to improve learning from deaths. However, the Department currently has no plans to introduce a national learning from deaths strategy. This reflects the fact that responsibility for preventing avoidable deaths and reducing harm sits across a wide range of government departments, agencies and bodies, each with their own specialist expertise, statutory responsibilities, policy levers, governance arrangements and learning mechanisms.
Many individual government departments and agencies have strategies and frameworks for reducing harm and preventable deaths in their areas of responsibility. One example is the Patient Safety Strategy updated by NHS England in July 2026. The purpose of this strategy is to continuously improve patient safety and evidence shows that is saving around 1,000 extra lives each year. The updated strategy can be found here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/the-nhs-patient-safety-strategy/.
In addition, the National Quality Board produced guidance in 2017 to help standardise and improve the way the NHS identifies, reports, reviews and investigates deaths to inform learning and improvement. Earlier this year, the newly revitalised National Quality Board commissioned a review of the national Learning from Deaths guidance to align with the introduction of the Medical Examiner system and new safety policy introduced via the NHS Patient Safety Strategy in 2019. The revision of the Learning from Deaths guidance will also incorporate a data strategy to support learning from deaths across the NHS in England. NHS England has met with Dr Georgia Richards and others working in the space of PFD analysis and the revised guidance will take this work into account. The Department for Health and Social Care tracks relevant PFD reports and ensures that relevant regulators and other bodies, are made aware of concerns, so that the relevant organisations can consider and act upon learning identified, including recurrent themes and risks.
More broadly, death certification, investigation, and registration system (including the coronial system and, through the reforms introduced by this Government in September 2024, the statutory Medical Examiner system) plays a vital role in establishing and recording universal and robust information about the circumstances of all deaths which take place in England and Wales. This information in turn contributes to work by ONS and other organisations to provide comprehensive and detailed mortality data for public benefit.
The Government recognises calls by the Infected Blood Inquiry and the Grenfell Inquiry that Parliament is the right body to undertake independent oversight of public inquiry recommendations and ensure that public authorities are held accountable for the actions they have committed to undertake. The Public Administration and Constitution Affairs Committee is currently looking at how Parliament can do this.
Ministers and officials regularly engage with a range of stakeholders on matters relating to the coronial system, including academic and research organisations. The Government recognises the contribution of the Preventable Deaths Tracker, led by Dr Georgia Richards of King’s College London, as well as work being undertaken by the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody and by other academics, in supporting access to and analysis of published PFD reports, and ministerial meetings are considered and arranged in the usual way.
Asked by: Chris Coghlan (Liberal Democrat - Dorking and Horley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Prevention of Future Death reports received by the government have outstanding responses.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Coroners do not make recommendations as part of their inquest findings. However, where a coroner investigation gives rise to a concern that circumstances creating a risk of other deaths will occur, or will continue to exist, in the future, and the coroner considers that action should be taken to prevent future deaths, they have a statutory duty to issue a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report to a person (including an organisation, public body, Government department or private company) that may have the power to take such action.
Recipients are required to provide a written response to the coroner within 56 days, or within any extended period agreed by the coroner, setting out action taken or proposed, or explaining why no action is proposed. Reports and responses must be sent to the Chief Coroner and are generally published and available at: https://www.judiciary.uk/?s=&pfd_report_type=&post_type=pfd&order=relevance.
These reports have been intentionally placed into the public domain since July 2013 as part of the Government and the judiciary’s commitment to open justice, so that coroner concerns can be understood, analysed and utilised to improve learning by recipient and other interested organisations, as well as by academics and others with a relevant interest.
The Government recognises the important role that PFD reports play in highlighting circumstances where action may be required to reduce the risk of future deaths and promoting organisational learning. However, whilst the Lord Chancellor has responsibility for the legislative framework governing the coronial system, the Ministry of Justice does not centrally assess, monitor or record the implementation of actions arising from individual PFD reports across Government and does not hold centrally the number of PFD reports received by government departments since 2013, nor the number of reports with outstanding responses. Responsibility for considering concerns raised by coroners, determining any appropriate action and responding to the coroner rests with the organisations and departments to which reports are addressed.
PFD reports are sent directly to the relevant recipients, and as above, are published by the Chief Coroner along with responses. Information on reports received and responses provided can also be obtained from individual recipients. Since 2025, the Chief Coroner has also published periodic lists of reports for which no response has been received by the relevant coroner's office.
The Ministry of Justice keeps all aspects of the coronial system under review and continues to consider evidence and proposals to improve learning from deaths. However, the Department currently has no plans to introduce a national learning from deaths strategy. This reflects the fact that responsibility for preventing avoidable deaths and reducing harm sits across a wide range of government departments, agencies and bodies, each with their own specialist expertise, statutory responsibilities, policy levers, governance arrangements and learning mechanisms.
Many individual government departments and agencies have strategies and frameworks for reducing harm and preventable deaths in their areas of responsibility. One example is the Patient Safety Strategy updated by NHS England in July 2026. The purpose of this strategy is to continuously improve patient safety and evidence shows that is saving around 1,000 extra lives each year. The updated strategy can be found here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/the-nhs-patient-safety-strategy/.
In addition, the National Quality Board produced guidance in 2017 to help standardise and improve the way the NHS identifies, reports, reviews and investigates deaths to inform learning and improvement. Earlier this year, the newly revitalised National Quality Board commissioned a review of the national Learning from Deaths guidance to align with the introduction of the Medical Examiner system and new safety policy introduced via the NHS Patient Safety Strategy in 2019. The revision of the Learning from Deaths guidance will also incorporate a data strategy to support learning from deaths across the NHS in England. NHS England has met with Dr Georgia Richards and others working in the space of PFD analysis and the revised guidance will take this work into account. The Department for Health and Social Care tracks relevant PFD reports and ensures that relevant regulators and other bodies, are made aware of concerns, so that the relevant organisations can consider and act upon learning identified, including recurrent themes and risks.
More broadly, death certification, investigation, and registration system (including the coronial system and, through the reforms introduced by this Government in September 2024, the statutory Medical Examiner system) plays a vital role in establishing and recording universal and robust information about the circumstances of all deaths which take place in England and Wales. This information in turn contributes to work by ONS and other organisations to provide comprehensive and detailed mortality data for public benefit.
The Government recognises calls by the Infected Blood Inquiry and the Grenfell Inquiry that Parliament is the right body to undertake independent oversight of public inquiry recommendations and ensure that public authorities are held accountable for the actions they have committed to undertake. The Public Administration and Constitution Affairs Committee is currently looking at how Parliament can do this.
Ministers and officials regularly engage with a range of stakeholders on matters relating to the coronial system, including academic and research organisations. The Government recognises the contribution of the Preventable Deaths Tracker, led by Dr Georgia Richards of King’s College London, as well as work being undertaken by the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody and by other academics, in supporting access to and analysis of published PFD reports, and ministerial meetings are considered and arranged in the usual way.