Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many prisoners on remand are currently held in prison.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As of 30 September 2024, the remand prison population was 17,662.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of using AI to produce trial transcripts.
Answered by Mike Freer
The government is constantly assessing how to improve the efficiency within the criminal justice system, including mechanisms to accelerate trial transcripts.
We recognise the potential merits to using automated technology for trial transcriptions, including a potential reduction in the time it takes to produce a transcription and comparative value for money.
Transcriptions must achieve very high levels of accuracy (99.5%) to ensure the justice system can operate fairly and effectively. However, even software with learning capability cannot yet reliably meet the accuracy requirements for the service without human intervention.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many outstanding cases there are at (a) Dudley, (b) Walsall and (c) Wolverhampton Magistrates Court.
Answered by Mike Freer
As of the end of June 2023 the number of outstanding cases at Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton Magistrates’ Courts are as follows:
a) Dudley Magistrates' Court: 1,017
b) Walsall Magistrates' Court: 779
c) Wolverhampton Magistrates' Court: 935
This is a further breakdown of published data that can be found in the criminal court statistics quarterly publication: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2023.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases are currently awaiting trial in magistrates courts.
Answered by Mike Freer
The volume of outstanding ‘for trial’ cases at the magistrates’ courts is published as part of the National Statistics series ‘Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly’.
The latest published data is available to March 2023 and can be found in Table M1 which is accessible at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2023.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department was consulted before the recent advice was issued by the National Leadership Magistrate to magistrates regarding the granting of warrants to force fit prepayment meters.
Answered by Mike Freer
The statutory responsibility for issuing guidance to the judiciary is held by the Lord Chief Justice, the Senior President of Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner. To preserve the independence of the judiciary, they are not subject to direction or required to consult the government on the guidance they issue.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many probate cases are under consideration in England; and what proportion of those cases have been waiting for a decision for six weeks or more.
Answered by Mike Freer
There were 53,253 probate cases in the Open Caseload1 as at 31 December. Of those 30,656 were more than 6 weeks old1. Of the cases over six weeks old 13,536 were stopped, 7,247 were awaiting documentation and 9,873 were ready to progress.
1 Data as at 31 December in line the official published stats. The administration of probate applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales. The open caseload excludes cases older than 6 months.
2The time outstanding is counted from the application submission date recorded in the case management system, except for digital applications with a Will, where the date of receipt of the original Will by HMCTS is used.
This data is management Information. The management information presented in this table reflects what is recorded on relevant case-management systems on the date of extraction. The case management systems are continually updated and so the information presented will differ from previously published information. Management information can differ from the quality assured MOJ official statistics, which form the agreed definitive position. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that is available.
HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand following an increased number of estates requiring probate and is further increasing resourcing to further bring down overall timeliness on digital and paper applications.
The improvement of the online probate system remains a priority for HMCTS, to ensure more applications can be issued first time and resources can be focused on reducing waiting times.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will take steps to ascertain whether P&O Ferries had sought a legal injunction to remove dismissed staff from their vessels.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
Applications for injunctions of this type are made to the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court. As at 22 March 2022 no injunction applications have been made by P&O Ferries seeking to remove dismissed staff from their vessels.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when HMCTS Probate plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Warley of 7 September on behalf of Mr and Mrs Chadderton.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
HMCTS apologises for the delay in responding and confirms they have now responded on the 5th November 2021.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prosecutions there have been under the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015, and how many convictions secured.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Ministry of Justice has published information on prosecutions and convictions for offences under the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015, in England and Wales, up to December 2019, available in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code’ data tool, which can be found here:
In the data tool linked above, use the ‘Offence code’ filter to select the following offence code:
Number of prosecutions will populate Row 31; number of convictions will populate Row 32.
Please note that this offence code includes offences under both Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015 and Microchipping of Dogs (Wales) Regulations 2015. In order to identify defendants dealt with in England, specifically, use the ‘Police Force Area’ filter to select all options excluding those in Wales (i.e. Gwent, North Wales, South Wales and Dyfed-Powys).
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many fines have been issued for offences under covid-19 legislation; and how many of those fines have been paid.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
National statistics on detailed offence level fines at court, including those relating to COVID-19 for the calendar year of 2020 are due for publication in May 2021.
The NPCC publishes statistics on the number of Coronavirus Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued by police. The latest can be found here: https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/update-on-coronavirus-fpns-issued-by-police-march-2021
Neither court nor NPCC data contains information about whether a fine has been paid.