Asked by: Anna Dixon (Labour - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing payment rates for legal aid in family law cases, in the context of his Department's decision to uplift the rates paid for all housing and immigration legal aid work.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This Government is committed to ensuring the long-term sustainability of civil legal aid, including family legal aid, and we are keen to work closely with practitioners and their representative bodies to look at how best we can address this.
Between January 2023 and March 2025, the Ministry of Justice undertook a comprehensive review of civil legal aid and concluded a consultation on uplifts to housing and debt, and immigration and asylum legal aid fees, which will inject an additional £20 million into the sector each year once fully implemented.
This investment will help the Government deliver commitments to reduce the asylum backlog, end hotel use, increase returns and ensure the most vulnerable can navigate a complex legal system and access justice.
Whilst there are no immediate plans to increase the fee rate in family law, the Ministry of Justice is looking at other potential changes that could support providers, for example, (civil) contractual requirements regarding provider offices and limits to the provision of remote legal aid that providers say are burdensome. Any changes would aim to give providers more autonomy in meeting client need, while maintaining effective in-person provision for clients who need this.
Asked by: Anna Dixon (Labour - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of statutory regulation for the bailiff industry.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Whilst most enforcement agencies have already signed up to the Enforcement Conduct Board’s (ECB) voluntary accreditation scheme, the Government believes that it is necessary to take action so that all enforcement agents, High Court Enforcement Officer and agencies are regulated to the same standards and overseen by the same body. To that end, a public consultation was launched on 9 June to explore how best to achieve this. The package of measures on which we are consulting includes a proposal to place the ECB on a statutory footing and for all enforcement agents to come within its auspices.
Responses to the consultation will inform legislation to be brought forward as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Anna Dixon (Labour - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the probation service has the capacity to cope with recent increases in prisoner releases.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Vice Chamberlain (HM Household) (Whip, House of Commons)
Probation staff do an extraordinary job in extremely challenging circumstances.
The eight weeks since the Lord Chancellor’s announcement of prisoner release under SDS40 has given the Probation Service more time to prepare than a release on the previous Government’s End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme afforded. We have also committed to recruiting 1000 new probation officers by March 2025.
Once released, offenders will be subject to the same set of strict licence conditions. These can include electronic monitoring, alcohol tags and exclusion zones. Should offenders breach these conditions they face being immediately recalled to prison.
Since July 2024, the Probation Service has implemented a set of measures designed to help alleviate workload pressures in response to the impact of prison capacity. This involves prioritising early engagement at the point where offenders are most likely to breach the requirements of their licence or community sentence. In turn that ensures that staff can maximise supervision of the most serious offenders.