Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to NHS dentistry in (a) South Norfolk constituency and (b) Norfolk.

Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term and increase access to NHS dental care, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the South Norfolk constituency, this is the NHS Norfolk and Waveney ICB.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of sentences handed out in open magistrates' courts were fines in each of the last five financial years.

Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of prosecutions at criminal courts in England and Wales between 2010 and June 2024 in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: June 2024.

For prosecutions from the Magistrates’ courts in England & Wales between 2010 and 2023, the Magistrates court tool can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2023 - GOV.UK.

The data requested can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Sentence Outcomes’ tab and using the ‘Sentence outcome’ filter to select ‘Fine’ in both the Magistrates’ court tool and the Outcome by Offence tool.

Currently, in centrally collated sentencing data, it is only possible to identify cases recorded and processed on the Automated Track Case Management System as Single Justice Procedure (SJP) cases – this only reflects a portion of all SJP cases. There is work ongoing to improve this. Select the filter ‘SJP Flag’ to see number of these cases.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of all sentences under the Single Justice Procedure were fines in each of the last five financial years.

Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of prosecutions at criminal courts in England and Wales between 2010 and June 2024 in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: June 2024.

For prosecutions from the Magistrates’ courts in England & Wales between 2010 and 2023, the Magistrates court tool can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2023 - GOV.UK.

The data requested can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Sentence Outcomes’ tab and using the ‘Sentence outcome’ filter to select ‘Fine’ in both the Magistrates’ court tool and the Outcome by Offence tool.

Currently, in centrally collated sentencing data, it is only possible to identify cases recorded and processed on the Automated Track Case Management System as Single Justice Procedure (SJP) cases – this only reflects a portion of all SJP cases. There is work ongoing to improve this. Select the filter ‘SJP Flag’ to see number of these cases.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of magistrates' court sentences were fines in each of the last five financial years.

Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of prosecutions at criminal courts in England and Wales between 2010 and June 2024 in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: June 2024.

For prosecutions from the Magistrates’ courts in England & Wales between 2010 and 2023, the Magistrates court tool can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2023 - GOV.UK.

The data requested can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Sentence Outcomes’ tab and using the ‘Sentence outcome’ filter to select ‘Fine’ in both the Magistrates’ court tool and the Outcome by Offence tool.

Currently, in centrally collated sentencing data, it is only possible to identify cases recorded and processed on the Automated Track Case Management System as Single Justice Procedure (SJP) cases – this only reflects a portion of all SJP cases. There is work ongoing to improve this. Select the filter ‘SJP Flag’ to see number of these cases.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of the people serving life sentences for second listed offences in prisons in England and Wales on 31 October 2024 were sentenced (a) on or prior to 9 November 2000, (b) between 9 November 2000 and 4 April 2005 and (c) after 4 April 2005.

Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury

Information that would enable us to answer these questions robustly is not collated centrally, and to obtain it would involve a manual interrogation of courts and prison records which would result in a disproportionate cost to the Department.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many of the people serving life sentences for second listed offences in prisons in England and Wales on the 31 October 2024 (a) were serving a recall and (b) have never been released.

Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury

Information that would enable us to answer these questions robustly is not collated centrally, and to obtain it would involve a manual interrogation of courts and prison records which would result in a disproportionate cost to the Department.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were serving life sentences for second listed offences in prisons in England and Wales on 31 October 2024.

Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury

Information that would enable us to answer these questions robustly is not collated centrally, and to obtain it would involve a manual interrogation of courts and prison records which would result in a disproportionate cost to the Department.