Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he plans to respond to the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law on Judicial Review.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Government will publish the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law alongside its response to the report in due course.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he plans to publish the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law on Judicial Review.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Government will publish the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law alongside its response to the report in due course.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
What support his Department is providing to HM Courts and Tribunals Service in response to the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
To ensure the safety of the physical estate and continue our efforts to tackle demand on the system we invested £142m in court buildings and facilities, and a further £110m to make the estate Covid-secure, recruit 1,600 additional staff, and create more Nightingale Courts.
This funding – the largest investment in justice for decades – helped the system to turn a corner in December 2020 so that we were closing the same number of cases as before the pandemic in almost all jurisdictions, including Crown Courts.
There is further to go, and through our Spending Review settlement, we have secured significant additional funding next financial year to recover our courts and tribunals system.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to reduce the usage of Spice in prisons.
Answered by Rory Stewart
We have made it a criminal offence to possess new psychoactive substances in prison and trained more than 300 sniffer dogs specifically to detect these drugs.
We have launched a Drugs Taskforce, working with law enforcement and health partners from across government to restrict supply, reduce demand and build recovery from drug use, including psychoactive substances.
Our Taskforce is working with 10 of the most challenging prisons to understand their situation and will invest £6 million to tackle drug supply in these establishments, alongside its wider work to provide support and guidance across the prison estate.
We are also adopting pioneering approaches such as our ‘Drug Recovery Prison’ pilot at HMP Holme House, which is leading the way in tackling the supply of drugs and putting offenders on a long-term path to recovery.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of sentences for each category of criminal offence resulted in suspended sentences.
Answered by Rory Stewart
This information is available in the “criminal justice statistics outcomes by offence tool” at
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2016
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to reduce tribunal waiting times.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is committed to reducing waiting times across all tribunals wherever possible. Recent initiatives include working with the judiciary to maximise the effectiveness of listing and case management practices as well as the greater use of fee paid judiciary to ensure waiting times are minimised. HMCTS is also working with the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice to recruit additional judges and judicial office holders to provide long-term capacity in the tribunals.