Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many government procurement cards were held by staff within (a) her core Department and (b) executive agencies of her Department at the end of calendar years (i) 2022 and (ii) 2023.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The following number of Government procurement cards (GPCs) were held at:
Date | Active cards in core department | Active cards in executive agencies |
31 December 2022 | 74 | 1135 |
31 December 2023 | 95 | 1182 |
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much her Department spent on government procurement card purchases (a) above and (b) below £500 net of refunded payments in (i) 2022 and (ii) 2023.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Government Procurement Card (GPC) spending over £500 Transparency data for the Ministry of Justice is published on GOV.UK.
The published data for both 2022 and 2023 can be found at:
The total spend for transactions under £500 on GPC is set out in the table below:
| Total 1 January – 31 December 2022 | Total 1 January – 31 December 2023 |
Under £500 including refunds | 28,370,116.77 | 31,559,138.10 |
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 13 May 2024 to Question 25190 on Ministry of Justice: Ipsos MORI, what the deliverables are for contract reference 398437/1351727 contained in Annex F of that contract.
Answered by Mike Freer
The supplier is contracted to conduct cognitive interviews, a pilot survey, and the finalised survey pursuant to the new survey design and agreed requirements.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 18 July 2023 to Question 193876, when he plans to publish the (a) content from the deliverables, (b) details of the experiment and (c) findings from the survey conducted by Ipsos Mori.
Answered by Mike Freer
The work under the contract with procurement reference 336036/1227987 was delayed due to difficulties with finding a survey design that would accurately answer the research question, and eventually the contract expired before a workable design was agreed.
The department is continuing to work to finalise a revised research design. The survey has not yet been conducted but the expectation is that results will be available later this year.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in what way the purpose of the contract agreed by his Department with Ipsos Mori on 20 March 2024, procurement reference 398437/1351727, differs from the purpose of the contract agreed with the same company on 5 June 2023, procurement reference 336036/1227987.
Answered by Mike Freer
The contract with procurement reference 336036/1227987 was delayed due to difficulties with finding a survey design that would accurately answer the research question, and eventually the contract expired before a workable design was agreed.
A new contract – reference 398437/1351727 – was awarded to Ipsos on the basis of agreeing a different survey design, which is more likely to produce usable results.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the press notice entitled Clean-up scheme expanded nationwide to tackle anti-social behaviour, published on 22 March 2024, how many offenders in England and Wales were ordered to carry out litter-clearing activities in support of the Great British Spring Clean from 17 March to 2 April 2024; and how many hours of litter-clearing activity were completed by those offenders.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the contract agreed by his Department with ZK Analytics Limited on 18 March 2024, procurement reference 23425, if he will publish the deliverables specified in Annex F of that contract.
Answered by Mike Freer
A redacted copy of Annex F – Deliverables will be uploaded to Contracts Finder within the next 10 days.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the contract agreed by his Department with Press Data Ltd. on 1 April 2024 under procurement reference 410700/1338489, if he will publish the (a) work specification set out in Schedule 20 of that contract and (b) list of words used by the contractor to generate daily media briefings for his Department.
Answered by Mike Freer
A redacted version of Call-Off Schedule 20, which includes the specification, will be published within the next 30 days.
The supplier provides the requested search terms as part of the contract service, the search terms themselves are not specified in the contract or any contract documentation and will not be published.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 23 November 2023 to Question 2542 on Legal Aid Scheme: Manchester and Middlesbrough, what progress has been made on preparing the evaluation report into the early legal advice pilot scheme; and when he plans to publish that report.
Answered by Mike Freer
We plan to publish all Early Legal Advice Pilot (ELAP) outputs in accordance with Government Social Research protocols very soon.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people completed unpaid work on the Community Payback Rapid Deployment Project pilot schemes between June and December 2023; how many hours of unpaid work were completed; and how many and what proportion of those hours were attributable to schemes run in the (a) Greater Manchester, (b) East of England, (c) Wales and (d) North East Probation Service regions.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Between 19 June and 31 December 2023, a total of 8,809 community payback hours have been completed as a part of the Community Payback Rapid Deployment Project pilot scheme by 509 different people.
Probation Region | Community Payback Rapid Deployment Hours Worked | Proportion of Rapid Deployment hours worked per region | People completing Community Payback Rapid Deployment |
East of England | 921 | 10.4% | 79 |
Greater Manchester | 5,358 | 60.8% | 193 |
North East Region | 787 | 8.9% | 64 |
Wales | 596 | 6.8% | 90 |
West Midlands Region | 906 | 10.3% | 54 |
Yorkshire and The Humber | 242 | 2.7% | 29 |
The data source is nDelius, the Case Management System used by the Probation Service. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the information collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. While the figures shown have been checked as far as practicable, they should be regarded as approximate and not necessarily accurate to the last whole number shown in the tables.
To note, the figures are different to those provided in parliamentary question responses in October and December 2023, due to work undertaken to improve the accuracy of the data recorded.