Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to ensure that single mothers receive adequate support and advice in the family courts division.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Access to justice is a fundamental right. We spent £1.6bn last year on legal aid for the most vulnerable – of which £545m was in family law.
Legal aid is also part of a bigger picture and so we are now making changes to enhance the breadth of legal support available for everyone in society.
The Legal Support Action Plan, published on 7 February, announced that we would be changing the legal aid eligibility criteria to provide non-means tested legal aid for parents, or those with parental responsibility, who wish to oppose applications for placement orders or adoption orders in public family law. In addition, we announced that we will doubling the department’s funding to the Litigants in Person Support Strategy to £3m for the next two years.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to encourage more young people to become magistrates.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We are taking a number of steps to encourage younger people to join the magistracy, including through the use of social media to advertise recruitment campaigns and collaborative work with Universities and employers, providing talks and information to raise the profile of the role amongst a younger audience.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to increase the number of women members of the judiciary.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The proportion of female court judges has increased by 5 percentage points since 2014, to 29% as at 1 April 2018, and for tribunal judges it has increased by 3 percentage points to 46%, over the same period.
We recognise that more progress is required and the Ministry of Justice has jointly developed and is funding the pre-application judicial education programme (PAJE), which launched on 24 April 2019. This will support and encourage lawyers interested in a judicial career and targets underrepresented groups including women, to help them prepare for a judicial career.
The MoJ continues to work closely with the Lord Chief Justice, Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission and other members of the Judicial Diversity Forum, including the three legal professions, to implement its multi stranded plan to increase judicial diversity.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many members of the judicial bench in the family division are women.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As of 1 April 2018, 58 judges appointed to the family division were women. This amounts to 48% of the total number of judges in the family division.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
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 reducing the daily rate of interest charged by the Legal Aid Agency to individuals who owe that Agency money.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Where legally aided clients successfully gain or retain an asset as a result of the publicly funded legal assistance they receive, they should repay the cost of their legal aid.
The rate in the statutory charge is currently set at 8%, the same as the Judgment Debt Interest Rate. It was reviewed in 2008/09.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has plans to ensure the Legal Aid Agency provides individuals with annual statements of the amount they owe to the Agency.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Annual statements are produced for all individuals who owe a debt to the Legal Aid Agency which is secured by way of the statutory charge.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of establishing an independent external organisation to review individual complaints about the (a) performance and (b) service provided by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Cafcass is inspected by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), and was last inspected in March 2018. It was rated outstanding. We consider that there is no need to establish an independent external organisation.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his department has any plans for the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service to be regulated by an independent governing body.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice has no plans for the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) to be regulated by an independent governing body. Cafcass is already subject to independent inspection by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will establish a legal process by which a preliminary judgment is reached on the evidence presented at pre-trial mediation and reflected in the mediation settlement.
Answered by Dominic Raab
Any agreement reached through mediation is privileged, and any information exchanged between the mediating parties remains a private matter, unless a court orders otherwise. The Government is committed to encouraging parties to reach a resolution out of court as far as possible and it may undermine the mediation process to introduce changes to its confidential nature. Where parties apply to court with a consent order which follows on from a mediation agreement, the court already has the necessary scrutiny powers at its disposal.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to reform the legal system to ensure that one side does not bear the financial risk associated with taking a case to trial and the other side cannot escape exposure to such risk through Damages Based Agreements and Conditional Fee Agreements.
Answered by Dominic Raab
Substantial reforms have been made over recent years to control the costs of civil litigation, and to deter fraudulent and unmeritorious claims. In particular, the operation of ‘no win no fee’ conditional fee agreements (CFAs) has been improved by Part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012. The Part 2 reforms, which came into effect in April 2013, also allowed Damages-Based Agreements (DBAs) to be used in civil litigation for the first time.
CFAs and DBAs facilitate access to justice by enabling claims to be brought by those of modest means. The Government recognises that access to justice has to be meaningful for defendants too: the Part 2 and other reforms help to ensure that claims are resolved at more proportionate cost, with the risk of litigation now being borne by claimants rather than defendants, who no longer having to pay inflated legal costs.
The Government is committed to carrying out a post-implementation review of Part 2 of the LASPO Act, to be completed by summer recess 2018.