Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an estimate of the funding required to meet the needs of (a) adult and (b) child victims of domestic abuse annually in England and Wales.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
For 2020/21, the Ministry of Justice allocated £69m of ‘core’ funding to Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) to commission and provide victim support services for all victims of crime. It is for PCCs to assess local demand and allocate this funding accordingly.
A further £32 million was granted in emergency funding to over 540 charities to help domestic abuse and sexual violence community based services meet demand.
The Home Office also provided funding for both national and community-based domestic violence victim support services and funding to tackle and better manage perpetrators of domestic violence.
Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much funding the Government has allocated for the provision of community-based domestic abuse services for (a) adult victims, (b) child victims and (c) perpetrators of domestic abuse in 2020-21.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
For 2020/21, the Ministry of Justice allocated £69m of ‘core’ funding to Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) to commission and provide victim support services for all victims of crime. It is for PCCs to assess local demand and allocate this funding accordingly.
A further £32 million was granted in emergency funding to over 540 charities to help domestic abuse and sexual violence community based services meet demand.
The Home Office also provided funding for both national and community-based domestic violence victim support services and funding to tackle and better manage perpetrators of domestic violence.
Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in the last full reporting year what the average sentence was for people convicted of a contact child sex offence.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Ministry of Justice has published information on proceedings and outcomes for child sexual offences in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code data tool’, available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/938554/HO-code-tool-principal-offence-2019.xlsx.
A full list of child sexual offences can be found in the table attached to the response to PQ 266750 (https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2019-06-19/266750).
All of the offences listed in the table are contact child sexual offences, apart from the following:
The average custodial sentence length for offenders convicted of contact child sexual offences in 2019 was 5 years and 2 months (61.5 months).
Court statistics on proceedings and outcomes for 2020 will be published in May 2021.
Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps family courts take to ensure that children’s wishes are central to decisions made on their lives.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 requires that the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration in all decisions made about them. In their consideration, the court must have regard to the factors set out at 1(3) of the Children Act 1989, referred to as the ‘welfare checklist’. These include the ascertainable wishes and feeling of the child, commensurate with their age and level of understanding, and any harm which he has suffered or is at risk of suffering.
In addition, for every public law case, the child is appointed a CAFCASS Guardian who specifically represent the interests and wishes of the child involved. In complex private law cases, CAFCASS undertakes direct work with the child when directed to do so by the court, for cases that continue after the first hearing. This includes speaking with children to ascertain their wishes and feelings to produce a Section 7 welfare report into the child’s welfare needs.
The Domestic Abuse Bill rightly recognises children as victims of domestic abuse and it is important that their voices are heard in family court proceedings.
In response to the Ministry of Justice’s Harm Panel report, the Government committed to exploring how to enhance the voice of the child in private law proceedings to ensure children’s wishes and views are central to proceedings concerning them. This will be done through a series of private law reform pilots, including the Integrated Domestic Abuse Court, and we intend to launch these pilots later this year.
Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what oversight there is to ensure court and children’s guardians carry out their role effectively and safely.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The work of children’s guardians employed by Cafcass is internally assessed in line with its quality assurance and impact framework. Cafcass has a number of internal case supervision and quality assurance processes, which are a top priority for the organisation, particularly in relation to the quality and impact of work and its added value for the child.
There is a rolling area quality review programme which looks at the quality of service provided by Cafcass within a specific service area. This programme includes feedback from children. Cafcass has also developed and implemented a series of Performance Boards across the country to share learning, good practice and develop improvement plans. These boards bring together members of the management team to review practice, continue to build on existing strengths and commit to an annual improvement programme.
Externally, the Ministry of Justice monitors the work of Cafcass as an arm’s length body through a proportionate system of oversight in line with the Cabinet Office’s ‘Partnerships with arm's length bodies: code of good practice’. This includes reviewing Key Performance Indicators and quality data on a regular basis, along with quarterly holding to account meetings with senior Cafcass executives.
Cafcass’s services are subject to inspections by Ofsted and received an overall judgement of outstanding at its last inspection, with a finding that “a rigorous, strength-based performance framework supports the delivery of good and outstanding services nationally and locally”. Children’s guardians provided by Cafcass are all qualified social workers registered with Social Work England, the specialist regulator.
Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what training court and children’s guardians are required to undertake on identifying, understanding and responding to domestic abuse.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Children’s guardians provided by Cafcass are all qualified social workers with at least three years’ post-qualifying experience. All Cafcass practitioners receive training in assessing domestic abuse and have access to learning packages and programmes developed in collaboration with organisations with specialist knowledge of domestic abuse, including a learning package on coercive and controlling behaviours.
Cafcass has a domestic abuse practice pathway which brings together the range of tools practitioners use for identifying domestic abuse, assessing its impact, and making recommendations to the court about programmes to address perpetrator behaviour. Cafcass has recently reviewed the pathway, working alongside partners including organisations that work with parents with lived experience of the family courts, and will roll out updated training for all its staff in the next year. This training will take account of recommendations from Cafcass’s Learning and Improvement Board, which draws on the findings of the MoJ Expert Panel on Harm in the Family Courts.
Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prosecutions for the offence of sexual assault by penetration under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 have been made in cases where the victim had experienced county lines exploitation in each year since 2015.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Government recognises the devastating impact of county lines activity on children and vulnerable people which can include both sexual and criminal exploitation. Prosecutions data involving offences under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 held centrally by the MoJ does not include such detailed information about the victim to indicate whether they had been a victim of county lines exploitation previously. This information may be held on court record, however to identify it would require access to detailed court records and transcripts, which would incur disproportionate cost.
However, the Ministry of Justice has published information on prosecutions, up to December 2019, for the following offences: ‘Sexual assault on a female – penetration’, ‘Sexual assault on a male – penetration’, Sexual assault of a male child under 13 - penetration’, ‘Sexual assault of a female child under 13 – penetration’ and ‘Causing sexual activity without consent – penetration’. These are available in the Outcomes by Offence data tool:
Asked by: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prosecutions for offences for exploitation of children under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 there have been in each year since that Act came into force.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Ministry of Justice has published information on prosecutions, up to December 2019, for offences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. These are available in the ‘Outcomes by Offence’ data tool, here:
Data held centrally by MoJ does not identify the age of the victim unless this is specified by the relevant legislation. Therefore, centrally held information cannot separately identify the number of modern slavery prosecutions that involved child victims. The information may be held on court record; however, identification of the victim’s age would require access to court records and transcripts, which would incur disproportionate cost.