Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of Sections 69-72 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 on human rights.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
This Government will defend the rule of law and uphold human rights. We are carefully considering the impact of sections 69-72 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 on human rights.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance has been issued on the use of inclusive language by NHS staff with respect to the LGBTQ+ community.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No guidance has been issued to National Health Service staff about the use of inclusive language. The Government expects the NHS to deliver services in line with the Equality Act 2010, having appropriate regard to protected characteristics as defined in the act.
NHS England has the document, A national framework for NHS – action on inclusion health, which defines inclusion health as an umbrella term used to describe people who are socially excluded, who typically experience multiple interacting risk factors for poor health, such as stigma, discrimination, poverty, violence, and complex trauma, which includes ensuring the needs of LGBT+ people are considered. The framework is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/a-national-framework-for-nhs-action-on-inclusion-health/
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to help support local authorities to fix (a) poor quality and (b) unsafe pavements.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government is committed to enabling local highway authorities to maintain and renew their local highway networks, including the footways that make up such an essential part of them. The Chancellor announced an extra £500 million for local highway maintenance at Budget 2024 for the 2025/26 financial year, which, for most authorities including East Sussex County Council, will mean an increase of nearly 40% compared to the current financial year. The funding is for all parts of the highway network, including footways, and it is up to each authority to determine how the funding is spent. The Government encourages local highway authorities to consider the needs of all road users, including pedestrians, when planning their highway maintenance programmes.
As well as the big uplift in maintenance funding, the Government has also announced an extra £100 million investment in active travel infrastructure next year, which will allow local authorities to improve footways in their areas. Further details of how this funding will be allocated will be announced shortly.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of proposals to increase the maximum sentence for coercive control beyond five years.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Controlling and coercive behaviour (CCB) is a particularly insidious form of domestic abuse and I recognise the devastating impact that it has on victims.
The Ministry of Justice has launched an Independent Review of Sentencing chaired by former Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, which is currently ongoing. The Review will specifically look at offences primarily committed against women and girls, and the Government is dedicated to ensuring that the harm caused by these devastating crimes is appropriately and proportionally reflected in the sentencing framework.
Separate to changes in sentencing, through the Victims and Prisoner Act 2024, offenders convicted of coercive or controlling behaviour, who are sentenced to 12 months or more, will soon be automatically managed under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). This change will place serious coercive or controlling behaviour offending on an equal footing with serious and/or violent offenders and create greater consistency in how these domestic abuse offenders are managed in the community. The extra monitoring of offenders, and restrictions which can be placed upon them, via MAPPA management will serve to reduce their risk of reoffending and give greater assurance of safety to previous victims in the coming months
Tackling VAWG in all its forms, including CCB, is a top priority for this Government.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what (a) programmes and (b) interventions are used to reduce reoffending among domestic abusers in prison; and what the reoffending rates are among prisoners who participate.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
HM Prison and Probation Service currently offers five Accredited Programmes that may be undertaken by those convicted of domestic abuse offences. These are the Building Better Relationships programme, Becoming New Me +, New Me Strengths, Building Choices (available in prisons and probation), and Kaizen (available in prisons only). These programmes may also be undertaken by offenders with a range of offending types, however, so it is not possible to provide re-offending outcomes specifically in relation to domestic abusers.
Accredited Programmes more generally are well-evidenced. Most international reviews indicate that programmes reduce reoffending generally by about 20% to 30%.
In addition to Accredited Programmes, a number of approved interventions are also delivered by HMPPS and other partners, including Third Sector organisations. The National Framework for Interventions Policy Framework - GOV.UK sets out the minimum design standards for these types of interventions.
Structured Interventions are available as a sentence of the court, by inclusion in a Rehabilitation Activity Requirement. They are part of a set of interventions delivered by regional interventions teams in the community. Those which focus specifically on domestic abuse include Stepwise Relationships, Positive Pathways Plus, Help, and Developing Assertiveness for Women in Relationships.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the processing time for Disclosure and Barring Service checks for people working in the health and social care sector.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) is operationally independent from the Home Office and operates to service standards of completing 85% of Basic check applications within 2 days, 85% of Standard check applications within 3 days, and 80% of Enhanced check applications within 14 days.
The DBS year to date performance against these targets up to November 2024 is 87.9% for Basic checks, 90.2% for Standard checks, and 75.7% for Enhanced checks. These attainments apply to applications across all employment sectors, including the health and social care sectors.
Specific support to the health and social care sectors is provided by the DBS Partnerships Team who have held recent meetings with NHS England, NHS Employers, Skills for Care, Care Quality Commission and Home Care Association, as well as on a regional level with local NHS, local authorities and care providers, about how checks are processed and how to improve the quality of applications submitted to the DBS in order to reduce processing times.
The DBS also provides the ‘adult first’ service to employing organisations in the care sector. Under this service, organisations can request a check of the DBS adults’ barred list and, depending on the result, a person can be permitted to start work, under supervision, with vulnerable adults before the result of an Enhanced DBS check.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what (a) programmes and (b) interventions are used to reduce reoffending among domestic abusers in the community; and what the reoffending rates are among people who participate.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
HM Prison and Probation Service currently offers five Accredited Programmes that may be undertaken by those convicted of domestic abuse offences. These are the Building Better Relationships programme, Becoming New Me +, New Me Strengths, Building Choices (available in prisons and probation), and Kaizen (available in prisons only). These programmes may also be undertaken by offenders with a range of offending types, however, so it is not possible to provide re-offending outcomes specifically in relation to domestic abusers.
Accredited Programmes more generally are well-evidenced. Most international reviews indicate that programmes reduce reoffending generally by about 20% to 30%.
In addition to Accredited Programmes, a number of approved interventions are also delivered by HMPPS and other partners, including Third Sector organisations. The National Framework for Interventions Policy Framework - GOV.UK sets out the minimum design standards for these types of interventions.
Structured Interventions are available as a sentence of the court, by inclusion in a Rehabilitation Activity Requirement. They are part of a set of interventions delivered by regional interventions teams in the community. Those which focus specifically on domestic abuse include Stepwise Relationships, Positive Pathways Plus, Help, and Developing Assertiveness for Women in Relationships.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of domestic abusers perpetrated further crimes in prison in (a) 2022, (b) 2023, and (c) 2024.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
It is not possible to robustly calculate the number of domestic abusers in prison or their reoffending rate. This is because these crimes are recorded under the specific offences for which they are prosecuted, such as intentional strangulation or suffocation. Data relating to crimes in prison is held across police referral and adjudication records. To be able to identify these cases we would have to access and review all potentially relevant records which would be of disproportionate cost.
The Public Protection Policy Framework and the Unwanted Prisoner Contact Service work to protect victims and prevent offenders, such as domestic abusers, from continuing to carry out crimes such as stalking or coercive controlling behaviour from prison.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of domestic abusers perpetrate domestic abuse against their original victims within (a) one year, (b) three years, (c) five years and (d) ten years of conviction.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
It is not possible to robustly calculate the number of domestic abusers in prison or their reoffending rate. This is because these crimes are recorded under the specific offences for which they are prosecuted, such as intentional strangulation or suffocation.
This Government is prioritising public protection from, and rehabilitation for, this cohort through measures such as better training for probation officers and improved use of monitoring technology. We have also recently introduced Domestic Abuse Protection Orders, which brings together the strongest elements of existing orders to protect victims.
This Government also ensured that a range of offences linked to domestic abuse have been excluded from the early release programme, unlike the scheme run by the previous Conservative Government. We have set out an unprecedented mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade, using every tool available to us to deliver transformative change.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of domestic abusers reoffend within (a) one year, (b) three years, (c) five years and (d) ten years of conviction.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
It is not possible to robustly calculate the number of domestic abusers in prison or their reoffending rate. This is because these crimes are recorded under the specific offences for which they are prosecuted, such as intentional strangulation or suffocation.
This Government is prioritising public protection from, and rehabilitation for, this cohort through measures such as better training for probation officers and improved use of monitoring technology. We have also recently introduced Domestic Abuse Protection Orders, which brings together the strongest elements of existing orders to protect victims.
This Government also ensured that a range of offences linked to domestic abuse have been excluded from the early release programme, unlike the scheme run by the previous Conservative Government. We have set out an unprecedented mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade, using every tool available to us to deliver transformative change.