Asked by: Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to reduce the backlog of child access cases in family courts following the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The protection of children, in particular those who are most vulnerable, is a priority for this government and this has never been more important than during the Covid-19 pandemic. I am extremely grateful for the dedication of family justice professionals at this unprecedented time.
The family courts have been quick to respond to the pandemic. The cases deemed to be most urgent are being prioritised, and where suitable, cases are being heard remotely to allow this vital work to continue during lockdown periods. Hundreds of courtrooms have since reopened to allow face-to-face hearings, and a record number of sitting days were used in June and July 2020 with family judges sitting more days than previously planned before the pandemic.
We are continuing to work across the family justice system to boost the throughput of cases, building on steps already taken such as enhancing the role of legal advisors and encouraging the more effective triaging and routing of cases according to type.
Asked by: Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Justice, how many (i) Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders and (ii) Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders were made by courts in each calendar year from 2016 to 2019 inclusive; and how many of those were made in respect of (a) EEA or Swiss nationals, excluding UK nationals and (b) UK nationals.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The number of i) Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders and ii) Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders in each calendar year from 2016- 2019 can be found in the accompanying tables. Robust data in relation to nationality is not held in the HMCTS courts Management Information Database.
Asked by: Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign national offenders convicted of human trafficking or modern slavery offences were returned to their country of origin under (a) the Early Removal Scheme, (b) an EU Prisoner Transfer Framework Decision, (c) the Additional Protocol to the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons and (d) bilateral prisoner transfer agreements in each year from 2016 to 2019; and under each scheme how many returned offenders were EEA or Swiss nationals in each of those years.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
We continue to remove foreign national offenders where routes are available.
Since 2010, we have removed over 55,000 foreign national offenders from our prisons, immigration removal centres and the community, with 4,743 removed in 2019/20.
We are absolutely committed to removing foreign national offenders from the UK and continue to work closely with international governments to maximise the removal of serious and persistent offenders.
We are constantly reviewing progress to ensure that all options are being pursued and that our early removal mechanisms are working as effectively as possible.
The latest published information on foreign national offenders returned under the Early Removal and Facilitated Returns Schemes is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-enforcement-data-august-2020 (Table FNO_09 in Transparency data Immigration Enforcement data: August 2020, provides the numbers of foreign nationals removed under the Early Removal Scheme every year since 2010 but that there is no published data that breaks down these numbers by nationality or offence type).
| FNOs repatriated under EUPTFD convicted of human trafficking or modern slavery offences | FNOs repatriated under CoE Convention convicted of human trafficking or modern slavery offences | FNOs repatriated under bilateral PTAs convicted of human trafficking or modern slavery offences |
2016 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
2017 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2018 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
2019 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
All five prisoners repatriated under the EUPTFD were EEA nationals.
Asked by: Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Justice, how many people were (a) prosecuted and (b) convicted of human trafficking and modern slavery offences as the principal offence; of those people how many were EEA or Swiss nationals excluding UK nationals; how many additional people flagged by the CPS as being investigated for human trafficking and modern slavery offences were (i) prosecuted and (ii) convicted of other offences; and of those people how many were EEA or Swiss nationals excluding UK nationals in each calendar year from 2016 to 2019.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Ministry of Justice has published data on the number of people prosecuted and convicted in England and Wales up to the year ending December 2019 for the following human trafficking-related offences and offences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, available at the link below:
Filter ‘Offence’ by:
The resulting table will then display the those prosecuted and convicted for the above offences over the 2013-2019 period.
However, it is not possible to identify the nationality of the defendants as this information is not held in the courts proceedings database.
Moreover, CPS flagged data relating to individuals prosecuted for human trafficking or modern slavery does not identify the specific offences prosecuted or convicted.