Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the training required of investigators employed by statutory bodies with the authority to undertake prosecutions external to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Private prosecutions, which are started by a private individual or an entity who is not acting on behalf of the police or other prosecuting authority, are an important and necessary part of the justice system. There is value in victims of crime being able to bring their own prosecutions and not every offence worth prosecuting can be prosecuted by the CPS, SFO or other public authority.
Any private prosecutor must comply with the Criminal Procedure Rules 2020 which sets out the rules for bringing a prosecution. All legal duties on prosecutors regarding their conduct of a case apply regardless of whether it is a public or a private prosecution, including the rules on disclosure and the law of evidence. As outlined in the Private Prosecutors’ Association voluntary Code for Private Prosecutors, investigators who are tasked with obtaining evidence should seek, where possible, to comply with the same codes of practice and guidance as apply to law enforcement investigators.
Whilst the Government believes that private prosecutions are an important and necessary part of the judicial system, we are examining the wider question of private prosecutions and have committed to looking again at the Justice Select Committee’s recommendations in their 2020 report as part of this work, including the recommendation to introduce an inspection regime for organisations which bring significant numbers of private prosecutions to ensure investigations and prosecutions are subject to the same standards as their public counterparts.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent progress his Department has made on implementing the reforms in the Root and Branch Review of the Parole System published on 30 March 2022.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
We have increased Ministerial oversight of moves of certain prisoners to open prisons and introduced a process for Ministers to submit a view on release.
We have allowed for some parole hearings to be held in public and commenced a testing phase for victims to attend parole hearings if they wish.
Reforms to the release process, including the Ministerial power to refuse release, require primary legislation. We will introduce this when parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what support is being made available for victims and survivors of domestic abuse, including children (a) nationally and (b) in Leicestershire.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 introduces a range of measures to help protect victims of domestic abuse and their children, including prohibiting abusers from cross-examining their victims in the family and civil courts, giving victims enhanced access to special measures in the courtroom, and introducing powerful new Domestic Abuse Protection Notices and Orders. The Act recognises that domestic abuse can impact on a child who sees or hears or experiences the effects of the abuse and it treats such children as victims of domestic abuse in their own right.
In 2021/22, the Ministry of Justice provided £150.5m for victim and witness support services, including those which support victims of domestic abuse. Of this, the Leicestershire Police and Crime Commissioner received c£2m to commission local victim support services.
We are increasing funding for victim and witness support services to £185m by 2024/25. This additional funding will enable us to significantly expand victim support services including increasing the number of Independent Sexual and Domestic Violence Advisers funded by the MoJ to over 1,000. On 25 March, the Ministry of Justice announced that it will be committing £147 million of this budget per annum on a multi-year basis, for the next three years (2022/23 to 2024/25 inclusive). This will allow victim support services, and those commissioning them, to invest in building capacity and strengthen the resilience of services, which will in turn provide consistency to victims receiving support. It will help to ensure that high quality support is available to victims when needed.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what support has been provided to reduce the backlog of criminal cases in (a) Leicester Crown Court and (b) the Midlands.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Government is committed to supporting the recovery of the courts. We recognise that the impact of the pandemic in courts has been uneven across the country, with the Midlands being one of the areas experiencing a greater increase in caseload.
In order to tackle the backlogs, we have extended 30 Nightingale courtrooms beyond the end of March 2022. Two of these are in the Midlands, Park Hall Hotel in Wolverhampton and Maple House in Birmingham. We are also working with the judiciary to explore moving cases across regional boundaries to areas with spare capacity, where appropriate, and using a national, flexible pool of judges for some regions, including the Midlands, to draw from as required.
We opened a new ‘super courtroom’ in Loughborough to expand capacity for multi-hander cases, which involve three or more defendants, that have built up during the pandemic as they were harder to hear with social distancing measures in place. This ‘super courtroom’ will create the space needed to hear trials and free up capacity elsewhere in Leicestershire and the Midlands, allowing up to an extra 250 cases a year to be heard across England and Wales.
We have once again removed the limit on sitting days in the Crown Court for this financial year to allow courts to work at full capacity, delivering swifter justice for victims and reducing the backlog of cases. To secure enough capacity to sit at the required levels in 2022/23 and beyond we are expanding our plans for judicial recruitment.
To provide additional capacity in the Crown Court we are extending magistrates’ court sentencing powers from 6 to 12 months’ imprisonment for a single Triable either Way offence to allow more cases to be heard in the magistrates’ court and help to drive down the backlog of cases over the coming years.
These measures are already working, and as a result we expect to get through 20% more Crown Court cases this financial year than we did pre-Covid. Following an increase in funding as part of the Ministry of Justice’s Spending Review settlement, we aim to reduce the number of outstanding cases in the Crown Court to 53,000 by March 2025.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent progress has been made on reviewing the parole system.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
As announced in October 2020, a Root and Branch Review of the parole system is currently underway. This review will draw together the reforms and changes that have taken place in the parole system in recent years. It is focusing on issues such as the future constitution of the Parole Board, ways in which to improve the overall transparency of the parole system, the possibility of public parole hearings in some cases and allowing for victims to observe hearings if they wish. This will fulfil our manifesto commitments made before the last general election.
The full terms of reference of the Review can be read here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/parole-system-reform/terms-of-reference
I intend to report on the progress of the Root and Branch Review later this year.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of longer sentences on deterring people from carrying knives without good reason.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
We understand the devastating impact knife crime has on victims and their families and are determined to do all we can to break the deadly cycle of violence that devastates the lives of individuals, families and communities. We are taking significant action to both prevent and respond to crimes involving weapons through the Serious Violence Strategy, the introduction of Knife Crime Prevention Orders, the recruitment of 20,000 new police officers, and increasing stop and search powers.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, currently before Parliament, introduces Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs). These will give the police powers to make it easier to stop and search those already convicted of knife and offensive weapon offences. A person who is subject to an order will know that if they persist in carrying a weapon, there is a greater chance they will be searched, detected and arrested.
In respect of sentencing, deterrence is one of the purposes, but there are other important aims. These include public protection and a strong punitive element, to help make our streets and communities safer and to give victims confidence that justice has been served.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has plans to increase sentences for people convicted of fraudulent activity that is related to the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is committed to ensuring a robust response to those who exploit the covid-19 outbreak through criminal means.
Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for our independent courts. Fraud is a serious offence and Parliament, in setting a maximum penalty of 10 years’ custody, has provided the courts with the full range of sentencing powers to deal effectively with offenders.
If a victim is particularly vulnerable for any reason (this applies regardless of the Covid context) then the sentencing guidelines do provide an aggravating factor for the victim’s vulnerability. This means a more severe penalty could be imposed than would have been the case absent the aggravating factor (subject always to the maximum penalty for the offence).
The Government continues to work alongside the CPS to provide a multi-agency response to criminality associated with covid-19. A joint interim charging protocol has been agreed between the police and CPS which gives the highest priority to custody cases and all covid-19 related cases, including related fraud offences.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will take steps to increase sentencing for people found guilty of spitting at police officers during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
It is vital that offenders using coronavirus to threaten our emergency workers as they strive to protect us during this pandemic face the full force of the law.
Such behaviour is an assault and where this is directed at an emergency worker we have recently doubled the maximum penalty for assault from 6 to 12 months’ imprisonment. We have already seen significant sentences imposed on those using coronavirus as a threat.
Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for our independent Courts. On 8 April 2020, the Sentencing Council also published interim guidance for sentencers in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The interim guidance clarifies that, when sentencing common assault offences involving threats or activity relating to transmission of Covid-19, courts should treat this as an aggravating feature of the offence, meaning a more severe penalty could be imposed than would have been the case absent the aggravating factor (subject always to the maximum penalty for the offence).