Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress her Department has made toward publishing the results of the urgent review into the presumption of parental involvement.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The previous Government announced the Review into the Presumption of Parental Involvement in November 2020, following the recommendation of the Harm Panel Report. Research into the courts’ application of the presumption was commissioned and carried out, however the outcome of the Review was not published before the 2024 general election was announced.
The Government is committed to improving outcomes for all children and families involved in the family courts. Ministers are considering the evidence gathered and the Government's response will be published in due course.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to reduce the backlog in the administration of family court orders.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The HMCTS Reform Programme has introduced several new digital services within the Family Courts, enhancing and automating the administration of family court orders. These services encompass Divorce, Financial Remedy, and Public Law Proceedings.
Additionally, HMCTS has transitioned much of the administration of these services to the newly established Courts and Tribunals Service Centres. Centralising work to national centres has allowed for better management of work fluctuations across the various services; improved data collection on HMCTS performance and identification of areas for enhancement; and more effective alignment of working patterns to meet demand.
Currently, HMCTS is piloting a new digital service for private law proceedings, aiming to replicate the administrative improvements seen in other family services. This service is scheduled to be implemented across England and Wales by the end of 2025.
Whilst this new service is being piloted, HMCTS continues to prioritise the orders wating to be administered according to their urgency and are using specialist order production teams to target delay at specific local court courts.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether her Department plans to take steps to help ensure the parents and guardians of disabled children are able to access (a) Child Trust Funds and (b) Junior ISAs.
Answered by Heidi Alexander - Secretary of State for Transport
Where a young adult lacks mental capacity, including due to a disability, the law requires parents or a guardian to have legal authority to make decisions on their behalf about financial assets or property. This includes in relation to accessing funds held in a Child Trust Fund or a Junior ISA.
On 9 June 2023, the Ministry of Justice published the ‘Making Financial Decisions for young people: parent and carer toolkit’, explaining the process by which parents and guardians of disabled children are able to obtain legal authority if no other arrangements are in place. This can be done by making an application to the Court of Protection for an order authorising access to monies held in a Child Trust Fund or Junior ISA. The toolkit is available on GOV.UK.
We understand that concerns remain, and the Ministry of Justice is exploring what further can be done to help improve access to matured Child Trust Funds.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether her Department plans to (a) review and (b) reform civil legal aid.
Answered by Heidi Alexander - Secretary of State for Transport
We are committed to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the civil legal aid sector and are keen to work closely with practitioners and their representative bodies to look at how best we can address this.
We want to understand the different ways in which the justice system can be improved and will be carefully considering our options on the way forward. This includes considering the evidence on civil legal aid gathered over the past year.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he expects the new segregation unit at HMP Bedford to be (a) completed and (b) opened.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The design brief for the new care and separation unit at HMP Bedford was to identify a suitable location for a facility which would address HMIP concerns while minimising the impacts on operational capacity, security and regime. The proposal agreed with the Prison was to covert part of B wing into the new unit in place of place the old one.
The care and separation unit is due to be completed in early March 2024, however additional works are required in B wing before the wing can be put back into use. While the programme for this is not yet finalised, the aim is for the new unit to open before the end of the year.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been held on the segregation unit at HMP Bedford since 17 November 2023.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
As records of prisoners who have left the prison on transfer or on release are no longer accessible to the prison, it is not possible, without incurring disproportionate cost, to say how many individual prisoners were segregated during the period.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of plans to replace the segregation unit at HMP Bedford.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The design brief for the new care and separation unit at HMP Bedford was to identify a suitable location for a facility which would address HMIP concerns while minimising the impacts on operational capacity, security and regime. The proposal agreed with the Prison was to covert part of B wing into the new unit in place of place the old one.
The care and separation unit is due to be completed in early March 2024, however additional works are required in B wing before the wing can be put back into use. While the programme for this is not yet finalised, the aim is for the new unit to open before the end of the year.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing specialised training to (a) administrative and (b) auxiliary staff in the Family Court service on domestic violence including (i) recognising it, (ii) supporting vulnerable individuals and (iii) how to report concerns.
Answered by Mike Freer
HMCTS staff are trained to support vulnerable individuals by providing practical protections, such as, protective screens, video links, and access to separate waiting rooms and separate entrances in accordance with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and Part 3A of the Family Procedure Rules. All staff follow safeguarding policies to recognise vulnerable individuals and report concerns. Staff complete annual training on safeguarding, and domestic abuse training is currently being updated in conjunction with HMCTS’ Domestic Abuse Working Group which includes judicial members and representatives from a Women’s Centre.
The Government is delivering on commitments made in response to the final report of the Expert Panel on Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Cases. This includes working with across the family justice system to improve training on domestic abuse and to provide all professionals with the tools to effectively support vulnerable parties.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he had made of the potential merits of requiring that health support workers are the first point of contact for prison leavers with substance dependency; and what steps he is taking to provide these leavers with timely access to health services.
Answered by Damian Hinds
It is vital that all prisoners and prison leavers with a substance dependency can access timely and high-quality treatment to recover from the misuse that drives offending, with dedicated staff in place to ensure continuity of the appropriate support and treatment once someone is released. We work closely with the NHS, Department for Health and Social Care and the Welsh Government to make this possible.
The Ministry of Justice is investing up to £120m over the next three-years to keep drugs out of prisons and get offenders off drugs and into recovery. This includes focusing on prison in-reach by providing prisoners with the opportunity to engage with community treatment pre-release via video calling, and recruiting Health and Justice Coordinators in every probation region to improve links between prison and local treatment services, ensuring continuity of care upon release.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of closing HMP Bedford and transferring prisoners to HMP Wellingborough when it is operational.
Answered by Rory Stewart
The Government is committed to the modernisation of the prison estate. This will be achieved by delivering up to 10,000 modern, safe and decent prison places as previously announced, and the reconfiguration of the existing estate, providing the physical conditions for Governors to achieve better educational, training and rehabilitative outcomes. The delivery of new places will enable the Prison Estate Transformation Programme to achieve a combination of replacing existing capacity and increasing current capacity so that we will be able to close the least fit for purpose prison accommodation while ensuring we continue to meet demand. Population and capacity of the prison estate is kept under careful review to ensure there is always sufficient capacity. Decisions on the size of the future prison estate will reflect the current and projected prison population, including an assessment of the necessary margin to manage population fluctuations. No decisions have been made about future prison closures (male or female) beyond those which have already been announced. |