Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to support victims of sexual assault.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
This Government is deeply committed to supporting victims of sexual assault. To do so, we must improve the justice system’s response to these crimes. We must relentlessly target the most prolific and harmful perpetrators; better support victims and survivors; and ensure timely and effective justice.
To do this, the Government has committed to:
Increasing the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner, ensuring that victims get the information that they need throughout their justice system journey.
Introducing specialist rape and sexual offence teams in every police force, providing the capacity and capability our police forces need to respond to these offences.
Introducing independent legal advocates to rape victims, ensuring that victims know and can uphold their rights.
Fast tracking rape cases through the courts, driving down waiting times for victims of these abhorrent offences.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential effectiveness of offenders being placed on probation in a city that is different from their supervising probation service.
Answered by Damian Hinds
In order to obtain data on the relocation of people on probation, individual case files would need to be reviewed. The information could therefore not be collated without incurring disproportionate cost.
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service provides accommodation directly to some offenders through its Community Accommodation Service: for example, approved premises for high-risk offenders and temporary accommodation for homeless prison leavers. We endeavour to accommodate offenders in an area that would be best for their rehabilitation, usually this is in their local area. However, a range of factors needs to be considered, including but not limited to the protection of victims. It may sometimes be more beneficial for an individual to be placed outside of an area where they have existing links due to their personal circumstances. This can include on occasion both individuals originally from elsewhere being housed in Birmingham, and individuals originally from Birmingham being housed elsewhere.
Offenders supervised by probation will normally be allocated to the Probation Delivery Unit local to them. Changes of location during a sentence can be disruptive and potentially impact on risk management and sentence planning and delivery. Changes can also, however, provide an opportunity for refreshing engagement, and the strengths and benefits of any move must also be identified and encouraged. In order to mitigate any risks, case transfers from one probation area to another are planned and managed.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of offenders are placed on probation in communities where they have no preexisting links.
Answered by Damian Hinds
In order to obtain data on the relocation of people on probation, individual case files would need to be reviewed. The information could therefore not be collated without incurring disproportionate cost.
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service provides accommodation directly to some offenders through its Community Accommodation Service: for example, approved premises for high-risk offenders and temporary accommodation for homeless prison leavers. We endeavour to accommodate offenders in an area that would be best for their rehabilitation, usually this is in their local area. However, a range of factors needs to be considered, including but not limited to the protection of victims. It may sometimes be more beneficial for an individual to be placed outside of an area where they have existing links due to their personal circumstances. This can include on occasion both individuals originally from elsewhere being housed in Birmingham, and individuals originally from Birmingham being housed elsewhere.
Offenders supervised by probation will normally be allocated to the Probation Delivery Unit local to them. Changes of location during a sentence can be disruptive and potentially impact on risk management and sentence planning and delivery. Changes can also, however, provide an opportunity for refreshing engagement, and the strengths and benefits of any move must also be identified and encouraged. In order to mitigate any risks, case transfers from one probation area to another are planned and managed.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders have been relocated to Birmingham to serve their probation in the last 12 months.
Answered by Damian Hinds
In order to obtain data on the relocation of people on probation, individual case files would need to be reviewed. The information could therefore not be collated without incurring disproportionate cost.
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service provides accommodation directly to some offenders through its Community Accommodation Service: for example, approved premises for high-risk offenders and temporary accommodation for homeless prison leavers. We endeavour to accommodate offenders in an area that would be best for their rehabilitation, usually this is in their local area. However, a range of factors needs to be considered, including but not limited to the protection of victims. It may sometimes be more beneficial for an individual to be placed outside of an area where they have existing links due to their personal circumstances. This can include on occasion both individuals originally from elsewhere being housed in Birmingham, and individuals originally from Birmingham being housed elsewhere.
Offenders supervised by probation will normally be allocated to the Probation Delivery Unit local to them. Changes of location during a sentence can be disruptive and potentially impact on risk management and sentence planning and delivery. Changes can also, however, provide an opportunity for refreshing engagement, and the strengths and benefits of any move must also be identified and encouraged. In order to mitigate any risks, case transfers from one probation area to another are planned and managed.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he will make it his policy to recognise Handfastings as a legal ceremony of marriage.
Answered by Mike Freer
In July 2019, the Government invited the Law Commission to undertake a wholesale review on weddings law in England and Wales. The Law Commission report was published on 19 July 2022 and contains 57 recommendations for extensive legislative reform.
We must now take the time to consider the report recommendations fully. As has been set out in Parliament, marriage will always be one of our most important institutions, and we have a duty to consider the implications of any changes to the law in this area very carefully. We will publish a response to the report in due course.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent estimate has he made of the number of rental repossessions in Birmingham since 1 January 2022.
Answered by Mike Freer
HMCTS publishes statistics on volumes of mortgage and landlord possession here - Mortgage and landlord possession statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The latest published statistics goes up to September 2022.
This data can be filtered by Court, Region, Local Authority using the Data Visualisation Tool - Data visualisation tool - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of home repossessions in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands and (c) the UK since 1 January 2022.
Answered by Mike Freer
HMCTS publishes statistics on volumes of mortgage and landlord possession here - Mortgage and landlord possession statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The latest published statistics goes up to September 2022.
This data can be filtered by Court, Region, Local Authority using the Data Visualisation Tool - Data visualisation tool - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time has been between arrest and appearing in front of magistrates for people charged with knife possession in (a) Birmingham and (b) the West Midlands in each of the last 12 years.
Answered by Simon Baynes
The Ministry of Justice routinely publishes timeliness estimates of the key stages of the criminal justice system as part of the Criminal Court Statistics quarterly National Statistics release.
The published estimates cover the periods from offence to charge, charge to first listing and through from first listing to completion (at either magistrates’ and Crown Court).
The latest published information is available to March 2022 and can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-court-statistics.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) women and (b) men received a prison sentence of under six months in (i) March, (ii) April and (iii) May 2020.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The requested data is not available at this time. National Statistics on sentencing for the first and second quarter of 2020 are due for publication in August and November 2020, with detailed data, including offender characteristic, for the whole of 2020 planned for publication in May 2021.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many video hearings were conducted by magistrates courts in each of the last three months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The estimated number of video hearings conducted in the Magistrates’ Courts in the last three months is:
April 2020 | 5,298 |
May 2020 | 20,845 |
June 2020 (to 11th June 2020) | 9,114 |
This data is manually collated each day and reported by individual courts and must be considered in that light with all the inherent risks in relation to possible input errors and missed submissions.