Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the cost of providing free court transcripts to survivors of sexual assault and other serious crimes.
Answered by Heidi Alexander - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
I understand transcripts may help individuals obtain closure from traumatic events.
Since May 2024, the Ministry of Justice has been running a pilot providing free sentencing remarks to victims of rape and serious sexual offences. We will be evaluating the pilot to understand cost, uptake and impact on victims when it ends in May 2025.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an estimate of the average number of words in a judge's sentencing remarks from court proceedings at HM Courts and Tribunals over the last 12 months.
Answered by Mike Freer
Management information held about transcript requests is limited, and the information requested is not held centrally. Contracted suppliers are required to provide HM Courts and Tribunals Service with certain data, including the folio count, but that data could not be disaggregated to report specifically on requests for sentencing remarks per se, and in any event would not enable any report on word (rather than page) count.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an estimate of the average cost of obtaining the (a) sentencing remarks and (b) judge's summing-up to HM Courts and Tribunals over the last 12 months.
Answered by Mike Freer
Management information held about transcript requests is limited, and the information requested is not held centrally. Contracted suppliers are required to provide HM Courts and Tribunals Service with certain data, including raw data on individual application costs, but that data could not be disaggregated to report specifically on requests for sentencing remarks or summing up per se.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 16 October 2023 to Question 199796 on HM Courts and Tribunals Service: Fees and Charges, how many and what proportion of those orders were made for trials that involved allegations of (a) rape and (b) serious sexual assault.
Answered by Mike Freer
The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many ministerial red boxes belonging to his Department have been reported (a) lost and (b) stolen in each of the last three years.
Answered by Mike Freer
The following table includes the number of lost or stolen ministerial red boxes from the Ministry of Justice between 2021 and 2024.
| February 2021-February 2024 |
Lost | 0 |
Stolen | 0 |
The departmental security unit records and investigates each reported loss from the Department. If appropriate, the police are invited to undertake further inquiries.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether any refurbishments have been made to ministerial offices in his Department in each of the last two years.
Answered by Mike Freer
There has been no refurbishment of the Ministry of Justice’s ministerial offices in the last two years.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many settlement payments his Department issued following claims of (a) bullying, (b) harassment and (c) discrimination in the (i) 2021-22, (ii) 2022-23 financial years.
Answered by Mike Freer
The information requested in relation to Employment Tribunal settlements could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Data in relation to settlements is not held centrally.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much his Department spent on press and public relations in each financial year since 2019-20.
Answered by Mike Freer
Like any large operational organisation, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has press and public relation roles to work with the media to ensure the work of the department and its agencies is communicated to the public, as well as ensuring the department is able to attract and recruit sufficient staff to operate critical front line services.
MoJ operates a 24/7, 365-day press office that supports MoJ, HM Prison and Probation Service, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, Legal Aid Agency, Office for the Public Guardian and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.
In the face of an increasingly challenging recruitment market over recent years, the MoJ has stood up additional, separate PR support to generate applications for critical frontline roles, including prison and probation staff and magistrates, which has led to an increase in PR spend over this period. This has allowed the department to ensure its front line public services remain staffed and operational.
Below is a table showing the Ministry of Justice’s press and PR spend since 2019.
Year | Spend |
2019-2020 | £1,507,000 |
2020-2021 | £1,681,000 |
2021-2022 | £1,965,000 |
2022-2023 | £2,612,000 |
2023-2024 | We are unable to provide figures on unaudited/open accounts. |
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many settlement payments his Department issued following claims of (a) bullying, (b) harassment and (c) discrimination in the (i) 2019-20, (ii) 2020-21, (iii) 2021-22 and (iv) 2022-23 financial years.
Answered by Mike Freer
The information requested for the period between 2019 - 2020 is not held centrally due to GDPR rules.
The information requested for the period between 2020 and 2023 could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what data their Department holds on the (a) number and (b) total cost of replacing (i) laptops, (ii) mobile phones, (iii) memory sticks and (iv) external hard drives that have been (A) lost and (B) stolen in the last year.
Answered by Mike Freer
Please find the requested data summarised in the table below:
| Laptops | Mobile Phones | Memory sticks | External hard drives |
Lost | 139 | 44 | 0 | 0 |
Stolen | 86 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
Total devices | 225 | 51 | - | - |
Total cost of replacing | £239,220.00 | £19,023 | - | - |
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has around 91,875 employees across the department. The proportion of lost and stolen devices therefore are low compared to this number.
The MoJ, including its executive agencies (HM Courts & Tribunals Service, HM Prison & Probation Service, Legal Aid Agency, Office of the Public Guardian and Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority) and smaller public bodies, treats lost or stolen devices seriously and have processes in place to ensure that when a device is reported as lost or stolen, action is taken immediately to disable the device. All incidents are subjected to an initial security risk assessment with further action on a proportional basis.
It is MoJ policy that all laptops and removable media are encrypted to minimise the impact if a loss were to occur. All mobile phones are deactivated once reported missing to minimise the impact if a loss was to occur.
There is also published guidance on what to do which can be found via this link: https://security-guidance.service.justice.gov.uk/lost-devices-incidents/#lost-devices-or-other-it-security-incidents.