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Written Question
Marriage: Humanism
Thursday 3rd October 2019

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to bring forward legislative proposals to amend section 14 of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 to give legal recognition to humanist marriages before waiting for the outcome of the Law Commission’s review.

Answered by Wendy Morton

The Law Commission review that the Government announced this June is a fundamental review of the law on how and where people can legally marry in England and Wales. As part of that review, the Government invited the Law Commission to make recommendations about how marriage by humanist and other non-religious belief organisations could be incorporated into a revised or new scheme for all marriages that is simple, fair and consistent.


Written Question
Marriage: Humanism
Thursday 3rd October 2019

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for what reasons the Law Commission is undertaking a review into humanist marriages.

Answered by Wendy Morton

The Law Commission review that the Government announced this June is a fundamental review of the law on how and where people can legally marry in England and Wales. The law has been added to over several centuries without any systematic reform.

As part of that review, the Government invited the Law Commission to make recommendations about how marriage by humanist and other non-religious belief organisations could be incorporated into a revised or new scheme for all marriages that is simple, fair and consistent.

The Law Commission has published the terms of reference for the review at https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/weddings/.


Written Question
Marriage: Finance
Thursday 3rd October 2019

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what funding has been allocated to the Law Commission review of the law on marriage.

Answered by Wendy Morton

The Law Commission will review the law on how and where people can marry in England and Wales, and will provide recommendations for a simple, fair and consistent system which gives couples choice in to marry in a way that is meaningful to them. The cost of this project will be approximately £400,000.

This cost is for the resource for two years of a project team made up of one full-time lawyer, one full-time research assistant, a proportion of the time of a team manager and some travel, publication and translation costs (totalling approximately £150,000 per year) plus the cost of engaging a specialist academic (£50,000 per year).


Written Question
Probate: Standards
Tuesday 9th July 2019

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the probate system.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

Waiting times in the probate service have recently increased. However, following urgent action by the courts service, they are now starting to improve.

The temporary delays were the result of more work coming into the system and the impact of the initial move to a new IT system for managing probate work.

Now that move is complete, and the unusually high workload has been dealt with, we expect waiting times to continue to improve – and be back to normal levels in the coming weeks.


Written Question
Prisons: Staff
Monday 10th September 2018

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department and HM Prison and Probation Service are taking to speed up security clearance for health and social care staff commencing employment in prisons.

Answered by Rory Stewart

The last year has seen a significant increase in the level of recruitment with a target of deploying an additional 2,500 prison officers in post by the end of 2018. This has impacted the overall volume of cases handled by our shared services provider, due to significant increases in the number of applications handled. This has resulted in backlogs in processing across all of the business.

The right balance needs to be struck between having staff appropriately security cleared and the speed at which they can begin employment with HMPPS. Steps have been taken to review the whole recruitment end-to-end procedure to look at the points in which delays have or can take place. Action has been taken to address these and the backlog of cases has been reduced significantly from last year. This in turn, has also resulted in speedier processing times in security vetting for all staff.


Written Question
Prisons: Staff
Monday 10th September 2018

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average number of days taken was to gain security clearance for health and social care professionals seeking to commence employment in prisons in each of the last five financial years.

Answered by Rory Stewart

The average number of days taken to complete security clearance for health and social care professionals seeking employment within HMPPS from 2016 has been provided in the table below.

We are unable to provide this information for cases prior to 2016, as a different operating system was used and to which the now service provider to HMPPS does not have access.

Financial Year

Average days

2016 - 2017

56

2017 - 2018

71

April 2018 to present

37

Please note - that the information in the table for health and social care professionals has been collated based on the job title of the campaign and may be subject to slight variations.


Written Question
Post-mortems
Wednesday 7th February 2018

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to collect centrally data on waiting times for coronial post mortems for (a) adults, (b) children and (c) neonatal deaths.

Answered by Phillip Lee

The Ministry of Justice collects data on the number of post mortem examinations commissioned by coroners and this is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/coroners-statistics-2016

We have no plans to collect data on waiting times for coroner post mortems.


Written Question
Sexual Offences: Trials
Wednesday 7th February 2018

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many applications were made under S41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 for (a) sexual assault and (b) rape in each of the last five years.

Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

The information requested is not held centrally.

We asked the CPS to analyse a sample of rape cases finalised in 2016 to assess the frequency and outcome of applications to introduce evidence of a complainant’s sexual history under s 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.

A section 41 application was made by the defence in 13% of the 309 sample cases looked at. In 8% of the 309 sample cases, an application to permit such evidence was granted by the court.

These are not official published statistics. For further details of this study, see our report published in December: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/limiting-the-use-of-complainants-sexual-history-in-sexual-offence-cases


Written Question
Rape: Trials
Wednesday 7th February 2018

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the criteria are for applications under S41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, in cases of rape.

Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

The same criteria apply to proceedings in relation to all sexual offences. See page 5 of the report ‘Limiting the use of complainants’ sexual history in sexual offences cases’ available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/limiting-the-use-of-complainants-sexual-history-in-sexual-offence-cases


Written Question
Sexual Offences: Trials
Wednesday 7th February 2018

Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the criteria are for applications under S41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, in cases of sexual assault.

Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

The same criteria apply to proceedings in relation to all sexual offences. See page 5 of the report ‘Limiting the use of complainants’ sexual history in sexual offences cases’ available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/limiting-the-use-of-complainants-sexual-history-in-sexual-offence-cases