Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Debate between Shailesh Vara and Julian Huppert(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Huppert
We heard earlier that such charges would be the lowest priority of claim. The Justice Secretary was clear on that. Surely, if only 80% of the higher priority claims are collected and some people run out of money when they have paid the highest priority, a lower proportion of the low-priority claims will be collected.
Mr Vara
My hon. Friend needs to appreciate that the time lag will be longer. This will be the last element to be claimed. It will be claimed after the others. There will be a priority element, and this will be the last bit. There is no reason to conclude that, if the other four criteria have been met with an 80% collection rate, the fifth one will not.
The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd)—I hope that I have pronounced the constituency name correctly, or close enough—had concerns about prison places. As the Justice Secretary said in his opening remarks, in the next 15 or so months, we expect that there will be some 2,000 more places, and Wrexham prison will have more than 2,000 places by 2017. He raised secure colleges. I emphasise that the aim is to reduce reoffending and have the expertise to provide for educational needs.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Shailesh Vara and Julian Huppert(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
T2. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 is one of the great achievements of this Government but it left a few issues unresolved, one of which relates to humanist weddings, which are very popular in Scotland but currently not allowed here. The Act required the Secretary of State to conduct a review. What progress has been made on it, so that we can get on with allowing such weddings to happen?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
My hon. Friend is right to say that the Government made a commitment to have a review, and we will do that. We will be starting it soon, and we will have a consultation. We intend to have the results of the review by the end of the year.