Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many justices of the peace served at Telford Magistrates Court in each of the last six years.
Answered by Heidi Alexander - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Magistrates that sit at Telford Magistrates’ Court are appointed to the Shropshire Bench. The Shropshire Bench covers Telford and Kidderminster Magistrates Court and the magistrates may be required to sit at any of these courts. The table below shows the number of magistrates on the Shropshire Bench (existing members and new appointments) for the years requested:
2024 | 76 |
2023 | 75 |
2022 | 82 |
2021 | 87 |
2020 | 82 |
2019 | 91 |
The Staffordshire and West Mercia Advisory Committee on Justices of the Peace’s recruitment plans are published here: Advisory Committee Recruitment Plan - Magistrates Recruitment.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many offenders who have been ordered to be deported following their prison sentence remain in the country by (a) offence and (b) country of birth.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
We are committed to delivering justice for victims and safer streets for our communities.
Any foreign national offender (FNO) convicted of a crime who receives a custodial sentence in the UK is referred to the Home Office for deportation consideration following sentencing. We are focusing resources on those cases currently serving custodial sentences directly from prison.
The latest statistics on FNO removals and on FNOs subject to deportation action are available here: Immigration Enforcement data: Q2 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
We will pursue deportation action against individuals living in the community rigorously, actively monitoring and managing cases through the legal process and negotiating barriers to removal.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of individual appeals to (a) introducing and (b) executing deportation orders on people convicted of criminal offences.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
In most deportation cases, there is no right of appeal unless the person concerned makes a human rights or protection claim, in which case there is a right of appeal against a decision to refuse the claim.
Where a person who has permission to stay in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme is threatened with deportation, there is a right of appeal against the decision to make a deportation order against them, in compliance with the Agreement on the Withdrawal of the UK from the EU.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish a breakdown of criminal offenders who were ordered to be deported at the end of their prison sentence by (a) shortest prison sentence imposed, (b) average prison sentence imposed, (c) longest prison sentence imposed and (d) criminal offence convicted in each of the last six years.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on returns of foreign national offenders (FNOs) in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on quarterly numbers of returns of FNOs are published in table Ret_02a of the ‘returns summary tables’. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data reports up to the year ending June 2024.
Deportations are a specific subset of returns which are enforced either following a criminal conviction or when it is judged that a person’s removal from the UK is conducive to the public good. The deportation order prohibits the person returning to the UK until such time as it may be revoked.
Information about sentence length and offence type are not currently included in our published statistics and could only be obtained for the purposes of this question at a disproportionate cost. Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the code of practice for statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, the resources required to compile the statistics, as well as quality and availability of data. These reviews allow us to balance the production of our regular statistics whilst developing new statistics for future release.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many foreign nationals have been issued with deportation orders but not deported.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested is not available from published statistics.
The Home Office publishes a quarterly paper on statistics on foreign national offenders (FNOs) subject to deportation action, living in the community. These are published in the Immigration Enforcement Data, Year Ending June 2024, which are available at: Immigration Enforcement data: Q2 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Any FNO convicted of a crime who receives a custodial sentence in the UK is referred to the Home Office for deportation consideration following sentencing. We are focusing resources on those cases currently serving custodial sentences and maximising removals directly from prison.
We will pursue deportation action against individuals living in the community rigorously, actively monitoring and managing cases through the legal process and negotiating barriers to removal.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many outpatients from Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin integrated care system (ICS) have been treated out of area by (a) other ICSs and (b) private providers in each year for which data is available.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients back at the heart of care. This includes supporting a patient’s right to choose, if they wish, where they go for their first appointment, including private providers holding contracts for National Health Services.
Information on the number of individual patients who have been treated out of area in the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care System (ICS) is not held centrally. However, information on the number of outpatient appointments taking place outside of the ICS is available, although it should be noted that a patient may have had more than one outpatient appointment. The following table shows the combined outpatient activity in English NHS hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector, and the number and percentage of appointments made outside of the ICS, for each of the last three years:
Year | Total appointments | Number of appointments outside of the ICS | Percentage of appointments outside of the ICS |
2021/22 | 864,870 | 138,715 | 16% |
2022/23 | 958,190 | 171,505 | 17.9% |
2023/24 | 1,027,375 | 178,590 | 17.4% |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS England.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Crown Court judges there were resident at Shrewsbury Crown Court in each of the last six years.
Answered by Heidi Alexander - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Crown Court sitting at Shrewsbury is accommodated across two sites, in Shrewsbury Justice Centre and Telford Justice Centre. In total, there are three courtrooms dedicated to Crown Court use.
For each of the last six years (i.e. since 2019/20), two Circuit Judges have been based permanently at the venue. Additional judges are and have been deployed to ensure sufficient capacity exists to meet sitting day and listing requirements.
On 29 October, it was announced that a new Circuit Judge will be deployed to sit at Shrewsbury from 13 January, succeeding a salaried judge who retired in July and bringing the permanent complement back to two salaried judges.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on reducing waiting times for patients with (a) cancer and (b) respiratory conditions.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Tackling waiting lists is a key part of our Health Mission and a top priority for the Government, as we get the National Health Service back on its feet, including for those suffering from cancer and respiratory conditions.
We have committed to getting back to the NHS Constitutional standard, that 92% of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment. As a first step to achieving this, we will deliver an additional 2 million operations, scans, and appointments during our first year in Government, or the equivalent to 40,000 per week. We will also increase the number of computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and other tests that are needed to reduce elective and cancer waits. As of August 2024, 62.5% of respiratory medicine patients are seen within this standard, compared to 60.7% in August 2023. This is compared to 58% of the total waiting list for planned procedures.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many offenders were (a) ordered to be deported at the end of their prison sentence and (b) deported at the end of that sentence in each of the last six years.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
We are committed to delivering justice for victims and safer streets for our communities. Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced and, where appropriate, we will pursue their deportation, and they will be swiftly removed from the country.
The Home Office publishes the quarterly statistics on the returns of foreign national offenders (FNOs) by nationality and year. These returns are published in the Returns Detailed Datasets, Year Ending June 2024, which are available at: Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
The published statistics refer to enforced returns which include deportations, as well as cases where a person has breached UK immigration laws, and those removed under other administrative and illegal entry powers that have declined to leave voluntarily.
Figures on deportations, which are a subset of enforced returns, are not separately available.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) children and (b) adults are waiting for outpatient appointments by (i) their average wait time and (ii) the appointment required in the NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Patients have been let down for too long whilst they wait for the care they need. The Government will ensure that 92% of patients return to waiting no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment within our first term, a standard which has not been met consistently since September 2015. Outpatients make up most of the waiting list, so transforming outpatient services is a key part of the Government’s approach to cutting waiting times.
The overall mean average waiting time for children waiting for an outpatient appointment in the NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board (ICB) is 23.3 weeks, with the median being 21.4 weeks, and the overall mean waiting time for adults waiting for an outpatient appointment is 21.2 weeks, while the median is 18.4 weeks.
The number of cases where children are waiting in the NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB for a first outpatient appointment is 4,471, and for a follow up outpatient appointment is 715. The number of cases where adults are waiting in the NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB for a first outpatient appointment is 45,272, and for a follow up outpatient appointment is 12,500.