Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to increase capacity in (a) family courts and (b) employment tribunals.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
We continue to take action to tackle the impact the pandemic has had on our courts and tribunals system. We invested £250 million to support recovery in our courts in the last financial year (2020/21). This included £76 million to increase our capacity to hear cases in the family and civil courts, as well as in tribunals. The recent Spending Review has also provided £324 million over the next three years to improve waiting times in the civil and family courts, and tribunals.
In the family court, we sat to our highest ever level in 2020 – 54,830 days in public law and 71,832 days in private law. This is 9% higher than we sat in 2019 for public law and 5% higher than we sat in 2019 for private law.
We increased Cafcass’s budget by £13 million in 2021, so that they have more capacity and can manage the additional pressures caused by the pandemic. In addition, we have provided Cafcass with an additional £491,000 in 2021, to be spent in the areas of the country where their resources are most under pressure.
We are also managing demand in the family courts to ensure the capacity can be used most effectively. In March 2021, we launched a Family Mediation Voucher Scheme for those seeking to resolve private law matters relating to a child. Since its introduction, over 6,000 families have successfully used the scheme to access mediation and help resolve disputes outside of court. In January this year, we increased the overall funding for the scheme to just under £3.3 million.
In the employment tribunal, we increased the sitting day allocation from 30,000 in the 2020/21 financial year to 35,000 in the 2021/22 financial year. To ensure this capacity is used effectively, we established a joint ministerial taskforce last year with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to reduce pressures on the tribunals and develop a joint plan for recovery. We have also established a virtual region of fee-paid judges able to hear remote cases from any region, which we expect to deliver more than 500 additional sitting days.
Across both jurisdictions, we have run ambitious recruitment campaigns to expand our judicial capacity and boost caseworker numbers.
We are also continuing to use remote hearings. This provides additional capacity to ensure cases that work well remotely can be heard quickly, while also freeing up space for cases that must be heard in-person. While it remains for the judge to decide whether a particular trial or hearing is suitable to be heard virtually, video hearings will continue to be a critical part of court and tribunal operations. For hearings that cannot be dealt with virtually, we have maximised the capacity of existing courtrooms by adjusting our estate to be Covid-secure.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to ensure equitable access to legal aid.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
We are currently carrying out a review of the means test for legal aid. The review, which we plan to publish shortly, is assessing the effectiveness with which the means test protects access to justice, including the income and capital thresholds for civil and criminal legal aid.
We have already made some changes to improve access to legal aid. In December 2020, we removed the £100k cap on the amount of mortgage debt which can be taken into account in the civil means test and expanded the list of compensation/ex-gratia payments which can be disregarded from an applicant’s means. As of January 2022, we have removed the means test for applications for legal representation at inquests via the Exceptional Case Funding scheme.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking expand educational rehabilitation programmes in prisons.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
As detailed in the Prisons Strategy White Paper published on 7th December, we are creating a Prisoner Education Service that will ensure prisoners improve skills such as literacy and numeracy, acquire relevant vocational qualifications, and access employment opportunities on release. This will be funded as part of our £200m a year investment by 2024-25 to improve prison leavers’ access to accommodation, employment support and substance misuse treatment and further measures for early intervention to tackle youth offending.
To improve outcomes, we are introducing new performance measures to track attendance and progress in English and maths; developing a new literacy strategy, introducing new roles to support prisoners with learning difficulties and disabilities and investing in digital infrastructure to deliver learning. We are also boosting our engagement with employers to understand the skills they need to plug labour market gaps and plan to launch a new fund to support innovation and training next year.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to build trust in the criminal justice system among young people.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The Government is taking action to reduce crime and put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, and we listen closely to young people’s voices and perspectives as we do so.
The Beating Crime Plan sets out a clear plan for less crime, fewer victims and a safer country, including for example £45m for specialist teams to support young people at risk of involvement in violence to re-engage in education, as well as new plans to support victims including tackling violence against women and girls and child sexual exploitation.
On engagement we are making the system more representative of our diverse society and work with the Youth Justice Board’s Youth Advisory Network Ambassadors to understand children’s concerns and inform policy.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment on the adequacy of the three-year time limit for medical negligence cases.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Government believes the current 3 year time limit for bringing a medical negligence claim is fair and proportionate given the flexibility built into the legislation. This provides for the 3 year limitation period for personal injury claims to be waived by judges in appropriate cases using their discretion under section 33 of the Limitation Act 1980. Judges have guidance on what should be taken into consideration when considering applications for an extension.
In addition, the 3 year limitation period can apply in appropriate cases from the ‘date of knowledge’ of an injury (for example in the case of a delayed diagnosis) which can be later than the date of the alleged negligence.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of resources available to effectively tackle court backlogs in the recovery from the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
We have taken decisive action to ensure the courts have sufficient resources to tackle our outstanding caseloads in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
We spent over a quarter of a billion pounds on recovery last financial year, making court buildings safe, rolling out new technology for remote hearings and recruiting an additional 1,600 HMCTS staff. We will run each Crown Court site to its fullest, with no limit on sitting days this financial year, so more cases can be heard and waiting times can come down. Following the lifting of social distancing restrictions, we are in the process of fully reopening our existing physical estate. We have also extended 32 of our Nightingale courtrooms until March 2022 to maximise our sitting capacity this year.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps he has taken to help ensure the accessibility of affordable civil legal aid.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
We have already made a number of changes to ensure that civil legal aid remains accessible to those who need it. For example, in May last year we removed the mandatory element of the Civil Legal Advice telephone gateway.
In addition, in December last year we brought forward legislation improving financial eligibility for civil legal aid. We laid legislation which removed the £100,000 cap on the amount of mortgage debt that can be deducted from the value of a person’s property in the means test. This means all mortgage debt will be deducted from a property’s value when assessing eligibility for civil legal aid. This legislation also enables the Legal Aid Agency to disregard some compensation and ex-gratia payments for the purposes of assessing legal aid eligibility. These changes will widen access to civil legal aid.
We announced a comprehensive review of the means test for legal aid in the Legal Support Action Plan in 2019. The review is assessing the effectiveness with which the means test protects access to justice, particularly for those who are vulnerable. As part of the review, we are considering the full range of means-testing criteria, including the income and capital thresholds for civil legal aid. We plan to conclude the review in late Spring 2021, at which point we will publish a full consultation paper setting out our future policy proposals in this area. We will seek to implement any final recommendations as soon as practicable following public consultation.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to support people who are in need of urgent priority court hearings.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Urgent priority court hearings are going ahead, and work has been prioritised to ensure justice systems remain open to the most vulnerable. Whether and how cases are listed is a judicial decision. HMCTS, together with the judiciary, has ensured priority case types continue to be dealt with, such as those held in police or prison custody, applications for Domestic Violence Protection Orders, and applications relating to public health concerns. Case prioritisation is under constant review. In addition, we have been a rapidly expanding our use of technology so that more video and audio hearings can take place across the justice system, subject to judicial discretion.
Users can be assured that where their case has been adjourned that the department will do all it can to support the judiciary in listing the case when the situation allows for it.
We’re doing everything possible to ensure any potential negative impacts are identified and mitigated for vulnerable users, by putting the right support in place for them.
We work with the advice sector to fully understand the impacts on vulnerable people, reasonable adjustments, and reflecting up to date advice from the sector in our processes for court users to join hearings and in related staff guidance.
We are pleased that the courts are now in a position, with approval from Public Health England and Public Health Wales, to take some first steps towards the resumption of jury trials.
Our priorities are to protect the safety of our staff, the judiciary, legal professionals and all courts and tribunal users while continuing to provide access to justice – in particular for the most time-critical and sensitive cases.