Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what support his Department provides (a) prison governors and (b) the probation service on identifying suitable prisons for release via the early release scheme.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
Central HMPPS teams identify the prisoners who are potentially eligible for release on End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) and provide this to the relevant prisons and to the probation service.
Extensive operational guidance on ECSL is issued to prisons and probation to guide them through the process and eligibility criteria. There is also an operational support helpline that prison and probation practitioners can call should they want additional support in confirming eligible cases or have any other questions about ECSL. For cases where there are concerns about heightened risk as a result of release before the automatic release point, the exemption panel of senior HMPPS leaders deals with cases that are escalated for a decision.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners released early under the overcrowding alleviation scheme have subsequently been recalled to custody in each of the last five years; and what the reasons for recall were.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
End of Custody Supervised Licence began in October 2023. Analysis of its use will be based on at least one year’s worth of data and published in line with the same approach we take for other statistical releases, such as deaths of offenders in the community.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners have been released under the End of Custody Supervised License scheme in each of the last five years, by category of offence they were originally convicted for.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
End of Custody Supervised Licence began in October 2023. Analysis of its use will be based on at least one year’s worth of data and published in line with the same approach we take for other statistical releases, such as deaths of offenders in the community.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an estimate of the number of court appearances that have been delayed as a result of Operation Early Dawn; and if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of Operation Early Dawn on court administration.
Answered by Mike Freer
Operation Early Dawn is a contingency designed to mitigate impacts across the criminal justice system. We monitor system impacts but we cannot estimate how many court appearances are delayed because of Operation Early Dawn. This data is not collected in our management information systems (because Operation Early Dawn is a contingency).
We can confirm that no court sessions were cancelled as a result of Operation Early Dawn.
The Ministry of Justice and its agencies are working to minimise any associated delays across the criminal justice system, which includes prioritising the most urgent cases, and to minimise the inevitable impact on court administration.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department are taking to ensure there are sufficient translators available to assist operation Interflex.
Answered by Leo Docherty
Specialist interpreter services for Op INTERFLEX are resourced by the Permanent Joint Headquarters Provision of Linguistic Services for UK MOD Global Operations Contract. The Contractor is meeting the requirement to supply the right number of correctly qualified interpreters.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps her Department is taking to help mitigate the potential impact of high energy costs on the competitiveness of UK exports.
Answered by Alan Mak
The Government announced measures to support Britain’s strategic Energy Intensive Industries (EII) with electricity prices from 2024 onwards through the British Industry Supercharger, building on the schemes that have been in place since 2013.
The Supercharger package is designed to reduce the long-term electricity price gap that exists between UK EIIs and competitor countries.
The government estimates that support on electricity prices for EIIs in the form of the Supercharger could be worth (on average) around £24-£31 Per MegaWatt Hour (MWh) for eligible businesses, closing the competitive gap with their international competitors.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether her Department plans to take steps to support manufacturers with energy costs for the purpose of increasing export competitiveness.
Answered by Alan Mak
The Government announced measures to support Britain’s strategic Energy Intensive Industries (EII) with electricity prices from 2024 onwards through the British Industry Supercharger, building on the schemes that have been in place since 2013.
The Supercharger package is designed to reduce the long-term electricity price gap that exists between UK EIIs and competitor countries.
The government estimates that support on electricity prices for EIIs in the form of the Supercharger could be worth (on average) around £24-£31 Per MegaWatt Hour (MWh) for eligible businesses, closing the competitive gap with their international competitors.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what data her Department holds on trends in the volume of British food exports to Asia over the last five years; and what steps her Department is taking to help support growth in that sector.
Answered by Greg Hands
The Department for Business and Trade offers Export Support Service, online guidance via the GREAT.gov.uk platform, the Export Academy programme, UK Export Finance and a network of trade advisers across England, the nations and overseas, to support businesses to maximise their exports.The department also provides a compelling programme of support for food exporters to connect with buyers through tradeshows and missions; for example, the upcoming UK Pavilion at Thaifex-Anuga, Bangkok (28 May - 1 June).
The department holds data provided by HMRC on food exports (see below).
HMRC: UK exports of Food, Feed & Drink (FFD)
VOLUME
Year | All UK exports | Exports to Asia (Million tonnes) | Proportion exported to Asia |
2019 | 15.3 | 1.50 | 10% |
2020 | 13.5 | 1.37 | 10% |
2021 | 11.0 | 1.30 | 12% |
2022 | 12.5 | 1.35 | 11% |
2023 | 11.9 | 1.16 | 10% |
VALUE
Year | All UK exports | Exports to Asia (£ billion) | Proportion exported to Asia |
2019 | 23.7 | 3.9 | 16% |
2020 | 21.7 | 3.4 | 16% |
2021 | 20.3 | 3.7 | 18% |
2022 | 24.9 | 4.7 | 19% |
2023 | 24.4 | 4.6 | 19% |
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, what estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) women and (b) children killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The situation in Gaza is desperate and too many civilians have been killed, including women and children. The fastest way to end the conflict is to secure a deal which gets the hostages out and allows for a pause in the fighting in Gaza. We must then work with our international partners to turn that pause into a sustainable, permanent ceasefire.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to her Department's press release entitled AI Safety Institute releases new AI safety evaluations platform, published on 10 May 2024, what steps she is taking to encourage the integration of the Inspect platform in AI development projects in (a) healthcare, (b) transportation and (c) other sectors.
Answered by Saqib Bhatti
The AI Safety Institute has responsibility for developing and conducting evaluations on advanced AI systems, including assessing potentially harmful capabilities. As part of this, AISI has released an open-source evaluations platform called Inspect. Inspect is designed to help AI safety researchers build more standardised and reproduceable safety evaluations. Whilst Inspect will not support the development of new AI products and services directly, by open-sourcing the platform we are making it easier to test the safety of new advanced AI systems.