Oral Answers to Questions
Tessa Munt Excerpts(6 days, 17 hours ago)
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Shabana Mahmood
No; what this Government are doing is cleaning up the almighty mess left to us by the previous Government, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member. He knows full well that I have already signalled an intention to review the powers of the Sentencing Council. We have an upcoming sentencing Bill, and I will take the action that he and his Government never did in 14 long years. [Interruption.] He has suddenly found his voice—he did not have it for a decade or more.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Sir Nicholas Dakin)
We continue to support IPP offenders through our updated action plan, which contributed to a 9% decrease in IPP offenders in prison in the last year, but we will not put public protection at risk. The Prisons Minister in the other place and I continue to meet regularly with MPs, peers and other stakeholders to work together on supporting this cohort.
Tessa Munt
It is 12 and a half years since IPP sentences were described as “not defensible” and were abolished for offenders, but 2,852 people remain incarcerated under these sentences—just 74 fewer than in June 2022. When the Justice Committee reported in 2022, its key recommendation was that the Government legislate to enable a resentencing exercise for these individuals. Will the Minister please set up an expert committee to at least advise on how to bring forward a resentencing exercise urgently?
Sir Nicholas Dakin
It is right and proper that IPP sentences were abolished. Various organisations have considered resentencing. None of them has identified an approach that would not involve releasing offenders whom the Parole Board has determined pose too great a risk to the public. We do not wish to give false hope to those serving the sentence by establishing an expert panel, but we will continue to work robustly with this group and do everything in our power to address the problem that we recognise.
Independent Sentencing Review
Tessa Munt Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Shabana Mahmood
This Government will make sure we are running a prison system that is sustainable and not on the point of collapse, so that we can ensure that dangerous offenders in this country are still locked up. We will make progress on our broader mission to halve the level of violence against women and girls over 10 years.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s statement and the work that David Gauke has done to inform everything that is happening today. As a member of the Justice Committee, I look forward to seeing him before us shortly. I seek clarity on what the Lord Chancellor referred to as the
“so-called medication to manage problematic sexual arousal”.
Will she place the available research and conclusions in the Library so that we all have access to the information and can understand the data on which she and David Gauke have relied?
Shabana Mahmood
I am happy to ensure that the evidence is available. I would say to the hon. Lady that the very small-scale pilot that I inherited had been running for some time without anybody paying a huge amount of attention to it, and the evidence from other jurisdictions where it has been rolled out a bit more widely is stronger. Our roll-out—I want to get to a national roll-out—will start with two extra regions and 20 more prisons, and we will build the evidence base there. We want measures that work, and I do believe that the combination of chemical suppressants and psychological interventions can help with a cohort of particularly difficult sex offenders.
Draft Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Legal Aid: Domestic Abuse) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2025
Tessa Munt Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Legal Aid: Domestic Abuse) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2025.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. The draft order makes a number of important changes to ensure that legal aid continues to support victims of domestic abuse. It is an important part of the Government’s commitment to ensure that legal aid continues to be available to those most in need and continues to serve some of the most vulnerable people in our society who need our support. It also ensures that our legal aid legislation is aligned with wider Government legislation on domestic abuse and immigration law.
Principally, this statutory instrument does four things. First, it will make changes to enhance the scope of immigration legal aid. It will make legal aid available for those eligible to apply for settlement in the United Kingdom as a victim of domestic abuse under the immigration rules. This change will ensure that all eligible domestic abuse victims can access legal aid for applications under this immigration route.
Secondly, it will amend the evidence requirements for domestic abuse victims applying for legal aid. It will do this by enabling victims to present evidence of abuse from appropriate medical practitioners overseas. Thirdly, it will make changes to terminology to align with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, replacing the term “domestic violence” with “domestic abuse,” and the term “financial abuse” with “economic abuse.” It will also recognise that abuse against an individual may consist of behaviour directed at another individual, for example at the victim’s child. These changes will ensure consistency with wider legislation.
Finally, the statutory instrument will make changes to complement instruments made in 2023 and 2024 on the scope of legal aid in relation to domestic abuse protection orders and domestic abuse protection notices. If enacted, it will ensure fuller availability of legal aid for individuals in respect of these orders.
Before turning to each of the amendments and provisions in detail, I will take a moment to outline how the legal aid scheme works as a matter of generality. In general, civil legal aid is available to an individual if their issue is listed within part 1 of schedule 1 to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, otherwise known as LASPO. Then, in most cases, an individual must pass a means test—a check on their financial eligibility—and a merits test, which ensures that the taxpayer is not funding unmeritorious cases. In certain cases, most notably those involving victims of domestic abuse or child abuse, evidence requirements also need to be satisfied.
I will now turn to each of the four topics covered in this draft order. First, amendments will be made to the availability of immigration legal aid for victims of domestic abuse who are applying for leave to enter or remain in the UK. Currently, legal aid is available for some victims of domestic abuse who are eligible to apply for leave to remain in the UK under Home Office immigration rules, subject to means and merits tests. The immigration rules set out the rules for entering and remaining in the UK.
The immigration rules include “Appendix Victim of Domestic Abuse,” which I will henceforth refer to as “the appendix.” The appendix concerns victims whose leave to remain in the UK was based on their partner or spouse’s immigration status, and whose relationship has broken down as a result of domestic abuse. It is the route by which victims can apply for settlement in the UK independent of their partner’s status, ensuring that they can escape the abusive relationship without having to leave or be removed from the UK as a result. The eligibility requirements in the appendix are amended from time to time, and that is what we are doing here.
The draft order amends LASPO to ensure that legal aid provision for victims applying for leave to enter or remain in the UK is aligned with the latest requirements set out in the appendix. The changes will ensure that this alignment will continue in the event that amendments are made to the appendix in future. This will mean that all victims of domestic abuse can access legal aid to assist with an application under the appendix for leave to enter or remain, subject to means and merits tests.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
Although this is a slightly different situation, I want to clarify what the Home Office’s response would be to the case of one of my constituents. She came into the UK with her partner and sought leave to remain. He was arrested four times for domestic abuse, and she alerted the Home Office to the fact that it had happened on two different occasions by literally sending in the film. Can the Minister elucidate a little how my constituent registered that information with the Home Office and it still granted that man leave to remain in the UK? He has now of course vanished off the face of the earth.
Sarah Sackman
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that case. The circumstances that she describes are appalling, although obviously I cannot comment on the specifics of the case. How to deal with that would ultimately have been a matter for the Home Office. However, where there is evidence of domestic abuse that results in a criminal conviction, that is exactly what these proposed amendments are designed to protect against. We are extending legal aid to victims of domestic abuse where the perpetrator’s immigration status bears on theirs.
The hon. Lady is right that the circumstances she describes come at the issue from a different angle. Either way, what she describes is clearly appalling, and we should not be rewarding such behaviour by granting leave to remain in this country. Indeed, where someone is convicted of an offence, we should be looking to take all steps to remove them from this country.
Tessa Munt
I welcome the broad outline of what the Minister is describing in this draft order. I just wanted to highlight that particular case, which is very distressing for the constituent concerned.
Sarah Sackman
Indeed, and the hon. Lady is very welcome to write to me about that specific case, if the Ministry of Justice is the appropriate place to deal with it. Of course, I will respond to her, but it may well be a question for the relevant Home Office Minister.
Secondly, this draft order will make changes to the evidence requirements that victims of domestic abuse must satisfy to receive legal aid. Acceptable forms of evidence are set out in schedule 1 to the Civil Legal Aid (Procedure) Regulations 2012. Currently, certain forms of overseas evidence are accepted as evidence of domestic abuse. For example, legal aid applications may include supporting documentation concerning an arrest or a police caution abroad. However, evidence of domestic abuse from overseas medical practitioners is not currently accepted. The Government wish to change regulations to enable evidence from appropriate health professionals who are licensed and registered overseas to be accepted for legal aid applications. That will enhance the ability of victims to take action against perpetrators.
Thirdly, the draft order will amend the terminology within LASPO and associated regulations to align with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Since its enactment, terminology across Government has moved away from “domestic violence” towards “domestic abuse” to recognise explicitly that perpetrators can often use more than just physical violence to harm an individual. Within its definition of “domestic abuse,” the 2021 Act describes such behaviour as including “physical or sexual abuse,” “violent or threatening behaviour,” “controlling or coercive behaviour”, “economic abuse” and
“psychological, emotional or other abuse”.
The inclusion of the term “economic abuse” in this definition rather than “financial abuse,” which is currently used within LASPO, also reflects a shift in recent years to acknowledge explicitly that abuse often goes beyond interfering with money and finances to include broader economic resources, such as housing, possessions and clothing.
Further, the Domestic Abuse Act expressly states that domestic abuse of an individual includes
“conduct directed at another person”.
For example, an abuser may direct behaviour towards a child in the household to facilitate or perpetuate the abuse of their partner. The definition of “domestic violence” in LASPO recognises that abuse extends beyond physical violence and therefore implicitly includes abuse directed at third parties. By updating the LASPO terminology to align with wording used in the Domestic Abuse Act, we aim to reduce the risk of victims perceiving that the abuse they are experiencing is out of scope for legal aid funding.
Finally, the draft order complements previous statutory instruments that made provision for bringing legal aid into scope for victims, third parties and those subject to domestic abuse protection orders and domestic abuse protection notices. DAPOs and DAPNs, as they are known, are new orders that are now available in Greater Manchester, three London boroughs—Bromley, Croydon and Sutton—and Cleveland, and are used by the British Transport police in those areas. We will shortly be extending DAPOs and DAPNs to north Wales.
The draft order makes further changes to LASPO and the Criminal Legal Aid (General) Regulations 2013 to bring other aspects of the Domestic Abuse Act in relation to DAPOs and DAPNs within scope of civil and criminal legal aid. These changes will help to ensure fuller availability of legal aid for individuals in respect of these orders. These technical changes are designed to address unintended gaps in provision.
To conclude, the draft order will make legal aid available to some of society’s most vulnerable people, furthering this Government’s ambition to support victims of domestic abuse.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tessa Munt Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Sir Nicholas Dakin
My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Justice Committee, identifies a subject that might well be useful for his Committee to examine.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
A young person I know was involved in an incident at 16. Can the Minister assure me that, because delays to going through the youth justice system have meant that that young person has not had the case adjudicated, that young person will not be adjudged an adult if they pass their 18th birthday when a conclusion is reached?
Sir Nicholas Dakin
The hon. Member draws attention to an issue. If she would like to write to me about that particular incident, I will write back to her.
Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity
Tessa Munt Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend makes the case well for why David Gauke is the right person to lead this review. As I said, he brings deep expertise to this debate. I am sure that the sentencing review panel will be interested, as many are, in some of the pilots that are being run on problem-solving courts, and also in the family courts.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
What measures is the Lord Chancellor taking to ensure that the review considers the impact of sentencing polices on different socioeconomic groups, and addresses concerns about disproportionate sentences for marginalised communities and minority groups?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Member raises an important point. That issue is not within the review’s terms of reference. It will not consider disparities in sentencing because it is looking at the overall sentencing framework, and how we ensure that we never run out of prison places again. There is an important debate on disparities in the criminal justice system. The review on sentencing is not the proper place for that, but we will take forward that other work in due course.