Asked by: Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2016 to Question 31332, if he will estimate the cost of collecting information on the nationality of offenders referred to the court.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The nationality of offenders referred to the court is not collated centrally.
The Ministry of Justice hold data on foreign nationals held in prisons in England and Wales and publish statistics quarterly. The data does not include those offenders who receive non-custodial sentences.
To obtain even the limited data which is held would require the consideration of the files in all cases over the past three years where the Court of Appeal increased a sentence of imprisonment previously imposed to ascertain if they contained sufficient information for the data to be requested from the Ministry of Justice.
The process that would have to be undertaken would incur costs above the current disproportionate cost threshold and would in any event only provide the nationality for a limited number of offenders referred to the court.
Asked by: Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many unduly lenient sentences were given out to (a) British nationals, (b) non-British EU nationals and (c) nationals from outside the EU in each of the last three years.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The nationality of the offenders referred to the court is not collated centrally and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many civil servants in the Law Officers' Departments are members of trades unions; how much working hours facility time is claimed by each such civil servant; and what the cost of that facility time is to the Law Officers' Departments.
Answered by Jeremy Wright
The Law Officers Departments do not hold complete records of the number of staff who are enrolled in a trade union as there is no obligation placed on a trade union to disclose this information to employers.
Records are however maintained on the amount of facility time claimed during the financial year 2014/15 and the cost involved, as detailed below.
Law Officers’ Departments – Trade Union facility time and costs in 2014-15 | ||
Facility time (hours) 2 | Cost | |
Government Legal Department1 | 2,206.2 | £46,302 |
Serious Fraud Office | 129.6 | £4,069 |
Crown Prosecution Service | 14,267 | £351,929 |
1 The GLD data also covers the Attorney General’s Office and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate.
2 Only nominated trade union representatives are granted facility time.
The Cabinet Office publishes data relating to Civil Service facility time on a quarterly basis. The latest data is Quarter 4, 2014 at and is available at
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trade-union-facility-time .