Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the role of the Church of England is on advising on the validity of religious conversion claims where the threat of religious persecution is given as a material basis for the claim.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
All asylum and human rights claims, including those based on religion or belief, are carefully considered on their individual merits in accordance with our international obligations, so that we do not remove anyone who faces persecution or serious harm on return to their country of origin.
Detailed Home Office policy guidance provides a framework for considering asylum claims, including those based on religious conversion, and all caseworkers receive extensive training and mentoring support before making such decisions.
Each individual assessment is made against the background of relevant case law and the latest available country of origin information. This is based on evidence taken from a wide range of reliable sources, including reputable media outlets; local, national, and international organisations, including human rights organisations; and information from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
The degree of weight to be given to evidence from church witnesses will depend on how much knowledge and experience a church witness has, and the individuals concerned, and the way in which the claimant may have engaged in church activities. Evidence from a senior church member is not considered to be determinative.
In such cases, decision-makers must decide whether a conversion is genuine on the balance of probabilities. Decision-makers must consider all evidence in the round, including, where relevant, such factors as the claimant’s participation in church activities, the timing of their conversion, their knowledge of the faith, and the opinions of other members of the congregation as to the genuineness of the conversion.
Protection is normally granted where a claimant has a well-founded fear of persecution under the Refugee Convention or a claimant faces a real risk of serious harm. Those found not to need protection are refused, and the decision can be subject to legal challenge where appropriate, either via appeal to the independent courts or through a judicial review, depending on the decision in question. Once appeal rights are exhausted, they are liable for removal and enforcement action pursued where necessary.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure a fair and accessible system for resolving employment disputes which is not restricted by financial burdens.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government is committed to ensuring an effective, efficient, and affordable justice system for all. We have taken various steps to increase capacity in the Employment Tribunals, such as the recruitment of an additional 19 salaried ET judges and 150 fee-paid ET judges in 2022/23. Additionally, the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 will transfer Employment Tribunal rule-making powers to the Tribunal Procedures Committee. This will allow the judiciary to manage their workloads more flexibly, maximising the capacity of the Employment Tribunal.
The Government is also investing in the development of new digital processes. The Employment Tribunal Reform project will provide a simple, fair and accessible service with simplified channels for engaging with the service, a focus on early resolution of cases, transparency for all the parties as the case progresses, and a reduction in the time taken to resolve employment disputes.
In addition, the Government supports the resolution of employment disputes via early conciliation, where possible. The Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) provides free and impartial advice to assist parties in resolving their employment disputes. Acas received £56m in 2022/23 from the Department of Business and Trade (DBT), with c.£24m directed towards individual dispute resolution activity.
The Government is currently consulting on introducing modest fees in the Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The Ministry of Justice recognises that the ET fees established in 2013 and quashed in 2017 by the Supreme Court were too high, and has carefully considered the lessons of the Unison Supreme Court judgment when developing this proposal.
The proposal of introducing modest fees seeks to ensure user-contribution towards the tribunals, which are currently fully funded from direct taxation, while ensuring that the principles of affordability, proportionality and simplicity underpinning the proposed fees continue to preserve access to justice for all.
Those who cannot afford to pay the proposed fees will be supported by our fee remission scheme, Help with Fees (HwF). In 2022/23, the scheme provided £80m in financial support to those on low incomes and with little to no savings. The scheme was recently reformed in November 2023 to provide for a much more generous scheme. In exceptional circumstances, the Lord Chancellor can exercise his power to remit a fee, which further ensures that access to justice is protected.
Asked by: Baroness Hoey (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they are giving to launching an independent review into the investigation, expenditure and private prosecution of Mr Jamie Bryson in the light of the ruling by District Judge Amanda Brady to terminate the case.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
As the regulator of the private security industry, the Security Industry Authority (‘the Authority’) can bring private prosecutions for criminal offences contained within the Private Security Industry Act 2001 (‘the Act’). Section 22 of the Act makes it an offence for anyone knowingly or recklessly to make a false statement to the Authority, in connection with the exercise of its functions.
Concerning the prosecution of Mr Jamie Bryson, the invoices received for the proceedings from 2019 to date (encompassing both the prosecution, and also responding to judicial review proceedings) total £106,992.00.
The final costs incurred cannot be updated at this time, as not all legal invoices have yet been received by the SIA for payment. The costs will be incorporated within the SIA’s existing budget. This is funded from licence fees, and not from funding allocated by the Treasury.
As legal proceedings continue, the Government cannot provide further comment, or the additional information sought within question HL1692.
Asked by: Baroness Hoey (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the total cost to the taxpayer of the failed prosecution against Mr Jamie Bryson on charges of making a false statement to the Security Industry Authority in 2018, including Magistrates court proceedings and all Judicial Review proceedings.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
As the regulator of the private security industry, the Security Industry Authority (‘the Authority’) can bring private prosecutions for criminal offences contained within the Private Security Industry Act 2001 (‘the Act’). Section 22 of the Act makes it an offence for anyone knowingly or recklessly to make a false statement to the Authority, in connection with the exercise of its functions.
Concerning the prosecution of Mr Jamie Bryson, the invoices received for the proceedings from 2019 to date (encompassing both the prosecution, and also responding to judicial review proceedings) total £106,992.00.
The final costs incurred cannot be updated at this time, as not all legal invoices have yet been received by the SIA for payment. The costs will be incorporated within the SIA’s existing budget. This is funded from licence fees, and not from funding allocated by the Treasury.
As legal proceedings continue, the Government cannot provide further comment, or the additional information sought within question HL1692.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 12 December 2023 to Question 5745 on Ministry of Justice: Communication, if he will publish the (a) policies, (b) procedures and (c) service standards for (i) his Department, (ii) HM Courts and Tribunals Service and (iii) the Judicial Office; and if he will publish provide contact details for raising concerns over compliance with each.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
There are a number of polices, procedures and service standards for communication that are used across the Ministry of Justice and the agencies within it which can differ due to the broad range of work and activities undertaken across the department.
Within HM Courts & Tribunals Service if any user wants to provide feedback or raise a complaint about the service HMCTS provides, there is a formal procedure in which to do so that is published on the HMCTS section on Gov.uk: Complaints procedure - HM Courts & Tribunals Service - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The complaints procedure is three staged and allows for a review and appeal if a user is not satisfied with the initial response received. There is also the option to ask the Member of Parliament for the user’s constituency to refer the case to the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman if the user remains unsatisfied following exhausting all stages of the HMCTS complaints process.
Any matter relating to Judicial Office policies, procedures or service standards would be for that organisation and not for Government. The Judicial Office supports the judiciary of England and Wales and is independent from the machinery which supports Ministers. Its officials are accountable to the Lady Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals.
Asked by: Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the grounds for appeal were of each of the asylum seekers due to be removed to Rwanda on 14 June 2022.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
We are unable to comment on the specifics of individual cases however, some of the individuals referred to did issue judicial review claims and the grounds of these claims can be found in the published court judgments.
The court judgments can be found at the following links:
Divisional Court (19 December 2022): AAA v SSHD Rwanda judgment.pdf (judiciary.uk)
Court of Appeal (29 June 2023): AAA-v-SSHD summary (judiciary.uk)
Supreme Court (15 November 2023): R (on the application of AAA (Syria) and others) (Respondents/Cross Appellants) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant/Cross Respondent); (supremecourt.uk)
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders were subsequently convicted of murder by index sentence in each financial year between 2010-11 and 2015-16.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Serious Further Offences (SFOs) are rare. Fewer than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are convicted of SFOs. Nonetheless, every single SFO is taken extremely seriously, and in all cases a review is carried out to identify any improvements that need to be made in the management of future cases.
We have increased funding for the Probation Service by an additional £155m a year to recruit staff, bring down caseloads and deliver better supervision of offenders in the community.
We have exceeded our recruitment targets for the last three years. As a result, over 4,000 trainee probation officers joined the Probation sService between 2020/21 and 2022/23, which we anticipate will start to reduce the number of cases held by a probation officer at any one time, with all the benefits which that brings in terms of the quality of risk assessment and risk management.
The table below sets out the total number of convictions where an offender subject to probation supervision was charged with a SFO which resulted in a conviction for murder, for all cases notified to HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) between 1 April 2010 and 31 March 2014.
Index Sentence | 2010-11 | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 |
Community Supervision | 31 | 42 | 30 | 28 |
Determinate Prison Sentence | 17 | 24 | 21 | 27 |
Life Licence | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
IPP | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Total | 50 | 67 | 51 | 59 |
1. Time period for conviction data relates to the date of SFO notification to HMPPS not the date of conviction.
2. Index sentence refers to the sentencing disposal imposed by the court which led to probation services supervision of the offender.
3. The data only includes convictions for serious further offences of murder that have been notified to the national SFO Team, HMPPS.
4. The data includes cases where the SFO was committed within 28 days of the end of the supervision period.
5. Conviction data also includes cases where the offender committed suicide or died prior to the trial, where the judicial process concluded that they were responsible.
6. The data for has been updated and may differ to any original publication due to data cleansing, re-categorising and re-grouping.
7. Data Sources and Quality. We have drawn these figures from administrative IT systems which, as with some large-scale recording systems, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
The number of convictions where an offender subject to probation supervision was charged with a serious further offence which resulted in a conviction for murder, for all cases notified to HMPPS between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2016 are published at the following link: Serious_Further_Offences_2023.ods (live.com).
Asked by: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much his Department spent on the case of Cabinet Office v Chair of Covid Inquiry, [2023] EWHC 1702 (Admin).
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
This judicial review was brought to seek clarification on a point of law and we were pleased that the Court agreed that there was an important legal question to consider. It acknowledged our concerns over respecting the privacy of individuals and ensuring that irrelevant information is returned and not retained by the Inquiry.
The total legal costs for the case of the Cabinet Office v Chair of the COVID-19 Inquiry were £192,739.
We have fully cooperated with, and continue to cooperate with, the Inquiry having provided over 56,000 documents to the Inquiry so far.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Answer of 28 March 2022 to Question 125391 on Bunzl Healthcare: Protective clothing, how much his Department spent on its legal costs for the judicial review in relation to the contract awarded by his Department to Bunzl Healthcare in April 2020.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In total, as of the end of October 2023, the Department has spent £915,071, excluding VAT, in relation to the judicial review regarding the contract awarded by the department to Bunzl Healthcare in April 2020.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in relation to duties imposed on local authorities by the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill for which there is an enforcement authority, whether there are any other instances in statute in which persons are able to make applications for judicial review of the local authority, rather than the enforcement authority.
Answered by Baroness Penn - Minister on Leave (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State)
It is expected that the enforcement regime will act as the main deterrent to breaches of the ban. However, where the public body in question would be amenable to judicial review in relation to the decision, the Bill is clear that judicial review is still available to any persons, irrespective of the other enforcement provisions in the Bill. This is in line with the normal principle that the exercise of public functions should be subject to judicial review.