Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has assessed the potential impact of recent changes to planned core education hours in public sector prisons on its compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The Department complies with the ongoing Public Sector Equality Duty to have due regard to the potential equality impacts of decisions to make changes to the provision of education in prisons at both a national and local level. Changes to planned core education hours vary across different prisons because the national funding formula for prison education has been refreshed, to ensure that allocations are a fair reflection of prison population, function and regional cost differences. Governors and Heads of Education, Skills and Work undertake needs analysis to understand the characteristics and needs of their local prison population, and commission education based on this information. New Core Education contracts also have strengthened requirements around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Providers are required to adhere to the Public Sector Equality Duty, and must continuously maintain an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion action plan to ensure equity of access to learning.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many individuals were assessed or monitored by the Joint Extremism Unit in each calendar year from 2017 to 2025 inclusive, broken down by the extremism or risk classification category used internally by the Unit.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Data on the number of people serving custodial sentences for terrorist offences are published by the Home Office as part of its quarterly statistical bulletin Operation of police powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 and subsequent legislation: Arrests, outcomes, and stop and search, Great Britain, which is available at: Operation of police powers under TACT 2000, to December 2025 - GOV.UK
Details of the risk classification are withheld on the grounds of national security.
The Joint Extremism Unit also monitors and assesses individuals who have not been convicted of terrorism or terrorism-connected offences, but nevertheless represent terrorist risk. Data regarding these individuals are also withheld on national security grounds.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in each of the last 3 years, how many instances of delayed hearings and trials have been caused by the CPS giving insufficient time for the defence to consider evidence shared as part of disclosure.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The specific information requested is not held. However, data on trials that have been ineffective due to the prosecution failing to disclose unused evidence is published quarterly in the Criminal Courts Accredited Official Statistics. The latest available data can be found in the ‘Trial Effectiveness at the Criminal Courts tool’ here: Criminal court statistics quarterly: October to December 2025 - GOV.UK.
The Government is carefully considering the recommendations on the disclosure regime made by Sir Brian Leveson as part of the Independent Review of Criminal Courts, and by Jonathan Fisher KC in his Independent Review of Disclosure Offences.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the First-tier Tribunal in resolving park home disputes.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
No specific assessment has been made of the effectiveness of the First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber in resolving park home disputes. However, the Ministry of Justice regularly considers the performance of tribunals more widely. Statistics are published on a quarterly basis and can be found at: htpps://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the total value of court-imposed fines outstanding in England and Wales is.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Financial penalties imposed by the courts will often consist of multiple elements including, amongst others, compensation, victim surcharge, prosecutor’s costs and a fine. The imposition is enforced as a whole, and any receipts received are applied to the offender’s account in accordance with a strict legal hierarchy. This ensures that the victims receive any monies they are due first, with the fine element being the last to be collected. This can result in the fine element, which is the punitive element of an imposition taking longer to be paid.
The Government takes the recovery and enforcement of all financial impositions very seriously and remains committed to ensuring impositions are paid. The courts will do everything within their powers to trace those who do not pay and use a variety of sanctions to ensure the recovery of criminal fines and financial penalties. These sanctions can include deducting money from an individual offender’s earnings or benefits, if they are unemployed, or issuing warrants instructing approved enforcement agents to seize and sell goods belonging to the offender. If the offender does not pay as ordered and the money cannot be recovered by other means, then the court can take other actions which includes sending them to prison for non-payment of the financial penalty including a fine.
The value of outstanding fines is reported annually in the HMCTS Trust Statement, the information can be found on page 35 in table 4, using the link below, the outstanding value at 31 March 2025 was £1,139,192,851 We anticipate the data for the 31 March 2026 being published in July 2026.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service Trust Statement 2024-25
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people paid court fines in the (a) quarter ending in November 2025 and (b) other four most recent quarters for which data is available.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
There is no central data available on the number of people who have paid court fines. It would be necessary to interrogate all records manually. This information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many hours of unpaid work were (a) sentenced and (b) credited in each of the last five years.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Between July 2021 and June 2025, a total of 24,341,125 hours of unpaid work were sentenced in England and Wales. In the same period, 17,614,065 hours of unpaid work were credited in England and Wales.
By Performance Year | Hours of unpaid work sentenced | Hours of unpaid work credited |
July 2021 to March 2022* | 4,351,655 | 2,769,930 |
April 2022 to March 2023 | 5,943,455 | 4,499,655 |
April 2023 to March 2024 | 6,108,405 | 4,683,290 |
April 2024 to March 2025 | 6,273,290 | 4,520,280 |
April 2025 to June 2025* | 1,664,320 | 1,140,910 |
Periods marked with an asterisk (*) indicate incomplete performance years.
Hours sentenced are the number of hours that the offender is required to work as part of the sentence of the court.
Upon attendance of the unpaid work session, the time the offender spends working will be credited towards the number of hours they have been ordered to complete. This includes where a person attends a session and subsequently fails to comply with instructions or is sent home due to poor behaviour, or where service issues during the day cause a session to be cancelled.
Data from April 2022 to June 2025 sourced from the latest published statistics on unpaid work. A link can be found here - Unpaid work management information, update to June 2025 - GOV.UK
Data from July 2021 to March 2022 sourced from nDelius on 13/04/2026. While these data have been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset, the data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last value presented.
Data from the biannual Unpaid Work publication are rounded to the nearest five hours worked for data suppression purposes and yearly totals are calculated on the rounded values of each quarter. To be consistent with the publication, the same principle has been applied to data between July 2021 and March 2022.
The next publication is due on 14 May 2026.
Data are provided from July 2021, the month following the reunification of the Probation Service.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of jurors completed jury service lasting (a) one week or less from their first day of service, (b) more than one week but not more than two weeks, (c) more than two weeks but not more than three weeks, (d) more than three weeks but not more than four weeks, (e) more than four weeks but not more than five weeks, (f) more than five weeks but not more than six weeks, and (g) more than six weeks in the last two years.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
When jurors are summoned, they are advised that Jury service usually lasts up to 10 working days, although some trials may extend beyond this period and jurors will be advised of this in advance. Jurors may also sit on more than one case during their service.
Proportion of Jurors by Jury Service Duration (Weeks) | |||
Period | Jan 2024 – Dec 2025 | Jan 2024 – Dec 2025 (%) | |
One week or less | 210,930 | 53.1% | |
Between 1 and 2 weeks | 155,178 | 39.1% | |
Between 2 and 3 weeks | 18,806 | 4.7% | |
Between 3 and 4 weeks | 5,061 | 1.3% | |
Between 4 and 5 weeks | 2,841 | 0.7% | |
Between 5 and 6 weeks | 1,667 | 0.4% | |
More than 6 weeks | 2,773 | 0.7% | |
Total | 397,256 | 100.0% | |
Source: HMCTS management information - Data extracted via Juror 16/4/2026 Notes:
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Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many times (a) hearings and (b) trials have delayed as a result of the the Witness Care Unit not informing witnesses of the trial date in each of the last three years.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The specific information requested regarding delays to hearings and trials is not held. However, data on trials that have been ineffective or vacated is published in the Criminal Courts Accredited Official Statistics. The latest available data including reasons for trial outcomes can be found in the ‘Trial Effectiveness at the Criminal Courts tool’ here: Criminal court statistics quarterly: October to December 2025 - GOV.UK.
Police Witness Care Units (WCUs) are integral to the criminal justice system which is reflected in their statutory obligations under the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (the Victims’ Code). The Victims’ Code is clear that WCUs must inform victims of the time, date and location of any hearing. Right 8.1 sets out that WCUs must do this within 1 working day of them receiving the information from the court.
The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 created a framework to monitor criminal justice agencies' compliance with the Victims' Code, including legislative duties for agencies to collect and share information on Code compliance. Alongside this, we are exploring digital and data improvements to strengthen data sharing cross the criminal justice system in order to streamline and improve victim experience.
This Government is committed to ensuring victims and witnesses have the information and support they need to navigate court proceedings. That is why we are consulting on a new Victims’ Code to ensure we get the foundations right for victims.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the total annual cost of administering the Community Payback scheme was in each of the last five years; and what the average cost per (a) sentence and (b) completed hour of unpaid work was in each of those years.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Financial Year | Total Community Payback Unpaid Work Spend (£) |
2021/22 | £47,340,492 |
2022/23 | £77,175,893 |
2023/24 | £89,614,915 |
2024/25 | £96,014,945 |
In terms of what the total cost covers, it is things such as staffing costs, fleet (vans) and tools.
We do not hold information on average cost per sentence in the format requested.
The average cost per hour of Unpaid Work credited was £17.15 (2022/23), £19.14 (2023/24) and £21.24 (2024/25). Data are not provided for the performance year 2021/22 as this is only a partial year of data following the reunification of the Probation Service.
The average cost per hour credited is calculated by dividing the total spend by the number of hours credited in each year.