Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether her Department informs victims when perpetrators of crimes against them are due to be released under her Department's scheme to temporarily reduce the proportion of some custodial sentences served in prison from 50% to 40%.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Ministers and officials regularly meet with the Victims’ Commissioner. I can confirm recent meetings have included discussions about the impact on victims of the prison capacity measures announced on 12 July, and the processes in place to ensure that victims have access to information and support they may need.
Victims who are eligible for and have opted into either the Probation Service’s Victim Contact Scheme or Victim Notification Scheme are provided with updates about an offender that perpetrated crimes against them, including when these offenders are due to be released from custody. This includes providing these victims with the opportunity to make representations as to the licence conditions that they would like to be in place on an offender’s release such as an exclusion zone.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether she has had recent discussions with the Victims' Commissioner on the potential impact on victims of her Department's scheme to temporarily reduce the proportion of some custodial sentences served in prison from 50% to 40%.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Ministers and officials regularly meet with the Victims’ Commissioner. I can confirm recent meetings have included discussions about the impact on victims of the prison capacity measures announced on 12 July, and the processes in place to ensure that victims have access to information and support they may need.
Victims who are eligible for and have opted into either the Probation Service’s Victim Contact Scheme or Victim Notification Scheme are provided with updates about an offender that perpetrated crimes against them, including when these offenders are due to be released from custody. This includes providing these victims with the opportunity to make representations as to the licence conditions that they would like to be in place on an offender’s release such as an exclusion zone.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Reform UK - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign-born criminals (a) are in prisons and (b) were released under the revised terms of the early release scheme in Norfolk since 10 September 2024.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Information on the number of Foreign Nationals in prisons can be found in Table 1_Q_12 here: Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a1167cce1fd0da7b592c8d/Prison-population-30-June-2024.ods.
We are unable to provide the requested prisoner release figures at this time, as they form a subset of prisoner releases data scheduled for future publication. Numbers of custodial releases for the period covering July 2024 to September 2024 will be published on 30 January 2025, here: Offender management statistics quarterly - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Lord Lucas (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Twycross on 12 August (HL426), whether the Ministry of Justice has received such representations from the Public and Commercial Services Union; and what was their response.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Public and Commercial Services Union has not made any representations to the Ministry of Justice regarding this motion and therefore no response was given.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of sending prisoners serving sentences in England and Wales to prisons overseas.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
We have prisoner transfer agreements with over 100 countries which enable us to send foreign national offenders to serve the remainder of their prison sentence in their home country. We are reviewing the opportunities to strengthen or expand these arrangements.
The previous Government explored the possibility of sending British prisoners to rented prisons overseas. There are no current plans to introduce this measure, which we believe carries considerable cost. This Government is in the market for practical approaches that work, and not for costly gimmicks, unlike our predecessors
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will make an estimate of the number of people who (a) have been convicted of domestic abuse and (b) will be released early from prison as part of the SDS40 scheme.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
There is no single offence for domestic abuse defined in legislation as many other criminal offences can include domestic abuse.
The SDS40 change has exclusions for specific offences linked to domestic abuse including stalking, coercive or controlling behaviour and non-fatal strangulation. This represents a change from the previous Government’s End of Custody Supervised Licence Scheme which failed to exclude domestic abuse sentences.
SDS40 data will be published in due course.
Asked by: Edward Argar (Conservative - Melton and Syston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate she has made of the number of prison places made available in the adult male estate as a result of the prisoner early release scheme.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The modelled estimates for the number of prison places made available in the adult male estate as a result of this change were published in the Impact Assessment for the Statutory Instrument to Amend the Standard Determinate Sentence Automatic Release Point.
This can be found at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2024/117/pdfs/ukia_20240117_en.pdf. Further statistics will be published in due course.
Asked by: Andrew Cooper (Labour - Mid Cheshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact on victims of SDS40 applying to sentences being served concurrently with sentences of sexual or domestic abuse.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Offenders’ eligibility for SDS40 is determined by each specific sentence. Release provisions for different sentence types and length are fixed by law. This change has amended the automatic release point for standard determinate sentences that are not excluded. This means that by law, an offender serving multiple sentences could have a mixture of some sentences that are eligible for the 40% release point and others that are not. Someone serving a sentence for an excluded offence will not see their custodial time for that sentence reduced, but any sentences for non-excluded offences will be impacted.
Certain offences have been excluded from the Standard Determinate Sentences SDS40 change. These include sex offences irrespective of sentence length; serious violent offences with a sentence of four years or more; specified offences linked to domestic abuse irrespective of sentence length (including stalking, coercive or controlling behaviour and non-fatal strangulation); as well as offences concerning national security. The change will also not apply to sentences subject to release at the discretion of the Parole Board or to offences which currently attract automatic release from an SDS at the two-thirds point (certain serious sexual and violent offences).
If victims are part of the Victim Contact Scheme (VCS) or Victim Notification Scheme (VNS), they will be informed about a change to an offender’s release date. Victims of a sexual, violent or terrorism offence are eligible for the VCS where an offender receives a specified custodial sentence of 12 months or more. They are eligible for the VNS if they are a victim of a stalking or harassment offence regardless of the length of the custodial sentence. This includes breach of a restraining order.
For victims of domestic abuse, there are national helplines that victims can also contact for more immediate help and support, which do offer translation services if your first language is not English. These are 24 hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline; the Men’s advice line for domestic abuse; and the 24 hour National Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence helpline in Wales.
Asked by: Jerome Mayhew (Conservative - Broadland and Fakenham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many letters informing postmasters and former postmasters that their conviction has been quashed under the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024 her Department has sent.
Answered by Heidi Alexander - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
I refer the honourable Member to the answer I gave on 10 September 2024 to Question 4254 (https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-09-04/4254).
The Government will begin to release monthly management information on the progress of the Post Office Convictions casework team. The first release of this management information will be on 3rd October 2024.
Asked by: Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they intend to respond to the consultation on the storage and retention of wills and other documents submitted in applications for probate which closed on 23 February; and what steps they have taken to ensure that no such documents have been destroyed in the meantime.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The response to the consultation will be published shortly.
No wills or other defined documents have been destroyed. The consultation sought views on changes to modernise the storage of documents submitted in applications for probate. If the Government did decide to proceed with the proposal in the consultation no documents would be destroyed without Parliament agreeing to legislative changes.