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1735462

registered interest
date	18/10/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Horizon IT System: Convictions
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of convicted postmasters has her Department contacted to inform them that their conviction has been quashed under the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024.
tabling member constituency	Broadland and Fakenham
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	9943
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 28/10/2024 answer text <p>I refer the honourable Member to our GOV.UK page where we now publish monthly management information on the progress of the Post Office Convictions casework team. This page can be found at: <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-office-horizon-system-offences-act-2024-quashed-convictions-management-information" target="_blank">Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024: Quashed convictions management information - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).</a></p><p>As of the end of September, we had assessed 459 individual cases and had written to 335 individuals or their appropriate contacts to inform them that they had one or more convictions quashed by the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024. A further update will be published in early November.</p><p>We are unable to provide an assessment of what proportion of individuals with convictions this represents, as we may not hold records for all relevant individuals. I would actively encourage anyone who believes they have a conviction in scope of the legislation and has not heard from my Department to register for the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme on GOV.UK so their case can be considered.</p> answering member constituency Swindon South answering member printed Heidi Alexander question first answered 28/10/2024 09:57:49 answering member 4038 label Biography information for Heidi Alexander
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1730766

registered interest
date	04/10/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Horizon IT System: Convictions
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many full-time civil servants are working on informing postmasters and former postmasters that their conviction has been quashed under the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024.
tabling member constituency	Broadland and Fakenham
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	6474
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 14/10/2024 answer text <p>The Horizon scandal was an unprecedented miscarriage of justice and the Government is working to notify all postmasters whose convictions have been quashed as quickly as possible. This work is carried out through a specially trained casework team who assess each case and verify that a conviction has been quashed by the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024. The team must assess a wide variety of data sources including records from the Police National Computer, Post Office Limited, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Criminal Cases Review Commission. As some of these convictions are decades old, it can take time to retrieve crucial pieces of data such as court records which adds to the time taken to verify a conviction in scope of the Act.</p><p>As of 8 October 2024, the Ministry of Justice has 22 civil servants working on the process of informing individuals who have had a conviction quashed by the Act. This number includes the dedicated Post Office convictions casework team as well as policy advisers, legal advisers, analysts and managerial oversight. The process to provide financial redress to postmasters is undertaken separately by the Department for Business and Trade with a separate team of civil servants, once a conviction has been overturned.</p> answering member constituency Swindon South answering member printed Heidi Alexander question first answered 14/10/2024 16:51:12 answering member 4038 label Biography information for Heidi Alexander
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1728297

registered interest
date	09/09/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Horizon IT System: Convictions
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	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.
tabling member constituency	Broadland and Fakenham
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	4865
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 17/09/2024 answer text <p>I refer the honourable Member to the answer I gave on 10 September 2024 to Question 4254 (<a href="https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-09-04/4254" target="_blank">https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-09-04/4254</a>).</p><p>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.</p> answering member constituency Swindon South answering member printed Heidi Alexander question first answered 17/09/2024 16:16:46 answering member 4038 label Biography information for Heidi Alexander
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1727433

registered interest
date	04/09/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Horizon IT System: Convictions
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many subpostmasters had their convictions quashed as a result of the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act.
tabling member constituency	Broadland and Fakenham
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	4254
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 10/09/2024 answer text <p>The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024 quashed all convictions meeting the conditions in the Act immediately upon commencement on 24 May 2024.</p><p>Following the commencement of the Act, the Ministry of Justice has been working through data from a range of sources and spanning multiple decades to identify convictions that are in scope of the Act and notify individuals of this where possible. As of 6 September 2024, the Ministry of Justice has sent 178 letters to individuals notifying them that their convictions were quashed by the Act, covering a total of 506 convictions. More letters are being sent on a daily basis, and we aim to have issued letters to individuals with a known conviction by early November.</p> answering member constituency Swindon South answering member printed Heidi Alexander question first answered 10/09/2024 16:42:06 answering member 4038 label Biography information for Heidi Alexander
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1716698

registered interest
date	08/05/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Administration of Justice
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	What steps his Department is taking to reduce delays in judicial processes.
tabling member constituency	Broadland
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	902791
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 14/05/2024 answer text <p>We remain committed to tackling the outstanding caseloads across our courts and tribunals and have introduced a range of measures to achieve this aim.</p><p>While the listing of cases is an independent judicial function, we have consistently invested in judicial recruitment to ensure we have the capacity to deliver effective judicial processes. Since 2018, we have recruited around 1,000 judges and tribunal members annually, across all jurisdictions.</p><p> </p><p>Criminal courts <br>Over 90% of all criminal cases are heard at the magistrates’ courts, where we heard 100,000 cases a month on average across 2023. While the outstanding caseload in the magistrates’ courts has slightly increased in recent months due to an increase in the number of cases coming to court, the caseload remains well below its pandemic peak and stood at 370,700 at the end of December 2023, and cases continue to be progressed quickly.</p><p>To aid our efforts in the magistrates’ courts, we invested £1 million in a programme of work to support the recruitment of more magistrates. We aim to recruit 2,000 new and diverse magistrates this year, and similar numbers for each of the next couple of years.</p><p>At the Crown Court, we remain committed to reducing the outstanding caseload. We delivered 107,700 sitting days in the most recent financial year (FY23/24) and judges have worked tirelessly to complete more cases. The latest data shows cases progressed through the Crown Court more quickly throughout 2023, with the median time from receipt to completion reducing from 167 days in the first quarter of 2023, to 125 days in the last quarter.</p><p>We are also investing more in our criminal courts. In August 2023, we announced we are investing £220 million for essential modernisation and repair work of our court buildings, up to March 2025.</p><p> </p><p>Family Court <br>In March 2024 the Family Justice Board agreed a new set of priorities for the family justice system, with a clear focus on closing the longest running cases and increasing the proportion of public law cases concluding within the 26-week statutory timeline.</p><p>We announced in the Spring Budget an additional £55 million to improve productivity, support earlier resolution of family disputes and reduce the number of cases coming to court. This includes creating a digital advice tool for separating couples, piloting early legal advice and supporting the expansion of the private law Pathfinder model. The Department for Education are investing an extra £10 million to deliver new initiatives to address the longest delays in public law.</p><p>We have provided the flexibility for judges to sit virtually across regional boundaries, so that judges can be deployed where they are needed most, to reduce the caseload and waiting times.</p><p>We are also investing up to £23.6 million in the family mediation voucher scheme, which we intend will allow for its continuation up to March 2025. As of May 2024, over 28,600 families have successfully used the scheme to attempt to resolve their private law disputes outside of court.</p><p> </p><p>Civil courts</p><p>With regards to civil cases, we are taking action to ensure those that do need to go to trial are dealt with quickly. We have a significant volume of judicial recruitment underway for District and Deputy District Judges, are digitising court processes and holding more remote hearings, and are increasing the use of mediation.</p><p>The requirement for small claims in the county court to attend a mediation session with the Small Claims Mediation Service will start this spring and is expected to help parties resolve their dispute swiftly and consensually without the need for a judicial hearing.</p><p>The HMCTS Reform Program has introduced technology that delivers simplified and transformed digital ways of working for civil court users and judges such as the online money claims process and the damages claims service, offering accessible and responsive services.</p><p> </p><p>Tribunals <br>With regards to the tribunals, we continue to work with the Department for Business and Trade on further measures to address caseloads in the Employment Tribunal, where the deployment of legal officers, recruitment of additional judges and a new electronic case management system have helped the Tribunal to manage its caseload which remains below its pandemic peak.</p><p>We have rolled out the HMCTS digital reform programme in the Immigration and Asylum and Social Entitlement chambers so that anyone challenging an immigration or welfare benefits decision can lodge their appeal, track progress and receive the results all online.</p><p>HMCTS continues to invest in improving tribunal productivity through the recruitment of additional Judges, deployment of Legal Officers to actively manage cases, the development of modern case management systems and the use of remote hearing technology.</p> answering member constituency Orpington answering member printed Gareth Bacon question first answered 14/05/2024 13:46:27 answering member 4798 label Biography information for Gareth Bacon
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1697732

registered interest
date	20/03/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Courts
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to tackle the backlog in the courts.
tabling member constituency	Broadland
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	902212
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 26/03/2024 answer text <p>We remain committed to tackling the outstanding caseloads across our courts and tribunals and have introduced a range of measures to achieve this aim.</p><p> </p><p>Over 90% of all criminal cases are heard at the magistrates’ court, where we heard 100,000 cases a month on average across 2023. While the outstanding caseload in the magistrates’ courts has slightly increased in recent months due to an increase in the number of cases coming to court, the caseload remains well below its pandemic peak and stood at 353,900 at the end of September 2023, and cases continue to be progressed quickly. To aid our efforts in the magistrates’ courts, we invested £1 million in a programme of work to support the recruitment of more magistrates. We aim to recruit 2,000 new magistrates this year, and similar numbers for each of the next couple of years.</p><p> </p><p>At the Crown Court, we remain committed to reducing the outstanding caseload. Last financial year we sat over 100,000 days and this financial year, we plan to deliver around 107,000 sitting days and recruit more than 1,000 judges across all jurisdictions. Judges have worked tirelessly to complete more cases, with disposals up by 9% during Q3 in 2023 compared to Q4 in 2022 (25,700 compared to 23,700).</p><p>We are also investing in our criminal courts. In August 2023, we announced we are investing £220 million for essential modernisation and repair work of our court buildings across the next two years, up to March 2025. We have also continued the use of 20 Nightingale courtrooms into the 2024/25 financial year, to allow courts to work at full capacity.</p><p> </p><p>In the Family Court, we are working with the Department for Education and other partners on the Family Justice Board to tackle the longest running cases and increase the proportion of public law cases that conclude within the 26-week timeline. The Department for Education are also investing an extra £10m to develop new initiatives to address the longest delays in public law proceedings.</p><p>We announced in the Spring Budget an additional £55m to improve productivity, support earlier resolution of family disputes and reduce the number of cases coming to court. This includes creating a digital advice tool for separating couples, piloting early legal advice and supporting the expansion of the private law Pathfinder model. We are also investing up to £23.6m in the family mediation voucher scheme, which we intend will allow for its continuation up to March 2025. As of March 2024, over 26,000 families have successfully used the scheme to attempt to resolve their private law disputes outside of court.</p><p> </p><p>With regards to civil cases, we are taking action to ensure those that do need to go to trial are dealt with quickly. We have launched the biggest ever judicial recruitment drive for District Judges, are digitising court processes and holding more remote hearings, and are increasing the use of mediation. The requirement for small claims in the county court to attend a mediation session with the Small Claims Mediation Service will start this spring and is expected to help parties resolve their dispute swiftly and consensually without the need for a judicial hearing.</p><p>With regards to tribunals, we continue to work with the Department for Business and Trade on further measures to address caseloads in the Employment Tribunal, where the deployment of legal officers, recruitment of additional judges and a new electronic case management system have helped the Tribunal to manage its caseload which remains below its pandemic peak.</p> answering member constituency Finchley and Golders Green answering member printed Mike Freer question first answered 26/03/2024 17:15:12 answering member 4004 label Biography information for Mike Freer
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1387570

registered interest
date	08/12/2021
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Offenders: Employment
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to support offenders in gaining employment following their release from prison.
tabling member constituency	Broadland
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	904762
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 14/12/2021 answer text <p>The Prisons Strategy White Paper sets out our ambition to deliver a step-change in the number of prisoners who work in prison, on temporary licence, and secure employment on release.</p><p> </p><p>We will open our doors to the private sector to overhaul the opportunities for work offered in prisons and on Release on Temporary Licence. We will implement dedicated Employment Advisors in prisons and develop a digital tool that will match prisoners to jobs on release.</p><p> </p><p>We will establish more local employment boards to link prisons with business networks. The Secretary of State recently hosted an employment summit, attended by over 600 organisations, at which he set out this department’s commitment to improving employment rates for prison leavers and also establish ‘Employment Hubs’, the equivalent of a ‘jobcentre in a prison’ where prisoners can find out about job opportunities.</p> answering member constituency North West Hampshire answering member printed Kit Malthouse question first answered 14/12/2021 17:54:01 answering member 4495 label Biography information for Kit Malthouse
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1199485

registered interest
date	02/06/2020
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Children: Access
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department's policy on parents access to children is based on a presumption of equal access, subject to additional risk factors.
tabling member constituency	Broadland
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	53618
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 10/06/2020 answer text <p>The welfare of the child is the court’s paramount concern when making any decision about a child’s upbringing, including with whom the child is to live or spend time. The legislative framework is contained in the Children Act 1989, which is gender neutral.</p><p>While the court must presume that a parent’s involvement in the child’s life will further their welfare this can be rebutted, for example in cases of domestic abuse. If a parent can be involved in the child’s life in a way that is safe, the nature of that parental involvement will then be determined by the court based on all the facts.</p> answering member constituency Cheltenham answering member printed Alex Chalk question first answered 10/06/2020 16:54:36 answering member 4481 label Biography information for Alex Chalk
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1198504

registered interest
date	01/06/2020
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Family Courts: Custody
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information his Department holds on the proportion of family court cases where discouraged access to the child was reported by one of the parents.
tabling member constituency	Broadland
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	52490
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 09/06/2020 answer text <p>Incidences of alleged or apparent parental alienation by either parent in relation to family proceedings about child arrangements are not recorded centrally and such information could only be obtained from individual case files at disproportionate cost.</p><p>The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) is continuing to develop its work in addressing parental alienation when it arises in such cases. Its Child Impact Assessment Framework (CIAF) includes various tools and guidance that further support social work practitioners in identifying how individual children are experiencing parental separation, including any alienating behaviour by one parent against the other. Further information about the Framework is available on the Cafcass website at www.Cafcass.gov.uk.</p> answering member constituency Cheltenham answering member printed Alex Chalk question first answered 09/06/2020 10:27:43 answering member 4481 label Biography information for Alex Chalk
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew

1198505

registered interest
date	01/06/2020
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Family Courts: Custody
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the adversarial approach of the Family Courts in dealing with child access cases.
tabling member constituency	Broadland
tabling member printed	Jerome Mayhew
uin	52491
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 09/06/2020 answer text <p>We are committed to ensuring that the Family Courts deal with child arrangement order cases to achieve the best possible outcomes for children and their families. In May 2019 the MoJ established a panel of experts to review how the family courts handle cases involving domestic abuse and other serious offences. The panel received submissions from over 1200 individuals and organisations, many of whom had experience of the adversarial system. The panel is finalising its report and will publish findings and recommendations for next steps in the coming weeks.</p> answering member constituency Cheltenham answering member printed Alex Chalk question first answered 09/06/2020 10:37:28 answering member 4481 label Biography information for Alex Chalk
tabling member	4739 label Biography information for Jerome Mayhew