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1715697

registered interest
date	02/05/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prisoners: Parental Responsibility
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of men in prison have access to legal advice on the issue of parental rights and responsibilities.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL4325
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 17/05/2024 answer text <p>Prisoners are entitled to civil legal aid if their legal matter is in scope, and they pass both a merits and a means test. The merits test considers the case’s likelihood of success and benefit to the client.</p><p> </p><p>Legal aid is available in certain family matters, such as public family law cases which fall under the Children Act 1989. These types of cases include proceedings relating to whether a child should be taken into care or who should have parental responsibility.</p><p> </p><p>In private family proceedings, legal aid is available for domestic abuse victims and where the child is at risk of abuse, subject to providing the required evidence and meeting the means and merits tests.</p><p> </p><p>However, the National Security Act 2023 introduced a restriction on access to civil legal aid for convicted terrorists, which narrowed the range of circumstances in which individuals convicted of specified terrorism offences can receive civil legal aid services, though these provisions have not yet commenced.</p><p> </p><p>It is not possible to estimate how many prisoners have a family law-related issue that is in scope of legal aid, and/or are eligible for legally-aided advice, as doing so would require each prisoner undertaking a means test and merits test of their case, as well as an examination of their issue to understand whether it is in scope.</p><p> </p><p>Prison staff are required to assist prisoners who wish to access legal advice by providing lists of legal advisers, supplying appropriate forms, and assisting prisoners to complete them where requested due to language or literacy difficulties.</p> answering member printed Lord Bellamy question first answered 17/05/2024 11:49:07 answering member 4941 label Biography information for Lord Bellamy
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1714595

registered interest
date	29/04/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prisons: Visits
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what the visit rates were for (1) male, and (2) female, public sector prisons in (a) 2019, (b) 2020, (c) 2021, (c) 2022, and (d) 2023.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL4143
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 13/05/2024 answer text <p>Visits are managed locally by each establishment and data is not routinely assured and reported nationally. Collating and assuring the data in the format requested would incur disproportionate cost.</p><p>His Majesty’s Prison &amp; Probation Service continue to promote the importance of offering different types of visits including family visits. We are aware that the Covid-19 Pandemic substantially impacted the numbers of face-to-face visits and stakeholders’ concerns over visitor numbers in some prisons being slow to return to pre-pandemic levels. There are a number of possible reasons for this including the introduction during the pandemic of additional ways in which families can stay in touch including the roll out of in-cell phones and secure video calls. Establishments have been working to provide a range of services to help prisoners develop or renew positive relationships. This includes using Official Prison Visitors, contracted family support workers, partnership work with external organisations such as New Bridge and the use of peer mentors.</p> answering member printed Lord Bellamy question first answered 13/05/2024 14:25:05 answering member 4941 label Biography information for Lord Bellamy
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1688306

registered interest
date	07/02/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prisoners: Parents
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made in identifying prisoners’ children, by sex and age, and obtaining other relevant data for their welfare, through the Better Outcomes through Linked Data programme.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL2276
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 19/02/2024 answer text <p>The Ministry of Justice’s most comprehensive estimate remains that over the course of a year, approximately 200,000 children may be affected by a parent being in or going to prison. This estimate is based on 2009 survey data.</p><p>The Prison Strategy White paper detailed our intention to work with other government departments to commission updated research to improve our collective understanding of the overall number of children affected by parental incarceration.</p><p>As part of this work, changes have been made to the Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCST) to enable us to collect data on entry to prison about how many primary carers are in custody and how many children under the age of 18 are affected by their imprisonment, which means that we can access this information centrally. Questions contained within the BCST are under continuous review to reflect learning from operational colleagues and people with lived experience of prison. While the BCST does include questions on the sex and ages of dependents of prisoners, the collection of this information relies solely on self-declaration of the parent in prison and therefore may raise challenges as to the accuracy or consistency of this information without being able to verify with other sources.</p><p>The Government is delivering on its white paper commitment to improve our data and evidence in this area, through the Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) Programme. BOLD is a £19.7m cross government Shared Outcomes Fund programme which is linking data to enable better evidenced and more joined up cross government services. The purpose of BOLD is to identify the overall scale of the issue by improving our understanding of the number of children affected by parental imprisonment. The BOLD programme aims to do this by exploring data available across government, including information that does not rely on self-disclosure. We expect findings from the project to be published in Spring 2024.</p> answering member printed Lord Bellamy grouped question UIN HL2277 HL2278 question first answered 19/02/2024 14:55:21 answering member 4941 label Biography information for Lord Bellamy
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1688307

registered interest
date	07/02/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prisoners: Guardianship
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made in collecting data on prisoners who are primary carers and their children through the Basic Custody Screening Tool so that this information can be accessed centrally.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL2277
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 19/02/2024 answer text <p>The Ministry of Justice’s most comprehensive estimate remains that over the course of a year, approximately 200,000 children may be affected by a parent being in or going to prison. This estimate is based on 2009 survey data.</p><p>The Prison Strategy White paper detailed our intention to work with other government departments to commission updated research to improve our collective understanding of the overall number of children affected by parental incarceration.</p><p>As part of this work, changes have been made to the Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCST) to enable us to collect data on entry to prison about how many primary carers are in custody and how many children under the age of 18 are affected by their imprisonment, which means that we can access this information centrally. Questions contained within the BCST are under continuous review to reflect learning from operational colleagues and people with lived experience of prison. While the BCST does include questions on the sex and ages of dependents of prisoners, the collection of this information relies solely on self-declaration of the parent in prison and therefore may raise challenges as to the accuracy or consistency of this information without being able to verify with other sources.</p><p>The Government is delivering on its white paper commitment to improve our data and evidence in this area, through the Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) Programme. BOLD is a £19.7m cross government Shared Outcomes Fund programme which is linking data to enable better evidenced and more joined up cross government services. The purpose of BOLD is to identify the overall scale of the issue by improving our understanding of the number of children affected by parental imprisonment. The BOLD programme aims to do this by exploring data available across government, including information that does not rely on self-disclosure. We expect findings from the project to be published in Spring 2024.</p> answering member printed Lord Bellamy grouped question UIN HL2276 HL2278 question first answered 19/02/2024 14:55:21 answering member 4941 label Biography information for Lord Bellamy
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1688308

registered interest
date	07/02/2024
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prisoners: Guardianship and Parents
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what is their most recent estimate for the number of children with (1) a parent in prison, and (2) a primary carer in prison.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL2278
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 19/02/2024 answer text <p>The Ministry of Justice’s most comprehensive estimate remains that over the course of a year, approximately 200,000 children may be affected by a parent being in or going to prison. This estimate is based on 2009 survey data.</p><p>The Prison Strategy White paper detailed our intention to work with other government departments to commission updated research to improve our collective understanding of the overall number of children affected by parental incarceration.</p><p>As part of this work, changes have been made to the Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCST) to enable us to collect data on entry to prison about how many primary carers are in custody and how many children under the age of 18 are affected by their imprisonment, which means that we can access this information centrally. Questions contained within the BCST are under continuous review to reflect learning from operational colleagues and people with lived experience of prison. While the BCST does include questions on the sex and ages of dependents of prisoners, the collection of this information relies solely on self-declaration of the parent in prison and therefore may raise challenges as to the accuracy or consistency of this information without being able to verify with other sources.</p><p>The Government is delivering on its white paper commitment to improve our data and evidence in this area, through the Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) Programme. BOLD is a £19.7m cross government Shared Outcomes Fund programme which is linking data to enable better evidenced and more joined up cross government services. The purpose of BOLD is to identify the overall scale of the issue by improving our understanding of the number of children affected by parental imprisonment. The BOLD programme aims to do this by exploring data available across government, including information that does not rely on self-disclosure. We expect findings from the project to be published in Spring 2024.</p> answering member printed Lord Bellamy grouped question UIN HL2276 HL2277 question first answered 19/02/2024 14:55:21 answering member 4941 label Biography information for Lord Bellamy
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1651438

registered interest
date	07/07/2023
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Divorce
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the reasons for the 22 per cent rise in divorce applications since reforms were introduced in April 2022.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL9170
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 17/07/2023 answer text <p>The Government continues to monitor and assess divorce application statistics. In the first year since divorce reforms were introduced in April 2022, 119,000 divorce applications were made through the new process, compared to almost 108,000 applications for the last full year under the previous legislation. This is an increase of 11 per cent. We expected a temporary spike in the volume of applications following implementation of the divorce reforms. This is because people will have waited to apply for a divorce under the new process. However, international evidence shows that long-term divorce rates are not increased by removing ‘fault’ from the divorce process. We expect volumes to return to previous levels once the initial peak has occurred.</p> answering member printed Lord Bellamy question first answered 17/07/2023 13:30:03 answering member 4941 label Biography information for Lord Bellamy
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1251622

registered interest
date	12/11/2020
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prisoners: Suicide
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the cost of suicides in prison over the last 12 months.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL10277
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 26/11/2020 answer text <p>Every death in custody is a tragedy and the Government is committed to reducing the number of self-inflicted deaths in prison.</p><p> </p><p>There is a variety of financial costs associated with responding to and investigating each self-inflicted death, making it difficult to calculate the total. However, it is the human cost, in terms of the loss of life, and the impact on the lives of others, including the bereaved family and friends and the staff who worked with the individual, that is of concern to the Government. It is our determination to avoid these harms, and our commitment to the welfare of those in our care, that drive our work to prevent self-inflicted deaths.</p> answering member printed Baroness Scott of Bybrook question first answered 26/11/2020 17:10:07 answering member 4553 label Biography information for Baroness Scott of Bybrook
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1251623

registered interest
date	12/11/2020
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prison Governors: Length of Service
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the average length of (1) a completed prison governor tenure, and (2) existing prison governor tenures.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL10278
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 26/11/2020 answer text <p>(1) The average length of service of a completed prison governor tenure who left over the last 5 years is 4.2 years.</p><p>To note, the averages are based on total governor tenure (which would include them moving to different prisons) and not specific to time spent in one post.</p><p>(2) As at 30 June 2020, existing prison governors had spent an average of 2.7 years in their current post.</p><p>To note, this includes substantive band 10-11 Governing Governors only and does not include any deputy governors who may be filling the role on a temporary promotion.</p> answering member printed Baroness Scott of Bybrook question first answered 26/11/2020 17:16:30 answering member 4553 label Biography information for Baroness Scott of Bybrook
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1251624

registered interest
date	12/11/2020
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prison Governors: Length of Service
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of prison governors have stayed in post for more than (1) two, and (2) three years.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL10279
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 26/11/2020 answer text <p>As at 30th June 2020, 48% of prison governors had stayed in their current post for more than two years, and 39% had stayed in their current post for more than three years.</p><p>To note, this includes substantive band 10-11 Governing Governors only and does not include any deputy governors who may be filling the role on a temporary promotion.</p> answering member printed Baroness Scott of Bybrook question first answered 26/11/2020 17:16:43 answering member 4553 label Biography information for Baroness Scott of Bybrook
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer

1251625

registered interest
date	12/11/2020
answering body	Ministry of Justice
answering dept id	54
answering dept short name	Justice
answering dept sort name	Justice
hansard heading	Prisons: Visits
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made in increasing awareness of the Assisted Prisons Visits scheme among (1) prisoners, and (2) visitors, since the publication of the report by the National Offender Management Service Families Do Matter Project Report 2009, which found that 38 per cent of prisoners and visitors were unaware of that scheme.
tabling member printed	Lord Farmer
uin	HL10280
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 26/11/2020 answer text <p>A new online Help with Visits service (formerly known as the Assisted Prison Visits Scheme) was introduced in June 2017 to simplify the application process and the ease of access to the service for members of the public who are visiting prisons.</p><p> </p><p>Family service providers have continued to assist HMPPS with raising the profile of the Help with Visits Scheme and, through their service user forum, have provided feedback on the design of the updated literature. This will be launched once Covid-19 restrictions ease across the prison estate.</p><p> </p><p>Additionally, a pilot across a number of prisons will be used to review eligibility criteria to help inform potential changes that may be made to improve access to social visits for prisoners and their families.</p> answering member printed Baroness Scott of Bybrook question first answered 26/11/2020 17:19:26 answering member 4553 label Biography information for Baroness Scott of Bybrook
tabling member	4321 label Biography information for Lord Farmer