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8 July 2008 : Column 1524W—continued
Fairtrade Initiative
Mr. Moore: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 7 February 2008, Official Report, column 1433W, on the fairtrade initiative, how much his Department spent on refreshments for official departmental meetings and engagements in each of the last three financial years; and what percentage of this total was spent on Fair Trade products. [211565]
Mr. Wills: The Ministry of Justice does not hold central records of the amount spent on refreshments for official departmental meetings and engagements. Therefore, we cannot calculate the percentage of Fairtrade produce as a total of this expenditure. This information could be obtained by manually contacting each division only at disproportionate cost.
Firearms: Sentencing
Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people have received the mandatory five year sentence for being in possession of a firearm in the last five years. [216495]
Mr. Hanson: The following table shows the number of persons sentenced to immediate custody for possession of an illegal firearm eligible for the mandatory minimum, and the proportion who received the mandatory minimum.
Statistics for 2007 will be published in autumn 2008.
| Persons( 1) sentenced to mandatory five-year custodial sentence for firearms possession offences( 2) , all courts, England and Wales, 2004 - 06 | ||||
| Number of persons and percentage of total | ||||
| Total persons sentenced | Persons given immediate custody | Of which: five years or over( 3) | Percentage of total sentenced | |
| (1) These data are on the principal offence basis. (2) Possessing or distributing prohibited weapons or ammunition or firearm disguised as other object. Firearms Act 1968 sections 5(1)(a), (ab), (aba), (ac), (ad), (ae), (af) or (c) and section 5(1A)(a) as amended by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 section 287. (3) Three years in the case of persons aged 16-17. (4) Many of the persons dealt with in 2004 will have committed their offences prior to the mandatory sentence being introduced in January 2004. Note: These figures have been drawn from administrative data systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. Source: OMS Analytical Services | ||||
Judges: Official Residences
Mr. Spellar: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 1 July 2008, Official Report, column 879W, on judges: official residences, what the addresses were in respect of which the expenditure was made. [216733]
Maria Eagle: The answer to which the right hon. Gentleman refers did not refer to official residences but to the domestic residences of judicial office holders, as was made clear at the time.
In the interests of security, the private addresses of judicial office holders where protective security work has been carried out are not made public.
Ministerial Duties
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what percentage of his working week is taken up in duties arising from his role and responsibilities as Lord Chancellor. [216048]
Mr. Straw: The proportion of my time taken up in duties arising from my role and responsibilities as Lord Chancellor, and that taken up in duties arising from my role and responsibilities as Secretary of State for Justice, varies greatly day to day and week to week depending on the issues which present themselves.
The breakdown of my responsibilities in each office is shown in the following list. The functions listed in italics are entrenched functions of the Lord Chancellor, that is they cannot be transferred to another Minister without legislation.
Division of responsibilities between the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Justice as at 1 November 2007
Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor are two legally separate ministerial offices, albeit combined in one person. Great Seal, judiciary-related and judicial appointment
functions are entrenched in the Lord Chancellorship, and cannot be transferred by order under the Ministers of the Crown Act 1975, These are shown in italics in the following list. There are no entrenched functions in the Secretary of State.
Custody and exercise of the Great Seal.
Judicial appointments and all matters related to the judiciary and lay magistracy, including titles, pay, pensions, conduct and discipline.
Procedural rules, appointments to rule committees/advisory councils, fees as applicable in Criminal Justice, Civil Justice, Family Justice and Administrative Justice.
HM Court Services (i . e . administrative systems, staff, services and accommodation, for the Supreme Court of England and Wales (including the crown courts and district probate registries), the county courts and the magistrates courts).
The Tribunals Service
The Land Registry
The Northern Ireland Court Service
The Law Commission
Public records
The National Archives
The Crown Dependencies
Royal and hereditary matters
Legal aid
Regulation of the Legal Professions
Secretary of State for Justice
National Offender Management Service, including the prison and probation services
Criminal law and sentencing policy
Sponsorship of relevant inspectorates and NDPBs, including the Prison Service, Parole Board, Youth Justice Board.
Devolution.
Data Protection.
Freedom of Information.
Human Rights.
Electoral Law.
Prisoners: Personal Property
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what procedure is in place for recording and storing prisoners' personal property (a) in the prisoner's possession upon arrival in prison and (b) sent to prisoners during their custody. [216187]
Maria Eagle: Guidance on prisoners' in-possession property is contained in PSO 1250 (a copy of which is in the Library). All property either accompanying a prisoner into prison or sent to them during their custody must be searched in reception and recorded on the appropriate property record card.
The amount of property that a prisoner may retain in their possession is limited by the policy on volumetric control which restricts prisoners to that which can be fitted into two standard size volumetric control boxes.
It is for prison governors to decide locally what items prisoners are allowed to retain in their possession bearing in mind what they consider appropriate for their local circumstances and to fit in with their locally devised Incentive and Earned Privileges scheme. Any surplus property will either be stored locally in the prison or sent to the HM Prison Service National Distribution Centre at Branston until 28 days before the prisoner is
due to be released when the holding prison should request that the property be sent to them in preparation for discharge.
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many items of prisoners' (a) clothing and (b) other property were stored by each prison in England and Wales between 1 April 2007 and 31 March 2008; how many such items were reported (i) lost, (ii) damaged and (iii) stolen during that year; and what sum of compensation has been paid by the Prison Service for the loss, damage or theft of personal property in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available. [216188]
Mr. Straw: The Prison Service does not keep a central record of the amount of prisoners' clothing and property that is stored by each prison and to provide this information would involve both the individual scrutiny of a substantial amount of documents at each prison and a large data collecting exercise—this could be done only at disproportionate cost.
The Prison Service also does not keep a central record of the number of items that prisoners report lost, damaged or stolen; again, such information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
A breakdown of the compensation the Prison Service has paid over the last 10 years to prisoners for damaged or lost property is set out in the following tables. In capturing the information the Prison Service does not distinguish between prisoners' lost or stolen property.
| Damaged property | ||
| Number of cases | Compensation (£) | |
| Lost property | ||
| Number of cases | Compensation (£) | |
Prisons: Crimes of Violence
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many prisoner on staff assaults there were in each of the last five years, listed by prison; [215861]
(2) how many prisoner-on-staff assaults were (a) referred to and (b) investigated by police forces in each of the last five years, listed by prison. [215966]
Mr. Straw: Table 1 shows incidents of prisoner on staff assaults in each of the last five years by prison.
The information set out is subject to important qualifications. The National Offender Management Service Incident Reporting System processes high volumes of data which are constantly being updated. The numbers provide a good indication of overall numbers but should not be interpreted as absolute.
Assault information is recorded at establishment level in four categories: Prisoner on Prisoner, Prisoner on Officer, Other (including miscellaneous assault information) and Prisoner on Other. The recorded incidents of assaults on prison officers are not completely exclusive to officers; establishment recording sometimes includes assaults on other prison staff in this category. Rises or falls in reported numbers from one year to the next are not a good indicator of an underlying trend for a particular prison. Additionally there have been improvements in reporting over the years, and this is reflected in the tables.
Assault data are complex and the numbers need to be interpreted with caution. Information recorded as assault incidents may involve one or many prisoners as some assault incidents may involve more than one assailant or more than one victim. Additionally in a proportion of incidents only the victim is known.
The numbers supplied refer to the number of individual assault incidents. The numbers refer to all incidents recorded as assaults; these may also include threatening behaviour, projection of bodily fluids and other non-contact events and allegations.
The category ‘Prisoner on Other’ contains few entries but these may include prison staff as well as visitors, legal visitors etc. For the purpose of this response the categories ‘Prisoner on Officer’ and ‘Prisoner on Other’ are used.
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